Pacific War withour Japan/US conflict

[ruisramos]

Does anyone know of any timeline/thread about a scenario in which Japan "goes South" without attacking the US? That is: they go after the colonies of the European colonial powers already in war or under ocupation by Germany (French Indochina, Dutch East Indies and British Far East pocessions).
I've searched the forum for something like that but failed to find any.

 

[HJ Tulp]

There have been more then a couple actually. It mostly boils down to a fight between those who think that sooner or later the US intervenes and those who don't.

 

[CalBear]

The Japanese already had taken effective control of French Indochina. That move was the last straw which resulted in the total U.S. embargo.

It is really hard to create a circumstance where the Japanese are willing to leave the U.S. Philippine bases sitting across IJN supply lines from the Southern Resource Area, Guam threatening Saipan, AND Wake in position to interdict traffic to/from the Mandates. Even if the U.S. wasn't going to act, and the chances are pretty good that initially the U.S. wouldn't have gone to war with Japan over Singapore and Java, the Japanese couldn't count on that.

There is also the not insignificant matter that, by early 1943, the USN would have been able to overwhelm the IJN in an afternoon thanks to the Two Ocean Navy Act of 1940. Japan simply couldn't roll the dice and hope the kept coming up 7's forever.

 

[Andrew Hudson]

Arguably it wouldn't be the Pacific War as Japan would strike southwards through the East Indies to gain oil supplies and at Malaya for rubber. The only Pacific fighting would be in Japan launched a carrier borne attack on Canada.

Most scenarios regarding no Pearl Harbour concentrate on the effect on Europe. Of course another possiblity would be a Pacific War if they decided to attack Soviet Russia.

 

[Astrodragon]

The other issue for the USA is the rubber supply. The DEI dont affect the US that much, they had (at that time), plenty of oil and were a major exporter.
]
However domestic supply if tin and rubber were another matter (tungsten too). So the Japanese crawling all over Malaya and Burma was quite a threat to the USA, even ignoring everything else (it took a lot of money and effort to cope with finding new rubber supplies in OTL). This was also quite obvious to the Japanese, so the idea of leaving the USN just sitting there as Damocles's sword over their supply lines while hoping the USA would just sit there forever is more than a little unlikely.

While the idea of going to war against the US and the British Empire was foolish in the extreme, the way they did it with the preemptive attacks was probably the best way of going about it.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I would guess that if Japan went south, the US would stay out, as FDR wouldn't be able to convince Congress to DoW Japan to protect the British and Dutch empires. OTOH, the US would probably do some aggressive patrolling around the Philippines, e.g., and would build up naval bases in Guam, Midway and the Philippines. So when a Japanese ship/airplane gets overexcited (or legitimately mistakes a US force for e.g. a British one), and the US gets a good casus belli, the Japanese would be even more toast than OTL, because a major, defended US base in the Philippines is in their way.

It might take a year or two...

 

[usertron2020]

I would guess that if Japan went south, the US would stay out, as FDR wouldn't be able to convince Congress to DoW Japan to protect the British and Dutch empires. OTOH, the US would probably do some aggressive patrolling around the Philippines, e.g., and would build up naval bases in Guam, Midway and the Philippines. So when a Japanese ship/airplane gets overexcited (or legitimately mistakes a US force for e.g. a British one), and the US gets a good casus belli, the Japanese would be even more toast than OTL, because a major, defended US base in the Philippines is in their way.

It might take a year or two...

The Isolationists were waaaaay too powerful to let what is basically a Lusitannia incident become a Major War. You could bet there'd be snarling but in the end FDR just doesn't have DoW powers. But it is true that any IJA/IJN flag officer who suggested going south while ignoring the Philippines would be put on the retired list in record breaking time.


The mention of tin, rubber, and tungsten is important, but are these really the only sources of these resources in the world? I seem to remember that Latin America has rubber and tin. Tungsten? Russia perhaps?

 

[xchen08]

The mention of tin, rubber, and tungsten is important, but are these really the only sources of these resources in the world? I seem to remember that Latin America has rubber and tin. Tungsten? Russia perhaps?

There's tungsten in Canada and South America too, plenty of tin in South America, or for that matter in the U.S. itself, and rubber in the Guianas/Brazil. Plus, the U.S. had a large quantity of Mexican Guayule rubber seeds left over from WWI-1920s rubber replacement projects, which can produce enough rubber in the Southwest for U.S. use if need be, if synthetic rubber production somehow fails.

 

[Astrodragon]

There's tungsten in Canada and South America too, plenty of tin in South America, or for that matter in the U.S. itself, and rubber in the Guianas/Brazil. Plus, the U.S. had a large quantity of Mexican Guayule rubber seeds left over from WWI-1920s rubber replacement projects, which can produce enough rubber in the Southwest for U.S. use if need be, if synthetic rubber production somehow fails.

All quite true, and they did develop these sources (after all, they had to!) However it was very expensive, and the thought of it would certainly affect the US attitude to Japan waltzing in an dtaking over those resources (there is a big difference, after all, in what you are prepared to do/spend in war and what you will do while at peace)

 

[I Blame Communism]

Russia perhaps?

They were a bit busy at the time...

I leave the main discussion to those who know that area better, but with regard to Japan attacking the Soviet East: there's nuffin' in it. The strategic value of the "claw" for Russia is in having a Pacific port; Japan has several already.

By the time the Japanese have cracked Vladivostok (which was a fortification on a level with Sevastopol'), the Russians will have pulled out what little they still had in the east back west of Irkutsk and blown up the railway. The Japanese are now even further from industrial targets in the Urals and Kazakhstan than the Germans are!

Their advance, which will be slow enough walking through the Siberian winter as it is, will be further stalled because they're still being embargoed by everyone and haven't resolved their resource shortages; and with their new entanglement in Russia, where will they find the troops? And Britain and the Netherlands have declared war (we were pretty scrupulous and even declared war on Finland and demanded its unconditional surrender) and are preparing as best they can to meet the initial attack, assuming it comes.

The issue is lend-lease. The Pacific route was important, and the Japanese cutting it bites the USSR in Europe badly. There will still be LL throough the Arctic and Persian routes, though; the US started it in October, before Pearl harbour; and it took until 1942 for the impact of Lend Lease to really be felt. And of hopefully, it's quite likley that the route will be re-operned before 1945.

More Russian civilians will starve, probably; crushing the Nazis in Europe will be more of a job for everyone. But the Nazis won't win.

So Russia's strategic situation is worse, but not bad enough to pull them under. Japan's is, if anything, worserer. I think the common wisdom that the Nazis should have signed Japan onto Barbarossa is making a big assumption in saying that the Japanese would have agreed.

 

[jedipilot24]

not likely

The reason the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor is because they were running short on oil and knew (or at least thought) that the US would likely declare war on them anyway if they went south toward the Philipinnes and other places. Because of their resource situation, the capture of the Phiilipinnes was absolutely vital. Since they believed that the US would declare war on them anyway for attacking the Phillipinnes (which is debatable, I admit), they figured that they might as well go whole hog and take out Pearl Harbor as well. Yamamoto was certainly not very sanguine about the notion of fighting the US but they didn't really have a choice.

 

[Thande]

I don't buy the idea that the US would have declared war on Japan if they'd just gone into Malaya and the NEI and ignored the Philippines etc. The isolationist anti-war lobby in the US was way too powerful, as someone else has noted above. Now maybe the Japanese may have thought the US would have declared war, but I'm much less convinced of it.

 

[jedipilot24]

You miss my point, the resources of the Phillippines were too vital for the Japanese to simply ignore.

 

[HJ Tulp]

You miss my point, the resources of the Phillippines were too vital for the Japanese to simply ignore.

Eh no. Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies were the prize. Resource-wise the Phillipines could be missed.


Thande: I've always seen the Isolationis-lobby as concentrating mainly on Europe. Asia is on Americas doorstep and the China-Lobby was reasonably influential as well.

 

[Markus]

Does anyone know of any timeline/thread about a scenario in which Japan "goes South" without attacking the US? That is: they go after the colonies of the European colonial powers already in war or under ocupation by Germany (French Indochina, Dutch East Indies and British Far East pocessions).
I've searched the forum for something like that but failed to find any.

It´s a topic that keeps comming up every few weeks.

That being said, the PI can not be ignored. Three to six months later it would have been an unsinkable aircraft carrier positioned right next to the SLOC to Japan. All it takes after that are one or two "Panay"-incidents and Japan would be screwed.

 

[kenmac]

Perhaps if the Japanese had declared war on the USSR first then been declared war on by Britain and it's European government in excile friends then struck back at them FDR would be far less likely to be able to push for an attack on Japan.

 

[Cook]

Eh no. Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies were the prize. Resource-wise the Phillipines could be missed.


Thande: I've always seen the Isolationis-lobby as concentrating mainly on Europe. Asia is on Americas doorstep and the China-Lobby was reasonably influential as well.

Didn’t the Isolationists believe that America should concern itself with it’s own traditional sphere of influence; the Americas and the Pacific?
They were very keen on stopping Tojo etc weren’t they?

 

[Cook]

Starts humming the Hoodoo Guru’s song; “Tojo never made it to Darwin”

 

[counterblitzkrieg]

Well, I've seen several timelines about Japan and the USA allying together in an alternate WWII scenario against Britain and Germany. Though most of the Pacific forces was mostly Japanese instead of American because the Americans was busy fending off an invasion from Canada.

 

[HJ Tulp]

Didn’t the Isolationists believe that America should concern itself with it’s own traditional sphere of influence; the Americas and the Pacific?
They were very keen on stopping Tojo etc weren’t they?

That's the impression I'm getting. With the Phillipines East Asia was very much in Americas backyard.