Discussion #1

[Olde Delaware]

Picture it in your mind, December 7th 1941. You are an American sailor aboard the U.S.S. Arizona which is docked at Pearl Harbor. It is 7am and you are just finishing breakfast in the mess hall. You decide to go topside to take in a bit of the sun before you start your duty shift when you notice a commotion at the rail. You look with your fellow sailors toward the sky and you see the outline of a plane.

Dozens of them.

You think its a parade, maybe a flyover until they start firing.

This isn't a drill.

Men scatter and begin taking positions at their guns when they notice landing craft hitting the beaches across the harbor at Hickham Air Force Base where Air Corps pilots are scrambling to meet the threat. Attacked from the air, sea and now land, America has lost Hawaii and its Pacific Fleet in one daring and surprising raid from the Japanese on this day that will now live in Infamy.

Of course, this is just a dramatization. Japan did strike the United States on December 7th 1941 and by doing so changed the course of World War II arguably into the Allies favor. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander in Chief of Japan's Naval Forces pushed so hard for the attack that he placed his career on the line, threatening to resign if it weren't done. Faced with the loss of an experienced Commander, the Naval High Command approved the attack. But what if they hadn't? What if they let Yamamoto resign and instead promoted Commander Yasuji Watanabi who had outlined a 30,000 strong invasion force combined with naval and air superiority? What if Japan refocused its efforts away from Southeast Asia and against U.S. Territories before, during and after the invasion?

The purpose of this debate is to rewrite history and to ask and answer the questions that may arise. Could Japan have invaded and captured Hawaii? If so, could they sustain the offensive and force the United States to sue for peace? Or was this doomed from the start, Japan's only chance to knock out the American fleet and maintain for as long as it could an advantage over British ships operating in the theater.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

They probably could have invaded Japan, assuming they could convince the Army to do it for them - as I understand it, the interservice rivalry in Imperial Japan at the time was intense, much like the rivalry between the branches of the Wehrmacht, rather than the reletively tame interservice rivalries in the US today.

How realistic it would have been for the Navy to get the Army to supply the necessary troops to invade and occupy Japan is an open question, and holding onto the islands wouldn't have been a simple proposition. But if they'd flattened enough local defense instalations in the first waves, would have been doable.

 

[Olde Delaware]

They probably could have invaded Japan, assuming they could convince the Army to do it for them - as I understand it, the interservice rivalry in Imperial Japan at the time was intense, much like the rivalry between the branches of the Wehrmacht, rather than the reletively tame interservice rivalries in the US today.

How realistic it would have been for the Navy to get the Army to supply the necessary troops to invade and occupy Japan is an open question, and holding onto the islands wouldn't have been a simple proposition. But if they'd flattened enough local defense instalations in the first waves, would have been doable.

Good point and I agree.

Without Japanese 'island hopping' closer to Hawaii by say taking Midway, Guam or Johnson Atoll they could have ran out of supplies not long after taking the islands. But, by denying the U.S. Pacific Fleet their base in Hawaii and crucial stops in Midway or Guam it would be difficult for the U.S. to counter resupply convoys. From a domestic standpoint, the Hawaiian Islands are subtropical and mountainous which means unsuitable for large scale farming or foraging. Any invader would face off against a hostile populous with mountainous and jungle regions which would need to be flushed out or otherwise overloaded with forces to counter guerrilla or insurgent forces.

Watanabe's superior, Captain Kameto Kuroshima, would have agreed with you as well. Even after the war, he called not green lighting the invasion the biggest mistake of his life. The three reasons why he denied the invasion plan were:

Japan's ground forces, logistics, and resources were already fully committed, not only to the Second Sino-Japanese War but also for offensives in Southeast Asia that were planned to occur almost simultaneously with the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) insisted it needed to focus on operations in China and Southeast Asia, and refused to provide substantial support elsewhere. Because of a lack of cooperation between the services, the IJN never discussed the Hawaiian invasion proposal with the IJA.

Most of the senior officers of the Combined Fleet, in particular Admiral Nagano, believed an invasion of Hawaii was too risky

With your thought of the interforces rivalry, I found point two to be really interesting. What do you think?

 

[Olde Delaware]

If anyone else wants to chime in, this will be open until Monday, January 1st 2018