WI: Japan Hoards Resources before World War II

Delta Force

Banned
I've read that Germany began hoarding critical resources in the run-up to World War II. What if Japan pursued a similar policy, and bought up as many resources as possible in the 1930s, especially once the United States and others began putting pressure on it for the invasion of China and other actions?
 
I've read that Germany began hoarding critical resources in the run-up to World War II. What if Japan pursued a similar policy, and bought up as many resources as possible in the 1930s, especially once the United States and others began putting pressure on it for the invasion of China and other actions?

No money for it. The Japanese were desperately short on hard currency and their exports had collapsed.
 
Besides, the Japanese were spending everything they had on the invasion of China.

So, ya, you'd need to severely change history to fix that.

If they stomped hard on the 'junior officers set policy by assassination' back when it first started, Japan wouldn't be at war with China (or at least not sunk deep in an unwinnable war). So they'd be using far less material. They'd have more money and they'd be able to buy a bit more - and stockpile it instead of using it up as it came in.

OTOH. Why would they bother? If they're not involved in China, they have no NEED to enter WWII.

Still, maybe they could build destroyers by the dozen and sell them to the Brits....
 
Actually Japan did hoard resources. As deathscompanion1 wrote Japan lacked the hard currency to create a really large stockpile but there was some. Ellis in his book of charts 'Brute Force' has some statistics for what Japan did sandbag. Short summary is there was a six to twelve month supply of items like refined and unrefined aluminum, steel, coal, alloys, a few critical chemicals, some rice, and of course petroleum fuels. The stockpiling is a bit distorted in that part of it was not in japan but in Korea, Manchuria, Formosa, & the naval bases on the mandate islands or in newly acquired Indo China. It was not necessary or practical to pile everything up in warehouses on Honshu or Kyushu.

The one critical resource Japan could not hoard was cargo shipping. Prewar about 11 to 12 millions tons capacity were required to sustain japans industry & support military operations in China. Almost half that was in foreign flagged ships. When the embargos went into effect in mid 1941 Japan was left with about six million tons in its control. So, Japan started the war nearly 50% short of cargo ships just to keep its factories operating. That was further aggravated by the need for civilian cargo ships to support military operations across the Pacific. In 1942 a bit over one millions tons of captured and newly built capacity was added. Unfortunatly the gross needed to be doubled to twelve to fourteen million tons to carry everything necessary. Perhaps four million tons were added in 1942-44.
 
The British Official History of the War Against Japan included an appendix about the Japanese economic preparations for the war. I transcribed it and posted it on another thread a few months back, but the table formatting didn't transfer.

Send me a personal message with your email address and I will send it to you.
 
The one critical resource Japan could not hoard was cargo shipping. Prewar about 11 to 12 millions tons capacity were required to sustain japans industry & support military operations in China. Almost half that was in foreign flagged ships. When the embargos went into effect in mid 1941 Japan was left with about six million tons in its control. So, Japan started the war nearly 50% short of cargo ships just to keep its factories operating. That was further aggravated by the need for civilian cargo ships to support military operations across the Pacific. In 1942 a bit over one millions tons of captured and newly built capacity was added. Unfortunatly the gross needed to be doubled to twelve to fourteen million tons to carry everything necessary. Perhaps four million tons were added in 1942-44.

Yes the British official history says that he Japanese were making a concerted effort to expand their merchant marine. It says that 54% of Japanese imports were carried in Japanese ships in 1937 and this had grown to 65% in 1941.

It's figures are 6 million tons at the outbreak of the Pacific War. 0.8 million tons were captured and 3.3 million tons were built. However, 8.6 million tons were sunk for a net loss of 4.5 million tons.

On 15th August 1945 the Japanese merchant fleet had only 1.5 million tons of ships.

1.7 million tons of the new construction (i.e. over half) was built in 1944. That's more than the British were able to do. IIRC they built 6 million tons 1939-45 with an average of one million tons a year.
 
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1.7 million tons of the new construction (i.e. over half) was built in 1944. That's more than the British were able to do. IIRC they built 6 million tons 1939-45 with an average of one million tons a year.

They might have built more. Lack of steel, shortages of other necessities, skilled labor, all limited the effort.


The British Official History of the War Against Japan included an appendix about the Japanese economic preparations for the war. I transcribed it and posted it on another thread a few months back, but the table formatting didn't transfer.

Send me a personal message with your email address and I will send it to you.

Sure. I think Ellis drew from that for some of his data. Be interesting to compare.
 
They might have built more. Lack of steel, shortages of other necessities, skilled labour, all limited the effort.

According to the appendix and the US Strategic Bombing survey the Japanese could have doubled their steel output with higher quality ores.

However, the high quality ores came from Malaya and they had to make do with lower quality ore from Japan and/or Korea/Manchuria.

It was also due to a lack of forward planning. I think that Japanese admirals like Yamamoto were so in awe of America's industrial power that it gave them an inferiority complex, with the result that they didn't bother to plan for a long war.

Another thing they could have done with the extra steel was build more synthetic oil plants. They did have one, which used domestic coal and imports from Korea and Manchuria, but it wasn't on the scale of Germany's.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Could Japan have used barter trade to acquire raw materials it was looking for? There obviously weren't as many options to do so as there would be in the Cold War and later, but there's always Germany and Italy, as well as Siam, South America, and others. Japan had the third largest navy in the world, and Germany was looking to rebuild.
 
Could Japan have used barter trade to acquire raw materials it was looking for? There obviously weren't as many options to do so as there would be in the Cold War and later, but there's always Germany and Italy, as well as Siam, South America, and others. Japan had the third largest navy in the world, and Germany was looking to rebuild.

Japan did some barter, but the structure of who controlled the global resource pool made it difficult. Germany did have some items Japan needed, but Japan had less of what Germany needed, and Germany or Italy lacked many items critical for Japan.

This was the a significant part of Japans impulse for empire. As fast as japan opened its doors to trade in the late 19th Century it saw the European empires of the north Americans complete their control of the bulk of global resources. Japan had done better perhaps when a British client state, but Japans leaders judged the long term cost to high and choose to try for a more independent route to their own empire.
 
Could Japan have used barter trade to acquire raw materials it was looking for? There obviously weren't as many options to do so as there would be in the Cold War and later, but there's always Germany and Italy, as well as Siam, South America, and others. Japan had the third largest navy in the world, and Germany was looking to rebuild.

Only if they had something to barter - like destroyers and tankers which it could sell/trade to the Allies for raw material.
 
Only if they had something to barter - like destroyers and tankers which it could sell/trade to the Allies for raw material.

That occasionally turns up on the WI forums; had Japan kept some sort of relationship with Britain it could have been on the Allied side against Germany, as in the Great War. In that case all Japans cargo ship & aircraft production can be had by Britain, for a price. Japan can send a token fleet to the Med or North Atlantic, some regiments so their young officers can win their glory, and make a lot of hard cash along with the barter.

Now think ahead to the 1950s. Japan has a cash reserve, or at least its debt paid down substantially, its industry in intact, and the cash paid to Japan is cash or debt not in the pockets of the US. What then? The empires that constricted Japan are in trouble, world markets are reopening, and Japan has a relationship with a nation that may now need that connection as much as Japan does.
 
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