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Out of curiosity--would the U.S. have been willing to let Japan keep any of its post-1930 conquests?
I assume you mean if Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor? I would say probably at the very least Manchuria.
Japan invaded China in 1931 and annexed Manchuria as a puppet state. But the problem is they attacked China again in 1937 and this time their goals seemed pretty limitless. Especially after they also moved into French Indochina because France was helpless after the German invasion.
Interestingly in the 1930s Italy had invaded Ethiopia and Albania. This was before she joined WW2. If both Italy and Japan had stayed out of the war, they both might have not only got away with their early conquests but kept their existing empires.
Japan's actions of attacking Pearl Harbor to keep the US from interfering in WWII also seemed counter intuitive. Did Japan have no better course of action of keep the US stopping Japanese invasion of Asia?
Well, let's consider the situation and Japanese options.
Japan needed raw materials. This need was greatly exacerbated by the fact that they faced trade restrictions after the eruption of full-blown war in China in 1937, caused by Japan (who, obviously, were in China - it's hard to fault China for resisting this foreign military presence, no?) and a full-blown embargo after the Japanese invasion of Indochina in 1940.
Option A:
Not occupy China and not invade Indochina, thus not precipitating states upon which you are depending for vital materials to stop selling you those materials, thus alleviating the need for war against those states. As a result, you don't get your cities firebombed and nuked and your country occupied and the loss of your colonial possessions such as Korea and Manchuria.
Option B:
Stay in China, invade Indochina, attack the states which subsequently decline to sell you vital materials, and in turn get your cities firebombed and nuked and your country occupied and your colonies cut loose.
Call me crazy, but A seems rather more appealing than B.
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Also, I have often heard the US had pushed Japan into corner by cutting of oil supplies. Do you think US actions such these forced Japan to take on an aggressive attack on the US?
Considering that Japan's chosen strategy for securing oil (among other vital resources) was a spectacular failure, no. Japan was not in a corner. It had other options. Certain Japanese leaders had maneuvered themselves into potentially untenable personal and political positions, but when bridges are burned it's those holding the matches that are responsible for their lack of subsequent options.
Obligatory note:
I am not claiming that the U.S. wore the white hat to Japan's black hat, but merely that Japan has no reason to complain about the logical consequences it set in motion through egregious actions of its own undertaking.
Well, let's consider the situation and Japanese options.
Japan needed raw materials. This need was greatly exacerbated by the fact that they faced trade restrictions after the eruption of full-blown war in China in 1937, caused by Japan (who, obviously, were in China - it's hard to fault China for resisting this foreign military presence, no?) and a full-blown embargo after the Japanese invasion of Indochina in 1940.
Option A:
Not occupy China and not invade Indochina, thus not precipitating states upon which you are depending for vital materials to stop selling you those materials, thus alleviating the need for war against those states. As a result, you don't get your cities firebombed and nuked and your country occupied and the loss of your colonial possessions such as Korea and Manchuria.
Option B:
Stay in China, invade Indochina, attack the states which subsequently decline to sell you vital materials, and in turn get your cities firebombed and nuked and your country occupied and your colonies cut loose.
Call me crazy, but A seems rather more appealing than B.
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Despite your disclaimer, it does appear that your post assumes a white hat for the west and a black one for Japan. You have stated the above as it appeared entirely through the eyes of the western powers. It would not be difficult to rewrite your above options using Britain and America in 1775. The Americans didn't have to revolt, the Americans could have continued to accept overseas domination by Britain, the Americans could have given in on their demand to have the sole right of taxation vested in their colonial assemblies, the Americans could have abandoned their dreams of western expansion...
But they wouldn't..so the whole revolution was their fault.
Japan was behaving in a manner indistinguishable from the behavior of the European colonial powers who had been carving chunks out of China and ignoring its sovereignty for more than a hundred years. They saw themselves as superior to the Chinese and precisely the right people to bring order and prosperity to Asia via regional domination.
Then they learned from the west that they were not considered enlightened enough, not white enough, to belong to the groups of nations which were permitted to impose themselves on weaker nations in the name of advancing civilization. In essence, they were being told to go stand in the corner and let the real nations, the white nations, handle affairs in the Pacific.
That is looking at the crisis through Japanese eyes, something which your analysis neglects.
Well, let's consider the situation and Japanese options.
Japan needed raw materials. This need was greatly exacerbated by the fact that they faced trade restrictions after the eruption of full-blown war in China in 1937, caused by Japan (who, obviously, were in China - it's hard to fault China for resisting this foreign military presence, no?) and a full-blown embargo after the Japanese invasion of Indochina in 1940.
Option A:
Not occupy China and not invade Indochina, thus not precipitating states upon which you are depending for vital materials to stop selling you those materials, thus alleviating the need for war against those states. As a result, you don't get your cities firebombed and nuked and your country occupied and the loss of your colonial possessions such as Korea and Manchuria.
Option B:
Stay in China, invade Indochina, attack the states which subsequently decline to sell you vital materials, and in turn get your cities firebombed and nuked and your country occupied and your colonies cut loose.
Call me crazy, but A seems rather more appealing than B.
Considering that Japan's chosen strategy for securing oil (among other vital resources) was a spectacular failure, no. Japan was not in a corner. It had other options. Certain Japanese leaders had maneuvered themselves into potentially untenable personal and political positions, but when bridges are burned it's those holding the matches that are responsible for their lack of subsequent options.
Obligatory note:
I am not claiming that the U.S. wore the white hat to Japan's black hat, but merely that Japan has no reason to complain about the logical consequences it set in motion through egregious actions of its own undertaking.
You speak from hindsight. The U.S. did not have nukes in December, 1941. The U.S. Army was small and weak, and hardly a threat to the Japanese being 1000's of miles across the ocean. The Germans and Japanese could not have envisioned the U.S. building a 5 million man army that could be quickly deployed around the globe, a huge airforce, or a massive shipbuilding program producing a ship a day. Let alone the Manhattan Project.
Further, the Japanese and Germans both thought the American citizenry was a bunch of drunk frat boys who did not want to fight. They did not think the U.S. had it in us to go to war and risk taking casualties. So it is easy to say "why did the Japanese and Germans think they could win against the mightly U.S.", but in 1941, the U.S. military wasn't that mighty. We were also coming off of the Great Depression and the economic turmoil for over a decade.
The Japanese took a calculated risk. They thought by wiping out the Pacific Fleet, that the U.S. wouldn't be a threat for years. They were nearly right, but their attack failed to wipe out the Pacific Fleet. Had Pearl Harbor accomplished its goal of wiping out the Pacific Fleet, in their minds, their plan could have worked.
Despite your disclaimer, it does appear that your post assumes a white hat for the west and a black one for Japan. You have stated the above as it appeared entirely through the eyes of the western powers. It would not be difficult to rewrite your above options using Britain and America in 1775. The Americans didn't have to revolt, the Americans could have continued to accept overseas domination by Britain, the Americans could have given in on their demand to have the sole right of taxation vested in their colonial assemblies, the Americans could have abandoned their dreams of western expansion...
But they wouldn't..so the whole revolution was their fault.
Right. The colonies initiated the Revolution. They had other options.
As it happened, they chose well. Of course, they were dealing with a 18th Century power that had far less ability rain ruin down upon those colonies, and less incentive to do so, as that power had far more economically vested in not destroying those colonies as did Britain. It wasn't nearly as big a roll of the dice as was the decision by Japan to attack the United States.
But, yes, the leaders of that uprising put their lives on the line in doing what they did. See? I'm not attaching good guy/bad guy labels to these analyses of whether or not certain military moves were wise or not. And truthfully, I don't consider the British in North America to be particularly onerous overlords to the colonists. As such, I see the Revolution as largely a contest between interest groups.
Sorry - I have no romantic vision of the heroic and liberty-loving colonist throwing off the evil yoke of British domination to make me feel sympathy for the poor and oppressed expansionists of the Empire of Japan, thus making me conclude - illogically - that Japan in fact had no choice but to attack Pearl.
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Japan was behaving in a manner indistinguishable from the behavior of the European colonial powers who had been carving chunks out of China and ignoring its sovereignty for more than a hundred years. They saw themselves as superior to the Chinese and precisely the right people to bring order and prosperity to Asia via regional domination.
Indeed. Which in no way mitigates the fact that attacking Pearl was a poor decision. I get that Japan's enemies during World War II weren't pure as the driven snow. In fact, that's precisely why I said so in my previous post.
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Then they learned from the west that they were not considered enlightened enough, not white enough, to belong to the groups of nations which were permitted to impose themselves on weaker nations in the name of advancing civilization. In essence, they were being told to go stand in the corner and let the real nations, the white nations, handle affairs in the Pacific.
That is looking at the crisis through Japanese eyes, something which your analysis neglects.
I neglect it because it's not relevant.
I'm not employing a starry-eyed vision of the Western saviors vanquishing the marauding Japanese. I only pointed out Japanese acts in China as the impetus for sanctions. If anyone thought I pointed them out because I was suggesting that sanctions were implemented because the United States and Europe deeply cared for the plight of the Chinese suffering under Japanese domination, then it was a mistake for them to think as such. I certainly did not express that in my previous post.
Nowhere am I an apologist for colonialism. Nowhere to I suggest that the United States prosecuted the Pacific War to liberate China or Korea or Indochina. What the United States, and several European powers, did to bring a growing Japan to heel was to implement various restrictions on the materials that would be exported to Japan. It is generally considered a right of a sovereign state not to sell whatever it wants not to sell to another power. It is generally not considered a right of a sovereign state to militarily attack another power because, directly or indirectly, that power is refusing to sell to the sovereign state material the sovereign state desires. The idea that Japan was free to attack Pearl Harbor (the issue of this thread) because of bad things European powers did in Asia, or even what the United States did in Asia, would only be relevant if Japan was working to liberate those non-Japanese Asian areas, and attacked Pearl Harbor as a means to that end. But they weren't; they wanted to exploit Asia no less than did Europe and the United States.
That the powers hindering Japan had engaged in egregious behavior similar to that of Japan no more gave Japan license to attack them than it gives person A to the right assault person B, for the personal gain of person A, because person B assaulted persons C, D and E. It simply does not follow.
Japan had a desire - expansion.
The United States and several Europeans powers had a counter-desire - limit Japanese expansion.
Japan expanded.
The United States and several European powers used the tool of sanctions to try and curb that expansion.
Japan used the tool of military force to try and obviate the effects of those sanctions.
That failed, spectacularly.
The only value judgment I apply to the preceding is that sanctions - particularly sanctions of war materials such as oil, copper, iron, etc. - is an accepted course of behavior between states, whereas aggressive warfare is not. But even that isn't relevant to the simple fact that Japan initiated hostilities when it did not have to do so - in other words, when it as a power had very reasonable alternatives, even if certain Japanese leaders as political and personal individuals did not - and lost as a result. No white or black hats, just various shades of grey. And one of those wearers of gray hats chose very poorly.
So what we have, at the root, is a contest between exploiting powers: Japan on one side and the United States and Europe on the other side. Frankly, my calculus doesn't change regardless of whether the United States/Europe had been the epitome of saintliness, what they actually were, or unspeakably horrific regimes.
Had the United States been as vile a regime as that of Stalin, Hitler and Mao all rolled into one, it still wouldn't change the fact that attacking Pearl Harbor was a poor choice, borne out of the foolish move to expand when the necessary materials for fueling that expansion had to be supplied by states with an interest in seeing that expansion not happen.
You speak from hindsight. The U.S. did not have nukes in December, 1941. The U.S. Army was small and weak, and hardly a threat to the Japanese being 1000's of miles across the ocean. The Germans and Japanese could not have envisioned the U.S. building a 5 million man army that could be quickly deployed around the globe, a huge airforce, or a massive shipbuilding program producing a ship a day. Let alone the Manhattan Project.
Further, the Japanese and Germans both thought the American citizenry was a bunch of drunk frat boys who did not want to fight. They did not think the U.S. had it in us to go to war and risk taking casualties. So it is easy to say "why did the Japanese and Germans think they could win against the mightly U.S.", but in 1941, the U.S. military wasn't that mighty. We were also coming off of the Great Depression and the economic turmoil for over a decade.
The Japanese took a calculated risk. They thought by wiping out the Pacific Fleet, that the U.S. wouldn't be a threat for years. They were nearly right, but their attack failed to wipe out the Pacific Fleet. Had Pearl Harbor accomplished its goal of wiping out the Pacific Fleet, in their minds, their plan could have worked.
I understand that the Japanese, among others, vastly underestimated the United States. Well, some of them did - and they were warned. Admiral Yamamoto famously predicted, in no unambiguous terms, that the United States would not submit no matter how hard the Japanese struck and that when the American war machine had gotten rolling Japan would be in peril. Prime Minister Konoe thought the attack was a grave mistake.
So, yes, there certainly were voices - very prominent voices - in Japan in 1941 who thought attacking Pearl Harbor was a mistake. And they preferred other options.
Which is what this thread is about - whether or not Japan had options other than attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941. And they did. Much better options than initiating a war with the United States. Frankly, it's not hard to find options better than what happened to Japan between 1942 and 1945.
The fact that the Japanese mistakenly thought the attack on Pearl Harbor 'in their minds' was a good idea doesn't change this fact.
borne out of the foolish move to expand when the necessary materials for fueling that expansion had to be supplied by states with an interest in seeing that expansion not happen.
You are looking at it with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that the expansion attempt brought ultimate ruin to Japan. The Japanese did not have this benefit available to them when they were making their decisions.
I also do not see you addressing the consequences of Japan simply giving up their expansion program. Why, in their minds, should they have had to accepted second class status? Why should they be told the limits of their ability to expand by powers which would not accept such dictates from Japan regarding their expansionist plans?
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I neglect it because it's not relevant.
Really? It appears to me that you are neglecting it because it is inconvenient to your thesis, pretending that it was not a factor when obviously it was a huge factor.
1. I assume you mean if Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor?
2. I would say probably at the very least Manchuria.
3. Japan invaded China in 1931 and annexed Manchuria as a puppet state. But the problem is they attacked China again in 1937 and this time their goals seemed pretty limitless. Especially after they also moved into French Indochina because France was helpless after the German invasion.
Interestingly in the 1930s Italy had invaded Ethiopia and Albania. This was before she joined WW2.
4. If both Italy and Japan had stayed out of the war, they both might have not only got away with their early conquests but kept their existing empires.
1. Yes, this is what I meant.
2. If you are correct in regards to this, then Japan's leadership were probably idiots for not agreeing to the U.S.'s demands to withdraw from other parts of China and from French Indochina.
3. Yes, I am already aware of all of these facts.
4. Agreed, but this raises the question of how long exact could Italy and Japan have kept their empires. After all, I am skeptical that Italy would have been able to establish an ethnic Italian majority population in any of its colonies, and same for Japan and for an ethnic Japanese majority population in any of its colonies.
A) They attacked when Germany had already been defeated
B) Their attack didn't even crumble the USA navy & they didn't even attack the mainland
C) They had 2 atomic bombs dropped on it
Truly clueless and pointless actions by the Japanese. I can't think of a nation that had a worse role in the Second World War
When Japan attacked the British and the USA in the Western Pacific, German forces had taken Kiev, had Leningrad under seige and could use field glasses to see into downtown Moscow. Britain was being starved and squeezed by Admiral Donitz' unterzeeboats and had German forces fighting to take Cairo, Alexandria and the Suez Canal effectively cuting the British empire in two. So it wasn't obvious German was even losing. The US Navy lost in some cases virtually all of its capital ships in the Pacific when the 8 Battleships were (1) stupidly moved and based at Pearl Harbour to allow them to attack Japan faster and (2) sunk by Japan because US Navy planners didn't think Japan would attack or develop effective weapons to do so. They did and the result was obvious by 9 am Dec 7, 1941. As for what was left Japan had a 2-1 superiority in the size of the Imperial Japan Navy over the USN Pacific fleet and importanly had 9 Aircraft carriers to our 3.Japanese ships were newer faster and had in some cases better guns than American units some of whom were a legacy of WW1. In December the Atomic bomb was billions of dollars, a lot of science and engineering and incredible effort under wartime priority in the futire. It didn't exist as a proof of principle weapon until July 16, 1945 nearly 5 years into the future. It wasn't a weapon until very late in August 1945. So Japn's attack was a reasonible military action since to have great ,ilitary achievement you need to take a little risk. Not all ventures are sure things. Japan found this out!!!
2. If you are correct in regards to this, then Japan's leadership were probably idiots for not agreeing to the U.S.'s demands to withdraw from other parts of China and from French Indochina.
3. Yes, I am already aware of all of these facts.
4. Agreed, but this raises the question of how long exact could Italy and Japan have kept their empires. After all, I am skeptical that Italy would have been able to establish an ethnic Italian majority population in any of its colonies, and same for Japan and for an ethnic Japanese majority population in any of its colonies.
Point 4.
That's a good question. I think Italy is the easiest but Japan is more complicated with a lot of what ifs. Assume they stayed out of WW2.
Italy - We know from history that little Portugal stayed out of WW2 and was able to hold on to some of her African colonies until the 1970s. Since Italy is much larger and wealthier then Portugal, it seems very likely that Italy would have been able to hold on to at some of her colonies until at least the 1970s also.
If Italy stayed neutral its possible Italy may very well still have the Dodecanese Islands and Rhodes.
Japan - The big question here is after the Communists unified China would they have turned against the Japanese in Manchuria? Would the Soviets also joined with the Chinese communists? Would they also have invaded Japanese held Korea? Could the Japanese Army loose Manchuria and Korea but the Japanese Navy still defend Taiwan? Would the Americans and the Allies help the Japanese defend the Japanese Empire from communist attack?
If Japan stayed neutral its possible Japan would still hold the various Pacific Island groups like the Marshalls, the Marianas, the Carolines etc.
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