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

[Shortround6]

The British armed Japan partly as a bulwark against Communist Russia. Then lost their Pacific fleet and some of the jewels of the Colonial Empire to them 15 years later.

Would you care to explain this?

The Kongo was the last major Japanese warship built by a non-Japanese company. her 3 sister ships were built in Japan with varying amounts of British Supplied materials.
The Kongo was completed 16 August 1913.

The Japanese helped hunt for German surface raiders in WW I. They had a small flotilla of ships in the Med assisting the British during or after the Dardanelles operation. They took over the German islands/possession in the Orient, part from greed and part to prevent them from being supply points for German raiders.

All of this was before the Russian revolution. Perhaps the British did assist the Japanese navy in modernising after WW 1 and perhaps it was to help counter bolshevism, but Japan had served as an ally during WW I and for the most part, the British were only "arming" Japan with technical knowledge about aircraft and aircraft operations. And selling small numbers of aircraft to Japan. Japan purchased no large ships from the British after WW I. The British certainly didn't "give" the Japanese much of anything in the way of weapons after WW I.

 

[The Basket]

The oil embargo was placed on Japan due to invasion of French IndoChina in mid 1941.

They could move south because the Germans had invaded Soviet Union and so Soviets had more pressing matters than Manchuria and Vichy France was in charge and so the Japanese were invading an ally!

So China was not the issue but been part of the wider world war and threatening Western powers in the region was.

 

[syscom3]

In a nutshell, the japanese did not have the capacity to invade and hold Hawaii. Oahu is large enough to hold multiple divisions and would be able to defend in depth using interior lines of communications. That is a hard nut to crack when relying on light infantry in an amphibious environment. And they would be fighting the battle without any important ports or anchorages within 2,000 miles, at the end of a logistical tether 4000 miles long. Not exactly heartwarming for the logisticians. Also consider this. An invasion would occur sometime in Q4 of 1942. The US was in far better shape militarily then than we were at the end of 1941. The main islands of Hawaii would be well reinforced and defended.

 

[The Basket]

For much of the time Tsarist Russia was a pain in the side of the British Empire.
Ww1 when we were allied to Russia and France was historically abnormal.

Wars are not won by tactics and strategy but by having a decidedly bigger technology advanced military against weaker military.

I don't have the figures to hand but America in the 1930s built more cars than Japan. Big deal. Cars are not battleships. But its a huge deal.

To build a car you need skilled labour, factories, steel, rubber, energy, oil, tools, designers and other skilled manpower. And all that experience and knowledge then can be translated into building tanks.

Castle Bromwich is a good example of this.

Economic warfare is just as important. The U-boat campaign against Britain is another example of winning wars by trying to collapse an economy. Imperial Germany was defeated by economic means by the blockade. The German army itself was still viable but Germany had by 1918 been exhausted.

 

[Schweik]

If you look at say France in 1940 then economics had nothing to do with the defeat of France and so you can ascribe tactics morale and other things because it was a run wot u brung and so nothing could be done long term because there was no long term.

The USSR had bad winter, huge land mass and large population so even the default setting is a winning hand.

But Russia collapsed in ww1 but didn't in ww2. And USSR should have collapsed but didn't. By 1942 the German Army had started to weaken and had to use troops from its axis allies. But point is the USSR was not fighting alone and benefitted heavily from Western equipment, the bombing raids and the 2nd fronts such as D-day and Italy. So the Soviet situation improved as the Germans grew weaker.

The Soviets benefited heavily from allied equipment and supplies, but lets keep in mind, the major Allied interventions all took place after Stalingrad, and the Germans never successfully conducted a major campaign after Stalingrad.

I'm sure D-Day helped accelerate matters but the truth is the Germans were already doomed more than a year before the first boot hit Omaha beach.

 

[Schweik]

For much of the time Tsarist Russia was a pain in the side of the British Empire.
Ww1 when we were allied to Russia and France was historically abnormal.

Wars are not won by tactics and strategy but by having a decidedly bigger technology advanced military against weaker military.

Tactics and strategy matter in two ways. Tactics make your units effectively better, often by leveraging whatever advantages you have in terms of kit while covering your weaknesses. When Julius Caesar invaded Gaul, his legions were using basically the same gear as the Gauls, who badly outnumbered him. He defeated them, and ultimately killed 3/4 of the population of what is now France, through tactics and strategy.

When the Germans invaded France in 1940, their tanks and airplanes weren't hugely superior to the ones France had. They just used them much more effectively - concentrating their armor, coordinating dive bomber attacks with forward air controllers, destroying road and rail links needed by the French and British armies, using their heavy AA guns for anti-tank defense and so on. When they invaded Russia they did all of the above and concentrated on deep penetration with armored columns and vast encirclements of large numbers of enemy troops. This again was a victory multiplier - by cutting off ten times as many troops as they actually fought, and forcing them to try to fight their way out of a pocket while cut off from supply and logistics, you weaken them dramatically and get to fight on ground of your own choosing.

It goes back to the concept of friction. If you have an armored battalion that due to kit and training is a 4 on a scale of 1-10, and I have one that is a 5 on a scale of 1-10, I don't have enough to win. But if through improved tactics I can make it a 10, i.e. double the effectiveness, then I'm far more certain of victory and will also suffer far fewer casualties among my own men.

Strategy, among other things, is what leads you to fight battles that degrade your opponents supply lines - like the U-boats you mentioned in the Battle of The Atlantic.

 

[michael rauls]

To emphasize this point, it's enlightening to read the synopsis of atrocities in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion circa 1902, (from the Wiki)

Boxer Rebellion - Wikipedia

"
From contemporary Western observers, German, Russian, and Japanese troops received the greatest criticism for their ruthlessness and willingness to wantonly execute Chinese of all ages and backgrounds, sometimes burning and killing entire village populations.[119] The German force arrived too late to take part in the fighting, but undertook punitive expeditions to villages in the countryside. Kaiser Wilhelm II on July 27 during departure ceremonies for the German relief force included an impromptu, but intemperate reference to the Hun invaders of continental Europe which would later be resurrected by British propaganda to mock Germany during the First World War and Second World War:

" Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German.[120] "

One newspaper called the aftermath of the siege a "carnival of ancient loot", and others called it "an orgy of looting" by soldiers, civilians and missionaries. These characterisations called to mind the sacking of the Summer Palace in 1860.[121] Each nationality accused the others of being the worst looters. An American diplomat, Herbert G. Squiers, filled several railroad cars with loot and artifacts. The British Legation held loot auctions every afternoon and proclaimed, "Looting on the part of British troops was carried out in the most orderly manner." However, one British officer noted, "It is one of the unwritten laws of war that a city which does not surrender at the last and is taken by storm is looted." For the rest of 1900–1901, the British held loot auctions everyday except Sunday in front of the main-gate to the British Legation. Many foreigners, including Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald and Lady Ethel MacDonald and George Ernest Morrison of The Times, were active bidders among the crowd. Many of these looted items ended up in Europe.[122] The Catholic Beitang or North Cathedral was a "salesroom for stolen property."[123] The American commander General Adna Chaffee banned looting by American soldiers, but the ban was ineffectual.[124]
Some but by no means all Western missionaries took an active part in calling for retribution. To provide restitution to missionaries and Chinese Christian families whose property had been destroyed, William Ament, a missionary of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, guided American troops through villages to punish those he suspected of being Boxers and confiscate their property. When Mark Twain read of this expedition, he wrote a scathing essay, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness", that attacked the "Reverend bandits of the American Board," especially targeting Ament, one of the most respected missionaries in China.[125] The controversy was front-page news during much of 1901. Ament's counterpart on the distaff side was doughty British missionary Georgina Smith who presided over a neighborhood in Beijing as judge and jury.[126]
While one historical account reported that Japanese troops were astonished by other Alliance troops raping civilians,[127] others noted that Japanese troops were 'looting and burning without mercy', and that Chinese 'women and girls by hundreds have committed suicide to escape a worse fate at the hands of Russian and Japanese brutes.'[128] Roger Keyes, who commanded the British destroyer Fame and accompanied the Gaselee Expedition, noted that the Japanese had brought their own "regimental wives" (prostitutes) to the front to keep their soldiers from raping Chinese civilians.[129]
The Daily Telegraph journalist E. J. Dillon stated that he witnessed the mutilated corpses of Chinese women who were raped and killed by the Alliance troops. The French commander dismissed the rapes, attributing them to "gallantry of the French soldier." A foreign journalist, George Lynch, said "there are things that I must not write, and that may not be printed in England, which would seem to show that this Western civilization of ours is merely a veneer over savagery."[122]
"

I have to admit, cynical as I am, I was a little shocked to read that missionaries were deeply involved in looting, reprisals, and rapes. I guess I'm naive. But it does put the rape of Nanking in some context. It's not just Japanese troops who went nuts in China, China suffered a great deal at the hands of foreigners, and while we may have forgotten most of these stories, or filtered them to point up the sins of our enemies, the Chinese have not. They remember it all too well.

Informative...........but disheartening.
What the F is wrong with so many people. No honor? It occurs to me more and more that 10% of the people are basically evil, 10% are basically good, and the remaining 80% have no moral core and will bow to the prevailing winds of wichever 10% is dominant at the moment.

 

[swampyankee]

I actually agree with most of this but that attitude, about smothering or sacrificing 'lesser' powers (like Japan as an example of the former and Czechoslovakia as an example of the latter) was itself dangerous and in no small part what led to WW II. The British armed Japan partly as a bulwark against Communist Russia. Then lost their Pacific fleet and some of the jewels of the Colonial Empire to them 15 years later. The British and French threw small but highly comptent Czechoslovakia under the buss and then faced a German armored spearhead pouring into France, 1/3 comprised of Czech tanks, which were quite good by the standards of the day.

View attachment 558132

As you said, British arming Japan is somewhat analogous to the US arming the Mujahadeen in the 1980s, in both cases to throw a barrier in front of Russia. However arms to the Muj / Taliban didn't rise to the equivalent height of the pagoda on the Kongo...

Just to put Britain's arming Japan against "communist Russia," into perspective, Japan had largely stopped importing weapons before the USSR existed. Before communism, Imperial Russia was a rival and threat to Britain's imperium. Russia didn't switch from an innocent, peace-loving country to an aggressive one.

Trying to get in topic....

Even though the USA of the time had serious human rights issues, most (like 99%) were the result of state and local governments' laws and policies (including tacit support of terrorist organizations), not federal ones (even the Japanese internment during WWII was pushed by local governments, although endorsed and enforced by the national one), there was not the sort of anti-US feeling among Hawaii's citizens as there was anti-imperium feeling as there was among the peoples under the British Raj, if for no other reason than Britain's deliberate destruction of local economic activity that inconvenienced the British. Japan would find even less support amongst the inhabitants of Hawaii than they did in the Raj.

 

[Milosh]

The Soviets benefited heavily from allied equipment and supplies, but lets keep in mind, the major Allied interventions all took place after Stalingrad, and the Germans never successfully conducted a major campaign after Stalingrad.

I'm sure D-Day helped accelerate matters but the truth is the Germans were already doomed more than a year before the first boot hit Omaha beach.

The Soviets reieved 17,499,861 tons of aid. In '41 and '42 this aid was 16% of the total aid. In '43, '44 and '45 this aid was 84% of the total.
Engines of the Red Army in WW2

 

[Schweik]

The Soviets reieved 17,499,861 tons of aid. In '41 and '42 this aid was 16% of the total aid. In '43, '44 and '45 this aid was 84% of the total.
Engines of the Red Army in WW2

True - as I said they got a lot of help particularly logistical. Aircraft sent by Britain and the US most definitely helped stabilize the front at a crucial time.

But lets not also forget - in each year of 1941, 1942, and 1943 the Soviets lost more casualties than all the US, UK and Commonwealth combined for the whole war. In 1944 it was about even, slightly less. That helps put things into perspective. Total Soviet casualties (military and civilian) were about 28 times US plus UK casualties. China, Japan and Germany also suffered shockingly catastrophic losses.

When you think what an impact the war had on us living in the UK and US, culturally, economically (both good and bad), spiritually - think of the other nations where the cost of the war was so much more extreme.

 

[Schweik]

Would you care to explain this?

The Kongo was the last major Japanese warship built by a non-Japanese company. her 3 sister ships were built in Japan with varying amounts of British Supplied materials.
The Kongo was completed 16 August 1913.

The Japanese helped hunt for German surface raiders in WW I. They had a small flotilla of ships in the Med assisting the British during or after the Dardanelles operation. They took over the German islands/possession in the Orient, part from greed and part to prevent them from being supply points for German raiders.

All of this was before the Russian revolution. Perhaps the British did assist the Japanese navy in modernising after WW 1 and perhaps it was to help counter bolshevism, but Japan had served as an ally during WW I and for the most part, the British were only "arming" Japan with technical knowledge about aircraft and aircraft operations. And selling small numbers of aircraft to Japan. Japan purchased no large ships from the British after WW I. The British certainly didn't "give" the Japanese much of anything in the way of weapons after WW I.

Kongo may have been the last Japanese battleship actually built in a British shipyard (in 1913) but the military - including naval and aircraft - technology transfers continued well into the 1930s. And not to put it all on Britain. Many other countries - France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the US, exported military technology to Japan somewhat recklessly. The chief aircraft designer for Blohm and Voss, Richard Vogt, was designing planes for Kawasaki in the 1920s and trained the Japanese designer Takeo Doi, who went on to draw up the blueprints for the Ki-61. The engine that powered the A6M Zero and the Ki-43 was based on a fusion of features derived from a license built Bristol Jupiter and a license built Wright Cyclone.

This is a pretty eye-opening article which gets into the details of all the other licensing agreements and other major tech transfers if you want to read more about it.

It is also true that Russia was a long time (on and off) enemy of England during Czarist times and only became more so after they became Communist, that Japan was an Ally of England and the US during WW1.

My point was only that Japan was perceived by most of these powers not as an equal, but as a pawn (and gradually more and more, as an upstart) useful in causing problems for other "real" states, i.e. the Great Powers. If Japan had continued to behave like an auxiliary or colonial State, arming them was harmless - and potentially quite useful! But of course, they failed to grasp that Japan had ambitions of her own and once Japan started to make that clear, the response was basically indignant contempt. It was a kind of hang over or the predatory colonial thinking of the 18th and 19th Century, (which was itself grown out of an era when Europeans were still being captured in slave raids and rivals from other cultures were every bit as predatory). The Japanese were grudgingly acknowledged by the other "Great Powers" as strong enough to be made a partner in their ruthless partition of China, but barely that.

A more equanimous - and circumspect approach seems like it would have been wiser, in hindsight.

 

[Schweik]

Informative...........but disheartening.
What the F is wrong with so many people. No honor? It occurs to me more and more that 10% of the people are basically evil, 10% are basically good, and the remaining 80% have no moral core and will bow to the prevailing winds of wichever 10% is dominant at the moment.

It is a bit isn't it. This worried a lot of people - But it needs to be put in perspective. A lot of time and effort in the 20th Century, particularly in the wake of ww2, was spent trying to figure out just how nasty ordinary people really are deep down. There is no doubt that we should be extremely wary of telling ourselves that there was something uniquely different about the Germans, Soviets, Japanese and so on that made them do all the nasty things which were done in WW2. There is nothing unique about them in this sense, all people, all nations can behave this way. Most have more than once. China in the late 19th Century was a colonial target and a host of circumstances divided the colonial powers from the common people there. And armies, any armies, can go really 'off' sometimes especially in a sack type scenario.

Contrary to some though I think most people are 'mostly' good deep down, but can be swayed all too easily even to act against their own interest and to be predatory toward other groups (other counries, people in other socioeconomic sectors of their own country etc.)- the science of swaying them has been getting better and better which brings with it certain dangers. And just as in an individual person, the mass culture of a State can get sick, rotten, crazy. When that happens most people prefer to go along with what people around them are doing even if the overall trends worry them. It's very hard to buck the social norms and stand up to the strong social pressure to confirm even when you know this is happening.

I was part of the punk counterculture "in the day", a long time ago before everything alternative was so accepted in the West. It could be a very uncomfortable, sometimes physically dangerous route to take, to be even a little bit out of sync with the accepted norms. What made it possible to endure was the friendship and support of many others who felt the same as I did. On your own, purely on your own - it's very hard. And these days, despite (or perhaps because of) social media, a lot of us are more isolated and alone than ever before.

So we should make sure our culture doesn't go too far off the rails, and it's a good idea to try to make friends even though it can be hard .

 

[swampyankee]

Trade was international, and there was nothing like the current international agreements limiting technology transfer. For example, BMW had a license for the PWAC Hornet, ALFA was a Bristol licensee, and Wright sold licenses for the Cyclone to the USSR

 

[Schweik]

Trying to get in topic....

Even though the USA of the time had serious human rights issues, most (like 99%) were the result of state and local governments' laws and policies (including tacit support of terrorist organizations), not federal ones (even the Japanese internment during WWII was pushed by local governments, although endorsed and enforced by the national one), there was not the sort of anti-US feeling among Hawaii's citizens as there was anti-imperium feeling as there was among the peoples under the British Raj, if for no other reason than Britain's deliberate destruction of local economic activity that inconvenienced the British. Japan would find even less support amongst the inhabitants of Hawaii than they did in the Raj.

I don't want to keep bringing up bummer stuff but lets not forget though US colonial policies for example in the Spanish American War (notably in the Philippines) and also down in South and Central America and so on - and in China which I already pointed out. US Federal government policy could be pretty ruthless and nasty just like the Europeans (or the Japanese).

And then there is all the firebombing during WWII, then Korea etc.

 

[swampyankee]

I don't want to keep bringing up bummer stuff but lets not forget though US colonial policies for example in the Spanish American War (notably in the Philippines) and also down in South and Central America and so on. US Federal government policy could be pretty ruthless and nasty just like the Europeans (or the Japanese).

And then there is all the firebombing during WWII, then Korea etc.

All quite true. From a strictly military point of view, I suspect Japan could not occupy and hold all of Hawaii. It may have been able to occupy and hold Oahu long enough to destroy it as a useful base, though. Given the Japanese methods of rule, they would not make any friends in the archipelago.

 

[pinsog]

All quite true. From a strictly military point of view, I suspect Japan could not occupy and hold all of Hawaii. It may have been able to occupy and hold Oahu long enough to destroy it as a useful base, though. Given the Japanese methods of rule, they would not make any friends in the archipelago.

And unlike the poor unarmed Chinese Peasants that they could simply do with what they pleased, many of those living on Hawaii may have been armed. Not actually sure of how well civilians on the island were armed, but at that time the mainland USA was very well armed.(I still don't see them having a prayer of successfully invading Oahu)

 

[RCAFson]

I don't agree, in 1940-42 Japan was definitely a 1st rate power. Italy was a bit worn out by 10 years of Fascism before WW2 even started, but they never achieved the stunning victories the Japanese did... and Kamikazes came with the defeat not with the expansion.

One of the interesting things I learned listening to Dan Carlins "Supernova in the East" was that Japan was one of the most ardently and intransigently anti-Communist States on Earth, maybe even more than Nazi Germany. They really, really, really hated communists. So it's a bit ironic that during most of the war they had a peaceful border with the Soviets. No doubt something to do with their defeat by General Zhukov early in the war.

Their hatred of communism has been cited as the real reason that IJ surrendered. The argument is that they feared a Red Army occupation more than the bomb.

 

[Milosh]

True - as I said they got a lot of help particularly logistical. Aircraft sent by Britain and the US most definitely helped stabilize the front at a crucial time.

I was backing up your statement.

 

[Schweik]

I was backing up your statement.

Sorry I got a little lost in the various posts... I didn't disagree though!

 

[The Basket]

I remember watching something on the American civil war and the Generals were going 'What would Napoleon do?'

If tactics and strategy were important then the Luxembourg army is set to conquer the world.

The bigger the economy, the bigger the industrial base and the bigger number of tanks I can build.

One thing missing is context. In the late 30s 40s everything is going on. I got civil war in Spain and invasion and surrender of France and Battle of Britain and unrestricted U-boat warfare in the Atlantic and USSR invading Finland and Baltic states and Italians in Ethiopia and then Germany invades USSR.

So China is not top of the USA list. Human rights abuses in China maybe rampant but I got Stalin and Hitler trying to kill millions of people. So taking the eye off Japan and missing the red flags is understandable.