"What's the plan for Japan if they win the pacific?" Topic

"I dunno, let's say it happens through some lucky midway battles, some kind of sue for peace. Anyway, the allies will come knocking later anyway, and you got a lot of islands to defend, what's the plan to defend them against a superior enemy? Because let's be frank the USA will just regear EVEN bigger and come with some SUPER GIGA armada of ships together with the allies and kick the out of the japanese. I guess a island hopping campaign would be needed, but how do defend against such a thing as Japan? It seems the allied victory is inevitable here. And what about raw materials? Sure you get some nice oil, rubber and other stuff from indonesia and china but china is probably not even secured at that point even with all their attention diverted there…"

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Armand

Without a fleet that can stand up to the attacker, a perimeter defense of islands cannot succeed. As the Japanese found out, an attacker with naval superiority can isolate an island or group of islands with their naval power and then concentrate enough force to take it, no matter how strongly defended it is. And by picking a single route of advance, the attacker can ignore many of the defended island, bypassing them to 'die on the vine'. Only a strong mobile fleet can prevent this. The Japanese tried to pull this off in the Marianas but failed.

The US sub fleet pretty much did to Japan what the U-boats tried (and failed) to do to Britain, strangled the supply lines. And the Japanese would never have built enough merchant ships to replace their losses…

Perhaps senior Imperial Japanese leaders believed the decadent Western Democracies would fold and accept the outcome of initial Japanese success between 1941-1942, much like Czarist Russia did following the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.

Outside of leaders like Admiral Yamamoto, it seems few Japanese seniors foresaw Allied resolve and resiliency in prosecuting the war to ultimate victory.

Thanks.

Armand

They still lose. Their war effort hit its outer logistical limits while they were still pushing out into the near vacuum left by Allied unreadiness in 1942. Even with a conscious de-prioritization of the PTO, the Allies had the initiative within six months, and never thereafter lost it.

And after Pearl Harbor, well…….they would have had to run wilder for a lot longer than six months to wear the US and UK into a compromise.

One other thought: the Washington Treaty famously set the capital ship ratio between Britain, the US, and Japan at 5-5-3. Realistically speaking, that represented a diplomatic concession that gave Japan the appearance of punching above its weight class. When the totality of national power is considered, the US/UK advantage at the strategic level was considerably more lopsided than 10-3.

Thanks also…

Armand

…let's say it happens through some lucky midway battles, some kind of sue for peace. Anyway, the allies will come knocking later anyway … the USA will just regear EVEN bigger and come with some SUPER GIGA armada of ships together with the allies and kick the $%#&^Z*!! out of the japanese.

The original post in another forum shows very little understanding of the Japanese expectations or intentions in WW2. And also very little understanding of the political environment of the US.

The US was isolationist. The Roosevelt administration would NOT have been able to restart the war after it had ended in some form of treaty or truce. And if, by hook or by crook, they had been able to restart the war, that would NOT have been baked into the Japanese expectations.

Without a fleet that can stand up to the attacker, a perimeter defense of islands cannot succeed.

Japan did not expect to hold the islands they took. They expected to bleed the US in the process of conducting a defense-in-depth. They viewed the US as decadent and of low fighting spirit. They expected the US to grow tired of the war, and to loose interest in continuing the fight. Their view of US politics and culture gave them to expect this, and they built their war plans and strategies around it.

In other words they built their "appreciation" of their adversary not based on capabilities, but on intentions.

It is true that Pearl Harbor galvanized public support in the US. But if a treaty or a truce had somehow been put into place in the second half of 1942 (using the scenario in the OP), that rage would have either abated or re-directed. The idea that the US would have just come back to the fight after it had built up it's arsenal … maybe it is possible, but I would say it would he highly unlikely. More likely is that the whole build-up would have shut down the day after any truce was signed, and within 2 years the US would have dissipated 2/3rds of the military force it had already built up by mid-1942.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)