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February 25, 2005
Was a Japanese Invasion Possible?
One of the central theses of In Defense of Internment: The case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror by Michelle Malkin was that after Pearl Harbor policy makers had reasonable cause to fear a Japanese invasion of the West Coast.
The central thesis of this book is that the national security measures taken during World War II were justifiable, given what was known and not known at the time. It is unfair to judge the decison-makers of the time as though they had all the knowledge that we do today.We've seen much second guessing of the invasion of Iraq. Many act as if they knew all along that Iraq did not have stockpiles of WMD, that there would be an insurgency, on and on. Most of them are completely disingenuous.We know now that Japan would not invade or launch a major attack on the West Coast. We know now that the Battle of Midway of June 1942 would be a decisive victory for the United States, and a turning point in the war.... We know now that Allied forces would defeat Hitler's forces in Europe. We know now that we would develop the atomic bomb before our enemies. None of this was known at the time.
We need to consider the situation that policy makers faced after Pearl Harbor in light of what they knew at the time also. The purpose of this post is solely to consider whether an invasion or attack by the Japanese of the West Coast was possible and whether U.S. policy-makers had cause to believe it was possible. I will discuss the issue of internment and profiling in later posts.
Japanese Objectives
The reason the Japanese fought the war in the first place was to secure access to natural resources. Their initial attacks focused on Manchuria (1932) and China (1937). Both of these provoked U.S. outrage, eventually leading to sanctions being placed on Japan. Japanese planners believed that to secure natural resources, they needed hegemony throughout the western pacific. They sought to achieve this through the creation of a "Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere". In reality, of course, this entity was to be run entirely by Japan, with the subject nations they conquered ruled in a brutal fashion.
Japan saw the U.S. Navy, and U.S. bases, as the primary threat to their goals. British bases were a threat also, though to a lesser degree. The point is that they attacked our fleet at Pearl Harbor to rid themselves of this perceived threat. Why, therefore, would they have wanted to attack the continental United States?
Why Attack the Continental United States
In order to achieve their goals Japan had no reason to occupy any part of the continental United States. They did not even have to occupy Hawaii.
However, one may argue that in order to completely neutralize the threat posed by the United States, and force us to sue for peace, they needed to destroy or severely damage west coast facilities. At the time the United States had, in addition to the obvious port facilities themselves, several aircraft manufacturing plants within easy range of carrier-borne aircraft that might sail up and down our coast. These were centered in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
As I mentioned, attacks on our West Coast would not only achieve physical damage, but might prompt Washington to sue for peace.
But Could They Have Done It?
Did the Japanese have the ability to conduct raids on our West Coast, and more importantly, did U.S. policy-makers believe that they did?
This is a complicated issue and I won't be able to cover everything in this post.
It is said that amateurs discuss strategy, pros discuss logistics. While perhaps overstated, this aphorism does have much truth in it, for the question of whether Japan could have conducted raids along our coast depends on an answer to this question.
Many at the time seemed to believe that actual invasion by troops was a possiblilty. The facts are that it would have been just about impossible for Japan to have carried this out. Let's briefly go over some principles for amphibious attacks.
The general rule is that the larger the invasion force, the closer (to the target) one needs their jump-off base. In other words, you can travel a long way with a small invasion force, but only a short distance with a large one. We needed a huge force to attack Normandy, and it was assembled in Britain, only a few short miles away. No way this force could have traveled from the U.S., for example. Likewise, the entire rational for our invasion of Okinawa in 1945 was to secure a base for the invasion of Japan proper. We could not have sailed the necessary fleet from our bases in the Marianas, for example.
Likewise, the various U.S. invasions of islands in the Pacific (Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, etc) were relatively small-scale affairs, at least when compared to D-Day in Normandy, or to a possible invasion of Japan proper. Therefore we could sail our invasion fleet for some distance before attacking.
Most of this was known at least in theory during the initial days of the war. Even with a jump-off point of Hawaii it is hard to see how the Japanese could have invaded the continental U.S. However, there was much "concern: (really bordering on hysteria) in the country following Pearl Harbor, even among otherwise sober policy makers. Some of them can therefore be forgiven for imagining that Japanese troops might land on our beaches.
As for coastal raids, that is another matter. In order to have carries out these raids the Japanese would have needed to occupy Pearl Harbor. The object of their December 7 attack was not to do this, but to simply cripple our fleet so they could take over the western Pacific, which they did over the course of the next six months. They did not invade Hawaii at the time because they lacked the logistical capability to do so, and because the US still had substantial forces in the western Pacific.
Midway - In June of 1942 Japan sent a large naval and troop force to occupy the island of Midway. Midway is so named because it lies midway between Japan and the continental United States. Their objective was to occupy Midway, and use it for a base for further attacks on Pearl Harbor. They had not developed any actual plans as of yet for invasion of Hawaii, it was on their minds.
As it was we won the battle of Midway in what was one of the most dramatic episodes of the war. We now see it as the turning point of the Pacific war.
Yet had the Japanese won the battle of Midway our situation at Pearl Harbor would have been almost untenable. We lost most of our aircraft and many surface ships in the Dec 7 attack. We only had three carriers in the Pacific, to the Japan's nine (they lost one at Coral Sea for those of you why are counting). Assuming a Japanese victory at Midway, we would likely be down most or all 3 of our carriers, with the Japanese retaining most of theirs. The Japanese had a huge superiority in all categories: aircraft (land and carrier-based), aircraft carriers, and surface ships (battleships, cruisers, and destroyers).
Had the Japanese been able to occupy Pearl Harbor they would have also been able to further consolidate their position in the western Pacific. They could eventually have mounted raids on our West Coast. It would have still been a very difficult task, given the distance from their supply depots in Japan. But from what I know of all this I believe that it would have been possible. U.S. policy planners knew it too.
Did Japan have Plans to Attack the West Coast?
No they did not. But we did not know this, so it does not matter.
True, we had broken the Japanese diplomatic code (MAGIC), and had partially broken their naval code (purple) but these intercepts did not tell us everything (the did not directly warn of the attack on Pearl Harbor or attack on Midway, for example), so it would have been foolish to assume that just because something was not mentioned in the cables it was not planned.
My Conclusion
No it's not based on a any specific research, just what I have learned over the past twenty-five years of reading about this stuff.
I conclude that U.S. policy planners had good cause to fear Japanese coastal raids, which I define as attacks by carrier-borne aircraft, and shelling of West Coast targets by surface ships sailing off-short. Actual invasion was not really a practical possibility, but I am not totally sure if planners realized this, given the attitude of near-panic of the time.
Posted by Tom at February 25, 2005 10:35 AM
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