Someone told me that they heard from a source on the history of World War II, that the Japanese were considering invading America…but thought twice about it…because they knew most Americans were armed with guns…and they thought they could not invade because of this reason…Does anyone ever heard of this or know the history behind this?
Um, LOL. No, never. There were never any serious plans for Japan to invade the United States other than the Aleutian Island-reuse. With their lack of maritime lift, air superiority/supremacy, and huge numbers of troops tied down in China and just holding their new possessions in the Pacific rim, the Imperial Japanese armed forces had no more capability to invade the U.S. than they did the planet Mars. American firearm ownership would have been a very small concern…
Moved to appropriate forum…
This is something I heard…someone read in a quote from a Japanese Officer in a World War II book. You can see discussions on this subject at warhistoryfans.com/reason for Japan not invading continental US
The quote allegedly from Yamamoto
You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.
is unsubstantiated but widely quoted as fact. Often used by the US gun lobby in the past.
No record of it actually having been said are known. It is often quoted with a reference to Japan saying it would be dictating peace terms to the US in the Whitehouse, but the quote is often taken out of context and not complete.
Full quote
Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians, among whom armchair arguments about war are being glibly bandied about in the name of state politics, have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.
Partial often posted
To make victory certain, we will (would have to) march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House
If it is posted enough on the internet and quoted by enough people fiction becomes a defacto fact that takes on a momentum all of its own.
The quote you may be thinking of:“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” Has been repeated since the War, but is not verifiable as being spoken by Adm. Yamamoto . The quote is largely considered to be bogus, though some still hold it to be authentic.
All of that aside, its a matter of conjecture, and conjuration as to whether or not Militia operations would have been successful against an invasion force at the time, too many unknown factors to juggle.
Its pretty clear that the Japanese did not have the resources to mount, let alone sustain, an invasion of the continental United States.
The boy scouts would have made a pretty good showing against such a dismal undertaking.
Every enemy of Japan had to of been pacified prior to the Japanese being able to invade anything east of Hawaii. They didn’t have the force projection in the least, as others have said, due to being bogged down in China, Burma, and other regions in SE Asia.
Think about the number of troops that Japan fielded during August Storm in Manchuria - and that was during the last days’ of the Japanese empire. No way they could send the troops elsewhere without the country being pacified.
Despite the IJN’s enthusiasm for an ambitious invasion of Australia on the back of the stunning victories in the first few months of the Pacific War, and ignoring the various inter-service rivalries between the IJA and IJN regarding the IJA’s conquests in China and the the absence of IJN conquests elsewhere and the benefits accruing to the respective services from such conquests, it was agreed at IJA/IJN conferences and Imperial Conference in February/March 1942 that it was beyond Japan’s capacity to invade Australia (with a population of about 6 million at the time and a vast coastline and internal acreage which it lacked the manpower to defend against the sort of assault Japan launched on the Philippines).
By the beginning of 1943 it was apparent from the Japanese defeats on Guadalcanal and in Papua that Japan was on the back foot even in its thrust towards Australia.
Among the reasons for those defeats were the inability of the Japanese to deploy sufficient troops and shipping to support the troops, which was a consequence of Japan’s involvement in China and the size of its merchant fleet when it went to war. All of that just got worse as the war progressed.
There was no way that Japan could have mounted an invasion of the west coast of the United States of America which had the slightest hope of success, never mind an invasion which could have forced America to surrender, for the same reasons that Japan couldn’t invade Australia but magnified by the problems of crossing the huge Pacific Ocean without the advantages of the island chain and distances involved in the conquests down to Papua and Guadalcanal by mid-1942.
There is also no way that Japan could have mounted any useful land invasion of the USA when Japan was at its zenith in the first half of 1942 as it couldn’t even manage to displace a relatively small force of Americans on Guadalcanal a quarter of a planet away from both America and Japan and long before America had got itself onto anything like a full war economy that made a major industrial and military contribution to the defeat of Japan and Germany. That does not detract from the sacrifices on and critical importance of Guadalcanal in turning back the Japanese tide on land and sea at a psychological moment in the face of unstoppable Japanese advances to that point, but the forces Japan and America were able to bring to bear against each other on Guadalcanal were nothing like the superiority America could have brought against Japan on mainland America.
None of that alters the entirely reasonable apprehensions of people in Australia and America in the first couple of years of the war that Japan seemed capable of invading both continents. But historical facts show that there was no prospect of it succeeding in America, and at best a very modest prospect of it succeeding in Australia. At least as long as the Australian government maintained its spine and didn’t give in until Japan was in full control, which was most unlikely to happen with modestly vigorous and sustained Australian defence of its land.
As for not invading America because most Americans were armed with ‘guns’, I’d need to see some figures on gun ownership in the western states of the US, primarily California, which supports that even if it was the Japanese view. The guns the Japanese needed to be afraid of were the USN and US Army guns, and many more military rifles with attached soldiers moved to that theatre, available to defend the west coast and, perhaps more importantly in wearing down an enemy with vastly overstretched supply lines, the interior as the invader advanced.
Separate response to the risk of Japanese invasion on the west coast of America.
The Japanese didn’t invade, but they managed to do huge damage to a significant segment of the west coast population. Who, unfortunately, happened to be Japanese or of Japanese descent who were interned and who, in some cases, had the misfortune to be the owners of agricultural properties which were bought up at bargain prices by the very same Anglo people who had been opposing Japanese agriculturalists in California for decades before the war.
Which goes back to prohibitions by the US on Japanese migration which, like the White Australia Policy, quite understandably antagonised the Japanese in the early years of the 20th century and which was one of the streams leading to the Pacific War.
Of course, the Japanese did manage to shell Oregon, launch fire balloons and bomb a forest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_North_America_during_World_War_II#Japanese_operations
The bigger question remains why Japan attacked the US in the first place. It was an act of national suicide, which, considering the culture of death in Japan at the time, seems consistent with its culture. As to invasions of Australia and America, both were palpably un-realizable. It raises questions about the Japanese leaderships grasp on reality.
Maybe but those missions that I mentioned above weren’t suicide missions - AFAIK, the pilot who bombed the forest and the submarines that shelled Oregon (and Canada) survived…though, I agree with you…I don’t really see the benefit other than for morale (which didn’t seem likely since I’m guessing the attacks weren’t publicly acknowledged in Japan).
Did the Balloon Bombs have “pilots?” 
No, they were explosive balloons that used the jet stream to come to the United States… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon
Not likely. Japanese only attacked peal harbor because the distance was close. Germany (on the other hand) had the equipment to do so after 1945, if the war lasted that long. I believe Germany would try to invade America if this war prevailed.
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Germany was at war with America.
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To defeat the Allies, Germany needed to conquer all major Allied countries.
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Political Jewry moved to America.
I feel Japanese just wouldn’t have the man power or equipment to pull an invasion of the USA. Someone had mention that the Japanese had awoken up a sleeping giant!!!
Even if the Germans didn’t invade the USSR, I seriously doubt they could have successfully invaded and occupied the US…even just the east coast. They could have bombed it and eventually attacked it with missiles, either land launched from Europe or sea launched from submarines but I think think they lacked the manpower and technical ability to invade the US. One thought - where would their staging area be? Mexico?
If Germany couldn’t invade Britain just a few miles across from the English Channel, however was she going to invade the United States from across the Atlantic?
It’s obviously all hypothetical…It’s pretty much impossible. The only way that I could see it happening (which isn’t possible) would be if the Germans never invaded the USSR, successfully invaded the UK and controlled the vast majority of northern Africa and then managed to control Mexico.
The much more likely scenario would have been bombing campaigns against the US…had the war continued, their jet fighters would have been perfected and their “Amerika Bomber” project may have been operational… They were also looking for ways to launch V2 rockets from subs.
quote If Germany couldn’t invade Britain just a few miles across from the English Channel, however was she going to invade the United States from across the Atlantic? End quote.
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to pee you off or anything. That was a practical mistake from Germans, in why, Britain won ‘the battle for Britain’. The Luftwaffe swap targets from the RAF target to city bombings at the time the RAF was on her knees. This allowed the RAF to get prepared once more.
I do believe the UK could’ve been invaded.
There’s a thread here on Operation Sea Lion somewhere, I’ll get the link…
Here it is. If you wish to post, I’ll return it to the active forums: http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?2548-Operation-Sealion