The hostilities of the Asia- Pacific war ended over 80 years ago. It was a war that by most estimates took more than 30 million Asian lives, the vast majority of whom were neither combatants nor Japanese. We have considered the currents of history that brought us to the doorsteps of war, over the threshold into war’s carnage, until its end which was possibly inevitable even from its beginning. Was it inevitable? Some historians answer, “yes,” but there are always choices. It is just that you might not like any of the choices available. 

By the 1930s it was clear that Japan viewed its role as the leader of the Asia-Pacific region in every aspect by which a modern, great-power nation should be seen. The slow morphing of its self-understanding was traced in the post Japan Apart. It was not as simple as Japan understanding itself to be superior in terms of civilization, military strength, institutional stability, and a host of other measures – it was now a matter of destiny. Japan’s self-assigned role in the modern era was to be the leader, guardian and protector of Asian nations against the incursions of western colonialism that had left its mark through all reaches of the Asia-Pacific region. To their thinking, only they had risen above the grasp of western powers. They were possessed of the destiny to assume the role of leadership of a greater Asian prosperity sphere: an oriental Monroe Doctrine.

The previous several posts have added information and insights to draw closer to uncovering why Japan would draw the United States into the already ongoing conflict in the Asia-Pacific region. Was it inevitable? Some historians answer, “yes,” but there are always choices. It is just that you might not like any of the choices available. And how the choices are viewed and evaluated are “in the eyes of the beholder.” 

By 1941 Japan was bogged down in China fighting a war it started and, despite early successes, had very little chance of winning but every chance of experiencing the endless quagmire that had always been China. The fighting was already draining Japanese national reserves, was being fueled (literally) by oil and gasoline from the U.S., and was beginning to drastically reduce the standard of living among the Japanese people on the home islands. And yet Japan started armed combat with the U.S., a battle that the leaders of Japan knew they could not win militarily. It was a war the Japanese government’s Total War Research Institute reported there was no chance of winning. Even the best minds in Japan argued against the possibility of success. But as Prime Minister Tōjō once remarked: “Occasionally, one must conjure up enough courage, close one’s eyes and leap off the veranda of the Kiyomizu Temple.” Their actions were not rational; made no sense to the Western mind. 

The presumption of irrationality is natural when considering the latent military and industrial power of the U.S.. But “counting the costs” was not the criteria employed by Japan. Their decision for war has to be seen in the light of the alternatives available to them: economic suffocation or surrender of Tokyo’s empire and imperial ambitions/destiny on the Asian mainland. The choices made by the United States have to be seen in the light of the alternative available to them at the same crossroads of history.

Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Asia-Pacific War. Given that perhaps war was inevitable, but the road to Pearl Harbor was paved with American as well as Japanese miscalculations.

Rationality

History does not lack accounts of the irrational. Consider Winston Churchill and Britain in 1941. The British army had been driven off the continent as the last soldier evacuated from Dunkirk. By mid-1940 there was no one who could challenge Hitler’s control of Europe.

Was Churchill’s decision to fight on after Dunkirk rational? In May-June 1940 Britain had no means of effectively challenging Hitler’s on the European continent. Britain was down to its last hope: American and Soviet entry into the war. The Soviets had a non-aggression pact with Germany and the situation in Europe was not enough to bring America “off the sidelines.” The people of the United States were not interested in again being drawn into “European affairs” as they were in 1917. Only profound mistakes by Germany and Japan would change Britain’s strategic fortunes to bring the United States into the war.

A rational Winston Churchill would have explored the possibility of accepting German rule on the continent in exchange for allowing Britain to withdraw from the war and save the remains of its empire. Perhaps this was the sun beginning to set on the British Empire. Was it rational to continue the good fight? It would have been epic, heroic but ultimately foolhardy and futile. The choices were the heroic last stand, negotiate peace, or hold on until the Axis powers take irrational actions.  

In June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. In December 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. They were the seismic events that changed the tide of history. 

American naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison called Tokyo’s decision for war against the United States “a strategic imbecility.” [Quoted in Gordon Prange’s Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History] Apart from all the reasons already noted in previous posts, the United States lay beyond Japan’s military reach. Though Japan could fight a war in East Asia and the Western Pacific, it could not threaten the American homeland. In attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan elected to fight a geographically limited war against an enemy capable of eventually waging a total war against the Japanese home islands themselves.

Dean Acheson, who in 1941 was Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, declared before Pearl Harbor that “no rational Japanese could believe that an attack on us could result in anything but disaster for his country.”³ Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson believed the Japanese, “however wicked their intentions, would have the good sense not to get involved in a war with the United States.”⁴ Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto certainly had good sense. In October 1940 he warned that to “fight the United States is like fighting the whole world.   Doubtless I shall die aboard the Nagato (his flagship). Meanwhile, Tokyo will be burnt to the ground three times.” 

Perhaps the most savage indictment is that of historians Haruo Tohmatsu and H. P. Willmott: “[N]o state or nation has ever been granted immunity from its own stupidity. But Japan’s defeat in World War II was awesome. The coalition of powers that it raised against itself, the nature of its defeat across an entire ocean, and the manner in which the war ended represented an astonishing and remarkable, if unintended, achievement on the part of Japan.” (A Gathering Darkness: The Coming of War to the Far East and the Pacific, 1921-1942, p. 1) Wilmott, a top tier historian, is noted for his acute and searing analysis.

Thucydides famously explained the desire of ancient Athens to retain its empire by declaring that “fear, honor, and interest” were among three of the strongest motives.  Japan’s decision for war has to be seen in the light of the alternatives available to them: war, economic suffocation or surrender of Tokyo’s empire and imperial ambitions/destiny on the Asian mainland. These seem to fall within Thucydides categories of the strongest of motives. Japan’s decision for war was made after months of agonizing internal debate by leaders who recognized America’s vast industrial superiority and who, in the more sober moments, suffered few illusions about Japan’s chances in a protracted war against America. Japan’s leaders did not want war with the United States, but by the fall of 1941 few saw any acceptable alternative to war and they resigned themselves to it.

The Blind Alley

All the above being true in perception, it would seem that the 20th century had seen a dynamic in which Japan was working its way deeper and deeper into labyrinth of international complexities with nations that were well familiar with the twists and turns of the morass. Japan has been isolated from the world for centuries, only emerging some 60 years prior. It entered the labyrinth with a certain presumption about its readiness for the adventure. By the end of the 1930s their undisguised military aggression had created a situation in which the survival of Japan as a great power, and of her conception of an Asian empire, did indeed hang in the balance. They had essentially walked themselves into a dead end with absolutely no allies in the region. It is like the driver who is lost, refuses to ask directions, won’t admit he can’t read a road map, and nonetheless pride moves him ahead deeper into an increasingly blind alley. Arguments of honor, humiliation and subjugation can be hoisted – and even agreed they don’t have to be rational – but it does not exonerate the choices made. Or the inability to see what Japan feared as economic subjugation was more likely the start of an economic partnership that would benefit Japan in ways it could not imagine. Consider the economic fortunes of Japan in the last 80 years.

But by the fall of 1941 the question had come to be not whether there was to be a war with the Western powers, but, given the regional and world situation, whether Japan’s leaders could imagine a more favorable time to solve Japan’s resource problems by military action. Japan’s relative naval strength would never be better than in 1941. In capital ships, Japan’s fleet was 70% of the size of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. It was more modern, more practiced, and already had established the ability to operate multiple aircraft carriers as a single, coordinated air fleet (something the U.S. did not figure out until late 1943 and early 1944). But during the course of the war, the United States built 8,812 naval vessels to Japan’s 589. In 1941 the United States produced 1,400 combat aircraft to Japan’s 3,200; 3 years later, the United States built 37,500 to Japan’s 8,300. Japanese leaders reasoned, better war now than later. While the odds were never in their favor, Japan’s chances of defeating the United States were better in 1941 than in any subsequent year.

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Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archive | Source credit: Samuel Elliot Morse quote taken from Gordon Prange’s Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History | Tohmatsu and Wilmott quote taken from A Gathering Darkness: The Coming of War to the Far East and the Pacific, 1921-1942 | Utley quote taken from Going to War with Japan 1937-1941 | Tojo quote taken from Nobutake Ike, ed. and trans., Japan’s Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences. |