Could the Japanese have captured Hawaii if they had won the battle of Midway?

[ThomasP]

Hey The Basket,

I may be wrong, but I do not think that anyone here is blaming the US for Japan's actions in China or other East Asian areas. I, myself, have simply been trying to point out the many of often attributed reasons for Japan going to war are incorrect. The Japanese government and military were not irrational/insane Samurai warmongers, with no knowledge of industrial power or military tactics. Nor were they ignorant of their chances agains the US. Yes, they had the intent of expanding their empire and becoming more-or-less as powerful as the US or the UK, primarily with the intent of becoming secure from outside military or economic threat, though there was a lot of business/economic opportunism as well. These intents were no different than what the US acted on during it's early period of (imperialist) military and economic expansion during the 1800's and early-1900s, under the auspices of "Manifest Destiny" (i.e. "God is on our side and it is therefor our divine right to invade and rape, loot, and pillage other nations if we want". The Japanese government pointed out repeatedly, both to the US directly and in front of the League of Nations assembly, the hypocrisy shown by the US (and other nations with military and economic designs on the Far East) when the US demanded that Japan stop doing what the US had done in its dealings with the populations of other nations during this period (I would list the cases of such US behavior but it would take at least a couple hundred pages to do so. There are many books on the subject.)

There are many myths attributed by the US, to the US and it's opponents in the many wars the US has been involved in. Some originated before or at the start of the wars, in order to enrage the public and spur action, others were created and perpetuated during and after the wars in order to warp history so that the actions of the US could be deemed more acceptable in the eyes of the public, or the actions of the enemy less acceptable. Some were intended to demean the enemy in the eyes of the soldier or public, others were used to hide hypocrisy. I am not saying that only the US has behaved this way, most if not all nations do so, especially the ones that end up in the driver's seat.

One of my favorite stories about this type of thinking happened to me back in the late-1990s. I and a group of wargamer friends of mine were discussing the end of WWII and its effects on societies in the social-psychological sense.

One of my friends made the comment that the Japanese were savages and deserved what they got (ie fire bombing, nuking, etc.). He mentioned the book "The Rape of Nanking" as an example, thinking that it was mostly about the Japanese army raping all the women of Nanking (he had not read the book, but was inferring from the title). I pointed out that he should inform his wife that it was much more moral to be blown to bits by a bomb dropped from 20,000 ft, burned to death by incendiaries dropped from 10,000-20,000 ft, or incinerated/vaporized by an atom bomb, than to be raped. He (understandably) became angry and continued to run down the Japanese native intelligence, social and individual morality, and ending up by pointing out the irrationality of the idea that the soldiers would fight to the point of death rather than surrender, citing the mass bayonet charges of some Japanese units. (He attributed this to the Samurai ethos, but again he actually had almost no idea of what he was talking about.) I responded by saying that I did not realize that the US Army Ranger regiment employed Japanese mercenaries (I confess I was being snarky, but I had had enough display of racist ignorance for the day). He did not understand what I meant so I pointed out that the Rangers trapped in the building in Mogadishu had decided that they would fight to the death rather than surrender, therefore they must be Japanese followers of the Samurai ethos, since they had to be savages to be willing to fight to the death and could not therefor be Americans. I then said that I had not realized that American born Rangers would surrender when they realized that it was unlikely they would win, particularly if they thought a last desperate attempt might win the battle and save the nation. He owned the cafe we were in and ordered me to leave. I found it interesting that he did not throw me out when I said what I did about rape vs et alia, but did so when I said what I did about the Mogadishu Rangers attitude. (He had been a member of the 2nd battalion of the 75th infantry regiment, the Ranger regiment, in the early-1980s.)

 

[Schweik]

All that is true - and I already pointed out some concrete examples e.g. the partition of China, Boxer rebellion, Opium Wars etc.. We have to be careful not to demonize other people so much that we forget all humans are capable of such crimes. But it's also true that by the onset of WW2, the systematic massacre of civilians of the type the Japanese engaged in not only in China but also in the Philippines, Java, Malaysia etc., was no longer really tolerated let alone encouraged in the armed forces of the Western Democracies. Germany and Japan, and to some extent Italy and some of the minor Axis powers, were experimenting with some kind of concept of completely erasing conventional morality. Things like the Bataan Death March and Unit 731 also stand out. Not to say the US and British etc. governments didn't do some of this kind of stuff too during the Cold War or whatever, but I don't know of examples of stuff like that done during WW2, not to that extent.

Soviet union is a bit of another matter, especially when you look at what they did in Poland.

That said I agree with you that the intentional terror bombing of civilians in Japan, Germany, many other places in occupied Europe, and later on in North Korea during the Korean War, are all also basically war crimes. I don't fault the poor guys up in the aircraft getting killed at such a high rate, but I believe it was a poor use of their lives. We'd have been better off just building thousands of mosquitoes and doing actual precision bombing, not "de-housing". Guys like Curtiss LeMay were nuts in my book.

Like I said, I don't blame soldiers for doing their job. It's what young men are supposed to do. I was in the military myself as a young man so I don't fault anyone for serving, to the contrary. But older men and women are supposed to do their job to make sure we aren't led astray when we put our lives on the line.

 

[The Basket]

Let's play a little game.

WW2 for the Japanese started in 1853 when Commodore Perry showed up.

This showed 3 things. Japan was vulnerable. The West were bad and gunboat diplomacy worked.

Japan had to be military strong to fight the West and Samurai with sword and bow and arrow were not cutting it. So if Japan didn't want to be a colony of a Western Power, it had to become a power. So total destruction of Japanese culture, lifestyle, economy and industry. Out goes the Bakufu and the Samurai replaced by battleships and steam trains.

I said the Britain sold battleships to Japan. The question was who was the enemy? Asian power? Western Power? Do you need battleships to fight China? Or were western powers the enemy? So the West were happily selling Japan the tools for Japan to fight the West.

But Japan traps itself in loops. To defend and build a military, it needs raw materials. It needs to expand. It needs raw materials to expand and it needs to expand for raw materials. So the more powerful it becomes the more it needs to expand. And the more it expands, the more vulnerable it becomes. So it needs to expand to become more powerful but it is becoming more vulnerable the more powerful it becomes.

Yikes! It has to defend its new territory which is why we get the Russo Japanese war in 1905.

However, as long as western colonies exist is Asia, the Western threat still continues.

The change of colonial power from Spain to USA in the Philippines is one example of where Japanese expansion is being thwarted by Western expansion. Spain was very weak while America was a world power.

So, with all the resources of Asia at Japan's disposal, the Western colonies in Asia done away with and a vast military industrial complex and powerful army and navy, 1853 is not going to happen again. Ever. Japan is the conquerer not the conquered. And the threat of Western imperialism is gone.

And so a bunker mentally exists of Japan as the victim and so it justifies all means and all ends to meet the goals of Asian domination. To secure Japan from any and all invasion threats.

Its why they went nuts over the Doolittle Raids even if it caused little damage.

If you have extreme goals using extreme logic then genocide is simply another means to the end.

So I invade China because the very survival of Japan is at stake. What happens to China is of no consequence compared to the survival of Japan. So that gives total and absolute justification to do what i want.

 

[Admiral Beez]

But Japan traps itself in loops. To defend and build a military, it needs raw materials. It needs to expand. It needs raw materials to expand and it needs to expand for raw materials.

Japan should have invested in geologists. They were sitting on enough oil to run much of their military, where today's oil fields produce 3,918 barrels a day. And the Korean Peninsula is predicted to have tons of oil, that Japan could have looked for in the 1930s.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

WW2 for the Japanese started in 1853 when Commodore Perry showed up.

This showed 3 things. Japan was vulnerable. The West were bad and gunboat diplomacy worked.

Spot on! The long view explains a lot.

So if Japan didn't want to be a colony of a Western Power, it had to become a power. So total destruction of Japanese culture, lifestyle, economy and industry. Out goes the Bakufu and the Samurai replaced by battleships and steam trains.

Spot on again, but I would suggest total makeover, rather than destruction, of culture, lifestyle, economy, and industry. Many sinews of the old ways survived the changes and hampered Japan's viability as a world power in the 20th century. The American occupation accomplished a more complete makeover of Japanese society than the Meiji Restoration or industrialization.

But Japan traps itself in loops.

The biggest loop, you didn't mention. Changes from the Meiji Restoration and industrialization led to a massive growth in population, due to the elimination of domestic warfare and improvement in and availability of medical services. This added fuel to the fire of the expansionist imperative, and put all the other motivating forces into overdrive. Eventual collision became inevitable.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[ThomasP]

Hey The Basket,

re your post#243: I believe that your summation is very accurate except for the 2nd to the last item: "If you have extreme goals using extreme logic then genocide is simply another means to the end." in so far as it implies that Japan had any interest in genocide in China. While I can not say categorically that the Japanese would not have engaged in such methods if they saw it as necessary, I can say that, according to the various intel available to the US prior to the war and since then, there is reason to believe the opposite. Our spies in Japan and many of the intercepted/decoded diplomatic and military dispatches indicated that the Japanese higher ups were very unhappy with the excesses/atrocities committed by the Japanese military in China. The same intel sources also indicated that Japan would have likely discontinued the invasion of China if they had time to figure out how to do so and disengage without giving up the more important conquered areas. Again, I am not trying to justify the Japanese behavior.

Also, and I apologize ahead of time if I am over-emphasizing this: Aside from some of the participants being different, the attitudes described in your summation equals the rational of "Manifest Destiny" and the Monroe Doctrine, and has been the continued justification for much of the US's subsequent bad behavior.


Hey Schweik,

re your post#242: Very well put. Although the morals of war have changed some with time, the Hague Conventions and the Geneva Conventions of the late-1800s and early-1900s subsequently became the international basis for (among many other things) the treatment of civilians in time of war.


To anyone,

I highly recommend anyone interested in what part of this thread has been about do some reading/research of their own into the international laws of war (if they have not already done so) as it helps ( at least it has for me) to put together a picture of the various events, causes, and the various historical views (based on myth or reality) and reactions. The lawyerly aspect of the laws of war in some cases is extremely important. The reason for the Japanese Army being tried for war crimes in China after the war, the reason for the US and UK not being tried for war crimes (due to the deliberate targeting of civilians by aerial bombing) after WWII and Korea (as Schweik mentioned above), are examples explained in the wording and application of the Hague and Geneva Conventions and other international treaties. I warn you ahead of time though, that while some of what you read will be uplifting and provide hope for the future, some of it will probably depress you.

The Wikipedia articles linked below are a very good place to start:

"Lieber Code - Wikipedia"

"Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 - Wikipedia"

"Geneva Conventions - Wikipedia"

"Kellogg–Briand Pact - Wikipedia"


Also, I would again like to suggest that anyone interested in the war in the PTO read the following book:

"War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945" by Edward S. Miller, published by the United States Naval Institute, and by Shinchosa Ltd. in Japanese

It helps explain the causes of, the behavior of the US during the run up to, and the behavior of the US during the war, from the US perspective, irrespective of actual physical events such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Again, taking notes to keep everything straight will help.

 

[The Basket]

I don't mind been proved wrong. Shows your paying attention. And it's only a hypothesis that fits the facts.

I would needs facts to say the Japanese would have disengaged from China willingly. That don't sit right.

Japan did plenty stuff so I not interested in what they said but only what they did.

Actions speak louder than words.

Now a wise man may say that 1853 don't matter. I wasn't alive then so it don't matter. I wasn't there.

And you be wrong. Very very wrong. Nationalists have very long selective memories and dates going back centuries poison their little minds and twist their logic into new cosmic hatreds. And just because they got colour TVs and full bellies don't mean they don't hate.

I was reading about the IJN cruiser Tone which is interesting to me as its a interesting ship. Until I got to the point where they were beheading prisoners. And I was like I don't want to read no more. I am genuinely interested in Japan and the IJN but that just messed up. And maybe you can point to British or American war crimes.

But Japanese sailors on Tone executed its prisoners by beheading. Let that sink in.

That ain't right. Don't care about Geneva conventions. It just ain't right.

 

[ThomasP]

Hey The Basket,

I agree about the 'opening of trade' perpetrated by Perry and have used it as an example in the past to explain the Meiji Restoration and rise of Japanese imperialism. You are actually one of the few people I have run across (that I know of) who also recognizes the significance and brought it up in a discussion..

It is difficult for me to present facts concerning the willingness of Japan to discontinue operations in China. The best I can do at the moment is to direct you to the link I posted earlier in this thread concerning the intercepted/decoded Japanese dispatches during the run up to the War. It takes some wading through and the way the site is layed out makes it difficult to direct someone to specific messages. There are several messages between Japanese diplomats and the Japanese home office discussing the quagmire they had gotten themselves into in China. There are also dispatches specifically addressing the US demand that they leave China and/or come to some sort of acceptable agreement with the US concerning "equal economic opportunity" relative to China. In the latter the Japanese home office informs the Japanese ambassador who informs the US Secretary of State that the timeline proposed by the US is not realistic, due to having to create a framework of acceptability for the various parties in Japan (including something for public consumption) justifying why they would pull out after 10 years of war with its associated cost (i.e. casualties, resources, money, national pride, etc.).

As to the beheading of prisoners I need to ask if you think it would have been more acceptable if the IJN had machine gunned the prisoners, or left the prisoners to drown, die of exposure, etc? (I am not being snarky or insensitive here, I realize that different people feel differently about the various methods of killing.) As far as my feelings about beheading, I can't say as I find it any more horrible than any other form of execution.

 

[swampyankee]

Murdering prisoners is murdering prisoners; the method really doesn't matter. While it's not that uncommon in history, in the modern era was certainly not unique to Japan (Germany did so in Europe during WW2, the CSA did so during the American Civil War, and I'm sure that many other cases can be found especially among the numerous imperialistic wars of conquest). That said, Japan had numerous civil wars in its history and it would seem that there must have been some concept of treating prisoners humanely, especially if they're no longer being seen as a threat, such as if their leader has surrendered.

 

[michael rauls]

I don't mind been proved wrong. Shows your paying attention. And it's only a hypothesis that fits the facts.

I would needs facts to say the Japanese would have disengaged from China willingly. That don't sit right.

Japan did plenty stuff so I not interested in what they said but only what they did.

Actions speak louder than words.

Now a wise man may say that 1853 don't matter. I wasn't alive then so it don't matter. I wasn't there.

And you be wrong. Very very wrong. Nationalists have very long selective memories and dates going back centuries poison their little minds and twist their logic into new cosmic hatreds. And just because they got colour TVs and full bellies don't mean they don't hate.

I was reading about the IJN cruiser Tone which is interesting to me as its a interesting ship. Until I got to the point where they were beheading prisoners. And I was like I don't want to read no more. I am genuinely interested in Japan and the IJN but that just messed up. And maybe you can point to British or American war crimes.

But Japanese sailors on Tone executed its prisoners by beheading. Let that sink in.

That ain't right. Don't care about Geneva conventions. It just ain't right.

The behavior of many( maybe even a majority) although certainly not all Japanese troops is something about the war that I find really disturbing. The culture doesn't seem condusive of such behavior yet it was certainly wide spread, not just a few isolated incidents.
Of course in any such discussion it should be mentioned that one doesn't have to go back too many more years to find similar treatment of" the other" by western cultures durring times of conflict either.

 

[swampyankee]

The behavior of many( maybe even a majority) although certainly not all Japanese troops is something about the war that I find really disturbing. The culture doesn't seem condusive of such behavior yet it was certainly wide spread, not just a few isolated incidents.
Of course in any such discussion it should be mentioned that one doesn't have to go back too many more years to find similar treatment of" the other" by western cultures durring times of conflict either.

One doesn't have to go back more than a few years, even after the military conflicts are over: witness the treatment of First Peoples in Canada and Native Americans in the United States, where there were deliberate, long-term attempts to destroy their cultures, albeit not physical extermination. Deliberate mistreatment of "others" is a major underpinning of nationalist movements in many countries, including Europe and the US.

 

[Schweik]

Let's play a little game.

WW2 for the Japanese started in 1853 when Commodore Perry showed up.

This showed 3 things. Japan was vulnerable. The West were bad and gunboat diplomacy worked.

Japan had to be military strong to fight the West and Samurai with sword and bow and arrow were not cutting it. So if Japan didn't want to be a colony of a Western Power, it had to become a power. So total destruction of Japanese culture, lifestyle, economy and industry. Out goes the Bakufu and the Samurai replaced by battleships and steam trains.

I said the Britain sold battleships to Japan. The question was who was the enemy? Asian power? Western Power? Do you need battleships to fight China? Or were western powers the enemy? So the West were happily selling Japan the tools for Japan to fight the West.

But Japan traps itself in loops. To defend and build a military, it needs raw materials. It needs to expand. It needs raw materials to expand and it needs to expand for raw materials. So the more powerful it becomes the more it needs to expand. And the more it expands, the more vulnerable it becomes. So it needs to expand to become more powerful but it is becoming more vulnerable the more powerful it becomes.

Yikes! It has to defend its new territory which is why we get the Russo Japanese war in 1905.

However, as long as western colonies exist is Asia, the Western threat still continues.

The change of colonial power from Spain to USA in the Philippines is one example of where Japanese expansion is being thwarted by Western expansion. Spain was very weak while America was a world power.

So, with all the resources of Asia at Japan's disposal, the Western colonies in Asia done away with and a vast military industrial complex and powerful army and navy, 1853 is not going to happen again. Ever. Japan is the conquerer not the conquered. And the threat of Western imperialism is gone.

And so a bunker mentally exists of Japan as the victim and so it justifies all means and all ends to meet the goals of Asian domination. To secure Japan from any and all invasion threats.

Its why they went nuts over the Doolittle Raids even if it caused little damage.

If you have extreme goals using extreme logic then genocide is simply another means to the end.

So I invade China because the very survival of Japan is at stake. What happens to China is of no consequence compared to the survival of Japan. So that gives total and absolute justification to do what i want.

I agree with all that to a large extent. You do have to look back into this harsh awakening of Japan into the modern world to understand them in WW2. I don't think war was as inevitable or 'predestined' as a result as it may seem to be in hindsight, but there were several negative factors in play, perhaps the most important and dangerous being the runaway hyper-nationalism of some of the mid-level officers in the Japanese military, which in turn was perhaps an unintended side effect of the almost uniquely harsh culture of the Japanese military, in particular the Army. A lot of sadism was baked into the training and indoctrination process, more than was typical for European or American armies of the time (which weren't exactly mild or reasonable either, but it's a matter of degree).

Again Dan Carlin does a great job of covering this in his "Supernova in the East" Podcast, which to date covers the Pacific War up to the conquest of Malaya and the Philippines. I can't recommend it highly enough. He's not a radical historian and doesn't take outlier positions, but what he and his team does is read basically all of the mainstream, respected histories and then give you a really good summary of the range of opinions and data points, to present a very nuanced and flexible portrayal of the subject. Even on matters I think I'm well read on, I always learn a lot from listening.

I think part of the problem in Japan and Germany in the 30's was that they had reached the limits, and seen the flaws of Enlightenment philosophy and Capitalism. They didn't really have anything coherent to replace it with aside from a mix of tradition with ideology driven by resentment and jingoistic fantasy. This was a crisis felt, and manifested in different ways, all throughout the world.

To wit when we consider the pressures on Japan and her sense of great threats from the outside, lets not forget that the 19th and 20th Centuries had also posed similar traumatic challenges to the social order in many countries. The Germans and Italians had completed brutal and desperate struggles to unify themselves into States only in the late 19th Century. Like most of Continental Europe, their drive to unite was instigated to a large extent by the trauma of conquest by the armies of the French Revolution and Napoleon. This was as brisk of an impetus to modernize for Continental Europe as commander Perry's visit to Japan was for them.

The industrial warfare of WW I, with water cooled machine guns, poison gas and armored war machines, the result of the new nationalism, had a shattering effect on the European order, and especially the middle classes which had to a large extent lost faith in their own social system. Working class people felt that they had been used as cannon fodder and lost trust in the system as well.

So much of Europe was split by social conflict between far left and far-right, WW I led into the Russian revolution and the cruel civil war after that. Spain had their own bloody civil war, France was on the verge of it and deeply divided. Poland, Belgium and Czechoslovakia were effectively new nations recovering from partition and foreign occupation. The US had their own blood soaked civil war in the mid 19th Century over their internal disputes of race and political organization, which were decidedly not resolved in the early to mid 20th Century. Most of the powerful nations on Earth leading up to the 20th Century felt very much under threat and were trying to figure out what new horrors the next war would bring, if there was any way to stop it happening again, and if that wasn't possible, how to win by whatever means were necessary, rather than become a victim like China was.

I hate to come across as a Dan carlin "Disciple" because I'm not, but he is very useful in understanding certain periods. Specifically he does a great job in another one of his podcasts "Logical Insanity" about the mentality of the 1930's pre-war thinking vis a vis air power. The doctrines, which were being discussed and were in vogue in England, France the US, Italy, Germany and across Europe, were cold blooded in the extreme. The notion was to escalate the cost of war so sharply as to prevent the charnel stalemate of industrial trench warfare. This in turn included ghastly notions like blasting civilian city centers with bombs and then dropping poison gas. Which in turn puts incidents like Guernica, Rotterdam, Birmingham, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and so on somewhat into perspective.



In other words, a lot of trauma all around, a lot of serious threats, and leadership unable to rise above the panic and the anxiety of the moment, in fact in many places cynically exploiting it, and ultimately leading their own people into doom and destruction. The sad thing is I don't think we are out of the woods on all that yet.

 

[Schweik]

Hey Schweik,

re your post#242: Very well put. Although the morals of war have changed some with time, the Hague Conventions and the Geneva Conventions of the late-1800s and early-1900s subsequently became the international basis for (among many other things) the treatment of civilians in time of war.

This is an important point, I think a lot of people particularly in the Anglophone world are unaware how deep the roots are for things like the Geneva Convention in Europe.

I don't know the history of this for the whole world, but in Europe I am familiar enough to discuss it a bit.

In Central Europe and Italy, where a lot of the culture and military technology of the Renaissance emerged (things like modern firearms, cannon, modern artillery-proof fortifications, navigation and modern naval combat and so on) there were limits placed on warfare both by law and by tradition, going back to the medieval period. There were violations of these norms, and those sometimes had dire consequences. But there were many factors pushing toward them, and surprisingly often moderation ruled the day. For example many people have heard of the battle of Grunwald / Tannenburg in 1410, when Poland and Lithuania defeated the Teutonic Knights. What is less well known is that the King of Poland released 95% of his 14,000 prisoners within days of the battle, on "parole" as the euphemism went.

Of course this meant he had a very real risk of facing them again in battle, as he in fact did at least 3 times in the next 30 years. But on the other hand, it meant cultivating goodwill among certain elements*, and it meant that he needed the Germans as support against the nearby Mongol Hordes, the Ottomans or the Duchy of Muscovy, as he also often did, they would be there for support. German law, which was in effect in much of Poland as well at that time, had a concept called the "Landfrieden" which prevented a host of different specific types of what you might call atrocities during war. Women and children were to be spared, churchmen, travellers on the public roads. Infrastructure such as mills, wells, granaries, bridges and so on were supposed to be spared. Violations of this "peace of the roads" law were not uncommon, but they were also frequently severely punished by coalitions of towns and nobles in the region which helped keep them somewhat in check.

In Italy wars between city states were often similarly limited. Many battles between great Condottiere were surprisingly bloodless. Prisoners were routinely paroled, civilians were often spared. Foreign armies invading Italy scoffed at these rules, but when they escalated things with atrocities and toward a more 'Total War' mentailty, they frequently suffered reprisals if and when the war went against them, as wars so often had a way of doing. Sometimes armies that marched proudly into Italy killing everyone in sight ruthlessly and without mercy emerged later in tatters and small numbers of traumatized survivors.




In short the norms of moderation in war which were established allowed co-existance and recognized the realities of frequent power struggles between neighbors, but tried to limit their damaging effects so as not to weaken the entire region. Violations of these norms were not unusual but the results could be obvious and direct - like multiple neighbors ganging up on you, or they could be more surprising but equally devastating, like scorched earth policies leading to famine which leads to plague outbreaks that kill massive numbers on both sides. Which can weaken you and leave you helpless before foreign invaders.

A lot of this broke down in the later 16th and 17th Centuries during religious conflicts, in which any excessive measure could be rationalized, and that culminated into the apocalyptic 30 Years War, which is seen by many historians as the birth of the modern state. What it also did was depopulate and traumatize most of Europe. By the 18th 19th Century I think attempts were being made to go back to some of these traditions of moderation, especially in the face of the escalating efficiency of mass-murder inherent in industrial warfare.

S

* German burghers of towns like Danzig who fought in the battle, eventually decided that Poland was a more reasonable sovereign than the Teutonic Order was and elected to become part of the Polish Kingdom.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Failed attempt at a delete!

 

[XBe02Drvr]

But Japanese sailors on Tone executed its prisoners by beheading. Let that sink in.

That ain't right. Don't care about Geneva conventions. It just ain't right.

What would you have done, honorable Captain? You don't even have enough provisions for your own crew, since personnel attrition is figured into the provisioning bill. And your prisoners are devoid of honor, having allowed themselves to be captured, thus are subhuman and not worthy of being accorded the honor of seppuku. Not even worth the ammunition to shoot them. Besides, many of your junior officers are lacking in proficiency with the Samurai swords that are part of their uniform, and need the practice. Forget Geneva and its conventions! That is a western colonialist invention and has no place in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Asia for the Asians! Tennoheika Banzai!
No cheers,
Wes

 

[Admiral Beez]

What would you have done, honorable Captain? You don't even have enough provisions for your own crew, since personnel attrition is figured into the provisioning bill. And your prisoners are devoid of honor, having allowed themselves to be captured, thus are subhuman and not worthy of being accorded the honor of seppuku. Not even worth the ammunition to shoot them. Besides, many of your junior officers are lacking in proficiency with the Samurai swords that are part of their uniform, and need the practice. Forget Geneva and its conventions! That is a western colonialist invention and has no place in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Asia for the Asians! Tennoheika Banzai!
No cheers,
Wes

I wonder if the IJA had beheaded and brutalized the Germans at Tsingtao if Hitler would have been so keen to choose supporting Japan instead of Germany's usual 1930s support to China. KMT could have used some Bf 109s.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I wonder if the IJA had beheaded and brutalized the Germans at Tsingtao if Hitler would have been so keen to choose supporting Japan instead of Germany's usual 1930s support to China. KMT could have used some Bf 109s.

Too many "ifs". The Japanese may have been a touch fanatic, but they weren't totally stupid. Of all the potential allies they might have had, the Germans (another warrior culture) were far and away the best option: disciplined, efficient, technologically advanced, and most important, FAR AWAY, and not a likely rival.
I wouldn't draw too many conclusions about German "support" for CKS just because he bought their airplanes. He also bought American, Russian, and Italian, a true equal opportunity customer. And I'm not so sure of the effectiveness of BF109s against Claudes, Nates, Oscars and Zekes. With its relatively high wing loading it might find those "bouncy" fighters a tough nut to crack. It would take another Chennault to make that work.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[Admiral Beez]

And I'm not so sure of the effectiveness of BF109s against Claudes, Nates, Oscars and Zekes. With its relatively high wing loading it might find those "bouncy" fighters a tough nut to crack. It would take another Chennault to make that work.
Cheers,
Wes

Japanese were impressed with the Bf 109.

Messerschmitt Bf109

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Japanese were impressed with the Bf 109.

Messerschmitt Bf109

So was USAAF. I saw an old copy of a CONFIDENTIAL air intelligence magazine from late 1943 that had an analysis of a captured 109F. The authors were all gaga about its design and engineering for ease of manufacture and maintenance. Quick Engine Change Assemblies, access panels held on by Dzus fasteners rather than screws, quick disconnect fittings, and wings that could be removed while the plane sat on its landing gear were all apparently new ideas to these intelligence specialists. They were so absorbed in the engineering that they devoted very little of their article to the comparative performance of the plane to US types.
I suspect the Japanese were similarly impressed. But the 109 was poorly suited to their style of fighting, and while faster than the Zero, and with a higher sustained rate of climb, it couldn't come close to the Zero in the sort of "pop up" instantaneous rate of climb that was so useful in the type of dogfight the A6M excelled at. Asian pilots raised on turn 'n burn fighting often didn't adapt readily to boom 'n zoom without someone like Chennault around to apply a little "motivational impetus" to their hindquarters.
Cheers,
Wes

 

[The Basket]

The Tone picking up survivors from SS Behar was against orders and the Captain disobeyed when told to execute the prisoners.

He asked to put them ashore but that was dismissed.

So there we go.