"Justifying the Japanese War " Topic

"Whenever a nation goes through a traumatic event, such as a world war, there is always an attempt to justify it in some way. Sometimes, this is easy, particularly for those who fought defensive wars; you fought because you were attacked and had to defend yourself. However, for those that fought offensive wars, some loftier, less tangible justification has to be put forward. For example, U.S. President Wilson attempted to justify American entry into World War I on the grounds that America had to "make the world safe for democracy". In World War II, the British government, in the European theater at least, justified the declaration of war on Germany in the name of eradicating "fascism" from the globe (defending Polish independence would have hardly sufficed given what happened to Poland when it was over). In the United States, and this is partly why the war is viewed without the ambiguity of other conflicts, there was no need for any great justification. The U.S. fought Japan because Japan had attacked the United States and it fought Germany and Italy because those countries had declared war on America in solidarity with their Japanese ally. As far as the war in the Asia-Pacific theater was concerned, Britain could say the same. Britain fought because Japan attacked virtually every British possession or affiliated country in the region. Additionally, Britain also greatly needed U.S. support in fighting Germany so the British were very quick to stand alongside America against the Empire of Japan.

The Japanese, however, had a more difficult position to defend. Given the consequences of the war, unprecedented in their history, with their forces utterly defeated, their empire destroyed, their homeland in ruins, the atomic bombings and their occupation when it was over, people were desperate to find some way to justify it all. Many claimed it was a war of self-defense and yet, while they did have facts they could point to, this was unconvincing. Japan had struck the first blow and the war was mostly fought on the lands and territory of other peoples. It was the Japanese who had attacked Pearl Harbor, invaded The Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Burma and later attacked India. The bulk of the Japanese army was fighting in China, a neighboring country, rather than on Japanese territory. As such, claims that Japan was simply defending itself was not going to pass muster with most people. This made justifying the war more difficult and yet, at the same time, even more imperative for some people since to do otherwise would be to admit that the whole thing had been a colossal mistake, which some, then as now, find too horrible to contemplate. Yet, in the ruin of immediate post-war Japan, there was a great deal of that. Many people who embraced the new direction Japan took after the war did so, not because they thought they themselves had done anything wrong, but because they hated the militarist regime which had pushed them into a disastrous war that was impossible to win and saw everything brought to ruin simply because they refused to admit to the mistake.

It would, thus, be impossible to admit that the war should not have happened without condemning those who had taken Japan into the conflict and many have never been prepared to do that. The Empire of Japan, after all, had not just lost a war the way that other countries have lost wars. Japan lost badly. Many people fail to realize how badly. Allow the fact to sink in that, after the initial Japanese offensive throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific at the end of 1941 and early 1942, Japan was never victorious in any major operation again. This would be like the Germans never winning a battle after the fall of France. When the Allied counter-attack came, after the pivotal Battle of Midway in the summer of 1942, the story of the war for Japan was one defeat after another. None of the island outposts in the Pacific ever repelled a single American attack and, in southeast Asia, after the defeat of the invasion of India, Japanese forces were rapidly pushed back by the Allies, their defenses effectively collapsed and few reinforcements could be spared due to the need to maintain so many troops in China. Much depended on the imperial naval and air forces and these were crippled at Midway in 1942 and practically annihilated as an effective fighting force at the Philippine Sea in 1944. And, keep in mind, this was all while the bulk of U.S. military strength was being focused on the other side of the world in north Africa and Europe. Even under the best of circumstances, the Japanese knew that they could never hope for an outright victory over the United States, so vast was the American superiority in resources, manpower and industrial output. Their only hope was that the Americans would simply give up at some point and quit the war after suffering heavy losses, yet, in all but one engagement, Japanese losses throughout the war were invariably far greater than American losses. It was, all in all, a disaster and one that could have been foreseen…"
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Amicalement
Armand

"Their only hope was that the Americans would simply give up at some point and quit the war after suffering heavy losses.."

HAH!

With much appreciation for the late great Richard Pryor…

"What was on their mind to be bombing Pearl Harbor and s#*t? They sat around saying, "We bombed Pearl Harbor! They'd never f@(k with us again!" "We're going to California then we bo.." "No need! Pearl Harbor is enough!"… Coz they'd been to the University of California. It's all white people, laid back. They hadn't been down to the University of Alabama or Mississippi. I'm not lyin', they got white folks down there they have to keep on chains in the basement!"

My Dad was one of those guys, but he was from Arkansas. :) They just flat out messed with the wrong people.

"They are immoral and weak, we are blessed by God, therefore we will win. Pretty much every war ever.

This ignores the successful Japanese campaigns in China in 44. Part of the problem in getting the Japanese to surrender was that there still was arguably an undefeated Army in the China theater. This all changes of course with the Russian invasion in 45.
LB

That was China's problem. That army sure wasn't going to get to go back to the main islands. Anywhere they were going to go would have to be by walking there.

I've heard the Russian campaign in 45 referred to as "the third atomic bomb". It was certainly part of the equation that led Hirohito to surrender.

The common belief in the West is that some in Japan *did* foresee their defeat ("We have awakened a sleeping giant…"), but were overwhelmed by those who saw nothing but victory. There has been enough historical chicanery since 1945 that I'm no longer certain if there is a definitive account that survives.