Japans biggest mistakes?

I think their biggest mistake was attacking Pearl Harbor in the first place. FDR wanted the US to join the war but realized the isolationist movement was to powerful. He wanted Japan to strike the first blow so the country would unite fully in the support of the war.

Japan played right into the FDR administration's hands by attacking Pearl harbor.

They should have instead just invaded Java and Malayasia to gain oil and rubber they needed. Perhaps I'm wrong but, it would have been very difficult for the US to intervene militarily against Japan without being attacked first. The american people simply would not have supported military action without being attacked first.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was just the first step of Japan's complete defeat.

Once the war began it was the lack of communication and the infighting between the IJN and IJA commands that hurt their war effort more than anything.

 

I think this and many others' posts in this thread has covered most of the reasons that Japan lost the war. I might add a few more than don't seem to have been mentioned:

1. The IJA was sure that Germany was going to defeat the UK and Russia, therefore, once Japan captured the resources that it needed, the IJA could concentrate on securing China and leave the IJN to take care of the US in the Pacific.

2. The IJN thought that it would be able to defend the Pacific with a perimeter defense of mutually reinforcing island air bases with the Combined Fleet able to respond from the centralized location at Truk to any large incursions by the US.

3. The Axis powers apparently did not attempt to coordinate an overall, mutually supporting strategic plan among themselves with agreed-upon goals, such as Japan driving on India from the east and Germany from the west via North Africa in order to destroy the British Empire and further isolate the USSR. If that had been the goal, then perhaps Japan should have considered taking the Dutch East Indies without invading the Philippines, in an attempt to keep the US out of the war for as long as possible.

The US Pacific Fleet signaled the folly of the IJN's perimeter defense plan even before the Doolittle Raid, when its carriers successfully raided the Marshalls, Gilberts, and Wake and escaped without serious loss (as well this fiasco for IJN aviation). I guess Yamamoto's response was to try to destroy the US carriers at Midway. But he should have known that the US had the Essex carriers ready to be launched starting a year later, and thus the IJN's perimeter defense would again be sorely tested after only a brief reprieve if the Japanese had won at Midway.

Since the IJN intended to fight a defensive war once it achieved its territorial objectives, then it should have designed its aircraft and ships with that in mind, i.e. ruggedness and armor. Instead, they were designed for speed and range, which meant that they were thinly or not otherwise armored, especially its aircraft and carriers. I believe Mark Peattie described the IJN in Sunburst as "having a glass jaw." The IJN paid for this in the rapid attrition of its elite aircrews and the loss of the carriers at Midway.

The IJN did have a chance to employ its perimeter defense during the Guadalcanal Campaign, and obviously disastrously failed to such an extent that the IJN never recovered. Most of what I've said above I read in Willmott's great book, Barrier and the Javelin.

 

How? and when?

They don't have the resources and if they wait until say 42 or 43 they have real problems like almost no oil and a USN that is growing at a rate they simply can't match. The closest the IJN can come to the USN is in 41, their relative strength declines after that fairly rapidly especially when you consider the oil situation. Remember there was a faction in the IJN that favored the naval treaties because they realized that Japan couldn't afford anything more.

 

Willmott confirms that the IJN knew that they had a limited window of opportunity before the US's big naval expansion of '42-'43 would put the IJN at a greater disadvantage.

 

Although from the very start, Japan could not have won against its opponents during WWII militarily, I do believe that if Japan had a different policy regarding its actions, then at least their motives would have been looked on in a better light and they would have been able to garner the full cooperation of the captured territories that they possessed. Much has to do with the Japanese military mentality of this period and should have begun far earlier with its preexisting territories such as Korea and during the war with newly gained ones in South-East Asia.

Japan's attitude toward the peoples of the territories it conquered should have been not that of a conquerer, but as a liberator. Japan's "Asia for Asians" slogan could have been truly been followed through as this was a prime opportunity for them to gain the trust and popularity of the locals. Already, sentiments within the Asian colonies were simmering, just waiting to overthrow the white Europeans and Americans. Japan could take advantage of this and claim that they were freeing them from the white oppressors and grant them their independences provided they remain friendly to Japan (trade, cooperation) and military activities and joint-occupations with local police forces. In a sense, puppet governments as this was necessary for Japan in wartime, but nonetheless, sovereign nations.

These actions alone, if demonstrated positively, would have incited patriotic responses in other colonies that were still in the hands of the Europeans possibly causing them trouble and unrest and should Japan go against these respective colonies, the response from the local population would have mostly likely been appreciative and cooperative. Not to mention European armies that were made up of predominant native soldiers such as the Indian sepoys would have possibly experienced mutinous behavior depending on the war situation.

The general attitude of the Japanese soldiers was that because they were soldiers of the emperor, they were free to do whatever they wished with the spoils of war be it property or people. This alienated and antagonized the locals to the extent of open hostilities such as guerrilla warfare such as in the Philippines, and lasting grudges that can be seen even in today's politics in Asia. The Japanese army, which was the primary occupation force in the territories did not possess the necessary diplomatic skills, knowledge and means to deal with the citizens in the occupied territories in a respectable manner and this led to hastily thought policies such as those of comfort women and military brothels which coerced and kidnapped women to serve as sexual slaves in order to "pacify" the troops without any regard for the existing locals.

Japan was in a war and supplies were already stretched to a limit, however I believe that if Japan had planned for these policies beforehand and had prearranged supplies and funds to provide visible humanitarian aid to needy populations in their territories, then that would have done much to improve relations between the occupation forces and the occupied peoples. Those and little things such as not requiring people to bow whenever Japanese soldiers passed by.

The Japanese possessed a well disciplined army back then and I believe that if the army high command in Tokyo prioritized the necessity of good relations between the locals and occupation forces, then changes would have definitely occurred in the ranks thus leading to a far more amiable relations with the local populations instead of letting the soldiers run amok and destroy everything in their path, notably tragedies such as Nanking and Manila among others.

These policies I stated would not have militarily benefited Japan in the long run for the war apart from better relations within its territories. Its military would not have been able to effectively use the resources in the territories as freely as they'd like due to the bureaucratic complications of the "sovereign" territories. Some possible benefits that could have come out of this though were that Japan would not need as many occupational troops in its territories and can commit them to the on-going war effort. Also with the lowered antagonistic feelings toward the occupiers, conduct such as trade and movement within the territories would have gone much smoother.

In the end, with Japan inevitably losing the war, the former European colonies would most likely be retaken as colonies by the white Europeans and Americans. However by then, patriotic sentiment within the local peoples would be too great for the new occupiers to handle, and by this time, maintaining a colony would far outweigh the benefits and the former colonies would become legitimate sovereign nations, with Japan viewed in a far more positive light.

Now this was, at the least, nearly impossible as much of the Japanese military mentality was embedded in a far more harsher way of waging war, but this, at least is my outtake on one of the greatest Japanese blunders during the war.

 

That rather depends on your definition of disciplined. Consider that high level officers had to take into account that lower ranking ones might try an assasinate them if they took actions the latter disaproved of. Or the fact that the China campaign was basicallys started by the local commanders and was not really part of Japan's plans at the time.

 

Excellent point lwd, I assume you are referring to the insubordination of army officers, primarily the junior officers influenced by radical ideas after the departure of senior officers in the 1920s yes?

The problem that persisted though, was that although these junior officers were influenced by radical ideas, discipline within the officer corp never truly was enforced. In the Japanese Army at least, discipline in the form of physical punishment flowed down the ranks especially in the lower officer ranks and down to the rank and file, making the junior officers from ranks such as captain or majors to be highly cocky towards their superiors due to the amount of power that they held below. It wasn't because the upper chain of command from were frightened because of those below, it was because they didn't care about what went on in the lower ranks as long as objectives were carried out. In whatever way, they did not care, and these objectives were carried out by the junior officers, who a number of them would carry orders out through improper conduct from most views.

The top brass only doled out rewards to the officer corp and did not discipline mavericks harshly, the most one would get is either a mild reproach or a transfer. Because of this lack of concern in how the international community would react to the army's actions, the IGHQ felt no real necessity to change whatever was going on because as long as the main goals were carried out, they didn't give a flip as to how it was carried out. So discipline can roll a number of ways here, the army's organization was not a clean rigid one, but one that would definitely get the prioritized mission done, as long as the top commandants didn't micromanage the tidbits in between the ranks.

So convincing the IGHQ that the soldiers needed to respect the occupied peoples would have been a lost cause, unless something big and drastic could have opened their eyes to possible benefits. But then again, this was the Japanese Army, headed by the same leadership that proposed to fight against America, so one can't really expect much prudence from this organization.

I believe that only an effective purge of the junior officer corp made whole-heartedly with the full cooperation of the IGHQ as well as the navy would have cleared this muck from within the army, if they can be led to see that this change was necessary in the first place. Either that or the army would be generous enough to let the navy handle occupational duties as they were far more skilled in the field of international diplomacy and issues that concerned foreign relations as compared to the army.

 

A well thought out post.

Welcome

 

Indeed well thought out response. The navy also had a similar problem indeed at one point it's been suggested that Yamamoto was given an a comand (I think one at sea) to forstal any assassination attempts. I've also read that older enlisted pilots in the navy could get away with a lot although this may have been later in the war.

 

Japan did not nessecarily continue fighter development. By the time the F6F came in to replace the F4F, the Japanese were not ready with the fighters to cope with the second generation of American planes.

Also, invading my grandpa's hometown in 1941

 

Unless I am reading you wrong, the Japanese did continue development with fighters throughout the war. They had a problem with quality control and inability to build them in numbers, but they still were dangerous opponants.

Ever hear of the Ki-84 "George"; J2M Raiden "Jack"; Kawasaki Ki.61 Hien "Tony"; Kawasaki Ki.100; Kawanishi N1K1-J Shiden "George"?

Anyone one of them with a good pilot was something not to be taken lightly.

 

Not to mention problems importing bauxite, rubber, iron ore, alloying metals, coking coal, and other commodities with which to make them, as well as oil to produce aviation gas with which to train those "good" pilots. The naval blockade of Japan killed any chance of mass producing advanced implements of war.

 

The IJN/IJA was still scoring victories up to the final day of the war.

A good pilot in anyone of those late war designs that had some good quality avgas and the plane was maintained well, was still a force to be reckoned with. And many allied pilots paid the price for it.

 

My dad flew F6F's from the spring of 1944 until the end of the Pacific war and that's what he said too. He was in the war literally from Day 1 to the last day over Japan, except for about a year in 1943 as a pilot instructor in the States. He said he was scared to death his luck would run out before the war ended, but it never did.

But for the Japanese pilots, quality avgas (or any avgas), good aircraft maintenance, and even decent training was in very short supply in 1945; those IJN/IJA aerial victories were very few and very far between in the last days.

 

And this at a time when US pilots were getting more and better training. Sakai's (sp?) account of a dogfight with a bunch of "green" F6F pilots over Iwo Jima is very enlightening in this regard.

 

Mistake? The biggest was ever allowing the militaristic mafia group "Black dragon society" and other right wing military cohorts to gain control of the Japanese civilian government. Imperial Japan was a Shogun era anachronism that had no place in the modern civilized world. The brutal bushido driven cult of personality led by the emperor was doomed as soon as it was started. A fatalistic ideology that views the world in terms of glorious death in combat and total conquest of the enemy is one that is not built on pragmatism or long lasting virtues.

If you want to break it down though.

1) Diplomacy. Japan's diplomacy was hilariously terrible and led to fatal misunderstanding of U.S. culture and global policy in the unfolding world war. Japan also constantly sabotaged its own long term feasibility in how it handled its "colonial" ambitions by letting unbridled military savagery run amok amongst other asian nations. This completely alienated them from the world as well as undermined their goals. They lost the propaganda war before the war even officially started.

2) The second sino-Japanese was not only wasteful but tied up the bulk of Japanese land forces in an unwinnable stalemate. This campaign is understated in western historical archives but the Japanese committed a large number (at least half a million) of soldiers at various junctures on the China mainland. The conflicts were brutal and involved massed infantry which were whittled down for minimal territorial or resource gains. Not to mention the Chinese guerilla conflict in the countryside would have lasted unabated indefinitely even if the U.S. never entered the war. After 1939 the mainland was pretty much a lost cause and a "quagmire" for Imperial Japan.

3) Military intel. Japanese military intel was inadequate and were big linchpins in their defeat in Coral sea, Midway, and even the attack on Pearl Harbor.

4) After Midway it was time to throw in the towel. There was absolutely no point in the defensive island resistance against the U.S. There was not a prayer for victory because if you look at the economic and military variables they were up against it was obvious how it was going to turn out. Nearly every single island conflict except the earliest had the Japanese outmatched logistically and militarily outnumbered.