Could Japan have won in the Pacific?

Started by besilarius, March 11, 2012, 03:40:05 PM

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bayonetbrant

As Nimitz and others have pointed out - we learned pretty late in the war that we could've just blockaded Japan with subs and starved them out.  By the time we figured that out, we were knee-deep in island-hopping.  Plus, it wouldn't've been nearly psychically satisfying enough.
You still would've had the land war in the C-B-I theater, but really, they wouldn't've lasted with the home islands starving to death.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

bayonetbrant

Quote from: Joseph on May 23, 2012, 10:42:31 AMStill, their first blunder was to try to conquer China.


Quote from: The Princess BrideYou fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line"!
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

FarAway Sooner

No, the Japanese were never a serious threat to win the War in the Pacific.  They didn't have the population center, the industrial base, the unity of purpose, or the practical attitudes towards war to win it.

The more I read about the Japanese conduct of WW II, the more it seems that it was primarily viewed as an arena to maximize personal honor, with the added benefit of serving national interests.  Viewed in that way, their decision making processes were badly flawed, impractical, and more intent on "going out in a blaze of glory" than in destroying enemy forces.

Shattered Sword gives a good analysis of how lacking and inflexible the Japanese were in developing a well-rounded war-fighting attitude.  You get a similar understanding from Bergerud's Fire in the Sky, which looks at the air war in the South Pacific. 

They knew how to create great warriors, but they had no idea how to mass-produce good warriors, and they had no systems in place to keep their swords sharp on the scale that modern industrial warfare called for.

AmericanPride

The Japanese had no intention of waging a total war against the United States, so even if they had the economic and military capacity to do so, they would not have been prepared for it. The Japanese were focused on building their empire in China and Indochina, and attacked the US on the assumption that America would intervene to defend British, French, and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. Consequently, the Japanese assumed that a decisive strike to destroy America's Pacific fleet would bring the US to peace quickly, and give them freedom of maneuver in Asia. Obviously, this was based on many false assumptions.