Hello Gumalangi,
Thank you for the reply. I wonder if there are many “Pai Tua” still living who remember the Japanese occupation of Celebes (Sulawesi)? I know some Dutch who were imprisoned as youngsters in the internment camps on Java and Sulawesi. Their memories are still quite vivid.
RS*,
Wasn’t the Japanese plan in New Guinea largely a ruse to draw both Australian and US forces away from other parts of the Pacific by conducting what were thought to be preparations for what turned out to be a pseudo-invasion of Australia?
Mate, I hate to contradict you so bluntly, but: No.
(If you have a source for that opinion, I’d like to know it. Could be interesting to follow up.)
Just the opposite.
Japan as a nation never had any plan (as distinct from a long term ambition) to invade Australia, or even to pretend to invade it, although the IJN was keen to try an invasion with its marines. That doesn’t mean that Japan wasn’t posturing and threatening to do so in 1942, as Tojo did several times in radio and parliamentary comments.
Invading New Guinea and invading Australia were a Japanese cluster fuck from beginning to end. (I don’t actually know precisely what a cluster fuck means in American usage, but I love the expression and if New Guinea wasn’t one then I don’t know what would be. 
)
There wasn’t anywhere for a Japanese ruse to draw land forces away from by the second half on 1942 when the Papua New Guinea, and Guadalcanal, campaigns were launched by the Japanese. They held just about everything to the north and north west. The Aleutian aspect was too far away to be relevant.
New Guinea was never more than a provisional target in Japan’s original war aims.
It was, like most Japanese advances after the initial aims were secured, opportunistically rather than strategically inspired.
To understand in a relatively few words how Japan ended up there, and how in many respects they lost the war there, you won’t do much better than the link I gave earlier to Henry Frei’s paper http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT00002FAA
To expand on a few points in Frei’s paper.
(Without wanting to teach you how to suck eggs :D) Anyone who doesn’t have a clear picture of the geography and distances, read what follows with a map beside you.
Rabaul was, strategically for the IJN, a sensible target to support Truk, but that in itself caused problems. The IJA regarded holding Rabaul as protecting Truk as a centre of IJN operations threatening the US in the central Pacific, but the IJN saw Rabaul as a centre of operations itself.
I’m oversimplifying it (I like saying that. It makes me sound like I know more than I do ;)) and I’ll expand on some earlier comments, but the IJN perception of Rabaul as a centre of operations led to the IJN seeing a need to protect Rabaul from Allied attacks, where the IJA was just defending Rabaul (after massacring a lot of Australians and others and doing other things you’d expect of that mongrel bunch at the time in and around Rabaul).
The problem for the IJN with Rabaul as a centre of operations was that the Allies could fly bombers from Townsville in north Queensland in Australia to bomb Rabaul and then land at Port Moresby in Papua on the way back to refuel on a round trip they couldn’t have made otherwise. The Japanese lacked a corresponding, and any, route to hit Townsville and its base which threatened Rabaul. So, if they took Moresby out of the equation, Rabaul was safe from Allied air attack.
Just to grasp the significance of Townsville, fairly early in the war Townsville was the biggest American air base outside the continental US.
Another advantage for Japan in taking Moresby was that it’s one of the few deep water natural harbours in the region, which of course backed up Rabaul and presented itself as a fresh centre of operations which might strangle Australian and Allied shipping through the relatively narrow Torres Strait between PNG and Australia.
This was important as just about everything that mattered in Australia, from productive capacity to things and people landed from the US, was on the east coast from Brisbane southwards to Melbourne and had to move by sea through the Torres Strait to Darwin or the north west to build a real threat to Japan’s southern flank in the NEI. Rail links lacked the capacity, while there were barely roads for some links.
Alternatively, any attempt to avoid the Torres Strait problem meant either an invasion fleet steaming through the Torres Strait where it was vulnerable to attacks from whatever was based at Moresby on sea or in the air, or a huge and probably insupportable expenditure in oil and tonnage in moving everything to assemble at Perth / Fremantle on the south west coast of the Australian continent and then steaming up from there, whether to Darwin as a fresh reassembly point or direct to somewhere in the NEI etc.
The IJN got carried away with victories and by early 1942 some elements were putting forward ideas like a one to two division raid down the middle of Australia from Darwin to Adelaide, which they thought might rattle us into surrender. Whether or not it would have worked, those plans show something that was consistently fatal in Japan’s understanding and planning and strategy. The people running the show had no idea what they were dealing with.
Read Henry Frei’s excellent Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia and you’ll see how ignorant the Japanese were of what was down here and how ambivalent they were about it, and how little they understood of it.
In a different way, it’s the same problem many of their leaders had with America. They didn’t understand it and they didn’t realise what was going to happen when they attacked it, because they were too bound up in their own narrow conceptions of Japanese excellence nurtured in a closed society lacking a real understanding of the outer world.
The same criticisms could be made of the Allies, and the Americans in particular, but America had everything Japan didn’t that mattered for war.
Too many leaders in Japan were too unsophisticated to realise that, and to realise that pissing off the remarkably diverse Americans unanimously as a nation is a very hard thing to do. But when anyone does it, then look out. About the only other time it’s been achieved before or after Pearl Harbor was 9/11, another sneak attack.
So, I’ll bring all this back to New Guinea, but first a digression.
In 1942 there was Papua, which was Australian soil thanks to a bit of aggressive colonial annexation by the Australian colony of Queensland in the late 19th century before Australia federated into a nation in 1901. New Guinea was a former German colony mandated to Australia after WWI. Ignoring Dutch New Guinea on the western half of the island, which was a colonial Dutch possession.
All the fighting in 1942, which was Japan’s initial assault in Papua New Guinea, took place on Australian soil in Papua, on the Kokoda Track, Milne Bay, Buna, Gona, and Sanananda. New Guinea came later.
All of that fighting was, from the Japanese side, aimed at little more than the short term tactical reinforcement and protection of Rabaul and support of Operation FS. There wasn’t any grand plan about invading Australia, let alone creating the impression that Australia was about to be invaded.
At best, Japan’s Papuan campaign was part of the Operation FS compromise between the IJA and IJN to allow the IJN to move eastwards to Fiji and the Solomons after the IJA had comprehensively rejected any attempt to invade Australia.
Operation FS and the IJN’s ambitious expansion pushed Japan into Guadalcanal, which was the campaign which finished Japan’s Pacific expansion and its attempts to implement Operation FS to isolate Australia from America, while Japan’s failure in Papua under Australian and American defence and then attack started the roll up of Japan back to its homeland.
Japan’s whole problem in the SWPA land area was that it never had a strategy, at grand strategy or military strategy levels, to explain why it went past the oil fields in the NEI which were the most important aim of its war, and why it failed to consolidate its forces to protect those gains instead of drifting further east and eventually bogging itself in a casualty and logistical killing field in Papua New Guinea from the point of its greatest early triumphs to its defeat, which is the only place it did that.
Japan’s land war southwards and eastwards after conquering the NEI was largely the consequence of IJN ambition and hubris rather than any coherent national or military strategy.
It demonstrates the wisdom of those pain in the arse MBA syndicate papers about a business usually ending up in deep shit if it doesn’t’ know exactly where it’s going, and plan properly to get there.
Or just the old saying: Don’t throw good money after bad.
Nick, maybe you were thinking of the IJN trying to draw the USN into the ‘decisive battle’ at Midway?
This was linked to the Battle of the Coral Sea and Operation MO (invasion of Port Moresby in Papua) through the Doolittle Raid. The relationship between these geographically distant and seemingly unconnected events is explained here. http://www.users.bigpond.com/pacificwar/CoralSea/CoralOverview.html
By all accounts, in February 1942, Yamamoto, proposed an immediate invasion of Australia. He had just implemented his bombing raids on Darwin in the Northern Territory. He pleaded with the Japanese General Staff, to land two Japanese Army Divisions on the northern coastline of Australia which was very poorly defended. They were to follow the north-south railway line to Adelaide, thus dividing Australia into two fronts. Once Adelaide had been taken, a second force would land on the south east coast of Australia and drive northwards to Sydney and southwards to Melbourne.
General Yamashita agreed with Yamamoto’s Invasion Plan and even volunteered to lead the invasion. However, the plan was opposed by Japanese Prime Minister, General Tojo, as he believed that there were no contingency plans considered for Yamamoto’s Invasion Plan.
Emperor Hirohito decided to postpone the Invasion Plan until Japanese forces had taken Burma and joined forces with the rebel Indian Nationalists. The outcomes of the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway ensured the Invasion Plan for Australia was never revisited.
Perhaps Yamamoto was on the right track to invade, although the Japanese might have been stretched, Australia at the time had their best divisions overseas and the Navy and Air force were pretty threadbare, the Japanese were on a roll against very limited opposition.
The best chance of an Japanese invasion of Australia would not have been through a Perth or Darwin axis. These points could be essentially neutralized by minor attacks.
The focus of invasion would have been the south-eastern boomerang. What would have happened if Japan had won the battles for Papua and the Solomon islands? In the event of a delayed response from the United States the Japanese would probably have attempted to invade Australia. This would have been only possible if they were able to withdraw troops from China and find sufficient shipping to land the troops on the east coast. A successful lodgment would have extended their supply lines further and only in the event of a rapid rout of Australian forces could the invasion have been sustained.
Or at least concentrated on taking Port Moresby, Fiji, the New Hebrides, Samoa and the Solomons to isolate Australia instead of moving Westward into Burma and the Indian ocean.
My understanding is different.
I don’t recall Yamamoto being an advocate for invading Australia. My recollection is that at the most senior levels it came from the Chief of Navy General Staff, Admiral Nagano while Yamamoto was pursuing other aims. Ultimately Yamamoto was still pursuing the decisive battle aim leading to Midway but also taking Ceylon from the British to keep pressure on the main Allies. He had discounted Australia as a target of strategic significance.
As I understand Yamamoto’s thinking at the time, his main interest in Australia would have been in using any thrust at it to lure the USN into the decisive battle for control of the Pacific. Although Nagano was nominally responsible for national naval strategy at imperial high command level, Yamamoto as Commander in Chief Combined Fleet had become perhaps more influential after Pearl Harbor and carried more sway in some respects. So the question about invading or raiding Australia reflected disputes and power struggles both between the IJA and the IJN and within the IJN.
I don’t know why General Yamashita would be significant in the discussions, or why his volunteering to lead the raid would matter. He was in Singapore and fully occupied consolidating his victory and occupation there after the surrender on 15 February 1942 and until Imperial General Headquarters rejected the IJN’s Australian invasion proposal on 4 March 1942. Yamahsita was not in great favour with some higher authorities, notably Tojo, as shown by the subsequent treatment accorded the ‘Tiger of Malaya’ by being posted to the boondocks in Manchuria in mid 1942. I can’t see him being consulted as part of the high strategy conferences occurring in Tokyo, some of the most important of which actually occurred between officers of lower rank, as often happened with Japanese planning.
The Australian invasion / raid was an ill considered notion fuelled by Japan’s victories and the belief that it was virtually invincible. Nothing unusual about that. The same hubris got Hitler into the USSR.
The Darwin raids weren’t an attack on Australia per se but a strike to miniminse responses from Australia to Japan’s coming invasions of Java and Timor.
There were various proposals for landing in mainland Oz, the main ones being a three division occupation of northern Australia, along the usual Japanese lines of taking something and then having to take something further away to protect it until they overstretched themselves, and the raid down central Australia. I haven’t heard before of a force landing between Melbourne and Sydney to support the Adelaide conquest and moving towards both capitals at once. The Japanese didn’t have the shipping or the troops to do it, and if they tried it they’d just end up with Milne Bay on a major scale. Although, with a bit of luck, they might have got geographically confused and obliterated Canberra before we got rid of them, and done the nation a lasting favour. 
A one or two division raid would have been a long way short of what was needed for an invasion, which has been discussed here http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4574
The hare brained Adelaide raid idea was essentially to land in Darwin and plunge down to Adelaide, sweeping almost nothing before the forces advancing through the middle of nowhere, and hope it rattled Australia into surrender while the primary south east corner and the naval base at Fremantle were well out of range and risk. If only the Japanese knew how little the rest of Australia values Adelaide. (This is probably the point at which you embarrass me by telling me that you live in the City of Churches. 
)
In addition to the points I made in the forum link, Japan also had the problem of transporting and supplying its troops along the 1,000 kilometres or so between the end of the railway from Darwin at Bidum and the start of the railway to Adelaide at Alice Springs. What a beautiful killing ground for air attacks. As would be troops crammed on trains on the only railways going down the middle of Australia. Assuming Australia was generous enough to leave any tracks or locomotives or rolling stock for the Japanese.
Building on the point I made in the link about Japanese rations, it was a problem even for Australians running up and down the track as mentioned here about the army supply farms. http://www.anzacday.org.au/history/ww2/bfa/dusty_track.html
The IJA showed rather more sense in military and strategic terms than the IJN in rejecting the invasion / raid ideas, but the event illustrates again that Japan had a serious problem the Allies didn’t by having, effectively, two armed forces which operated independently of each other when it suited them and without a unifying high command. Perhaps the best illustration of how far apart they were is that the IJA wasn’t informed immediately about what a disaster Midway was. Imagine a similar approach by the Americans to Pearl Harbor.
I don’t have the book, but IIRC there’s a description in John Toland’s The Rising Sun (no relation :D) of the intense conflict in Tokyo in February - march 1942 between the IJA and IJN over invading Australia, which involved officers nearly coming to blows and threats of resignation.
And your historical point is? 
No worries there, lovely city, but not my domicile.
Ive always thought, thank god the army won the barny and not the Navy, although I suppose Tojo would have the final say.
H. P. Frei’s book ‘‘Japan’s southward advance and Australia from the Sixteenth Century to World War II’’ gives an interesting analysis.
Frei examined Japanese government archives and found no evidence of a strategic plan or intention to invade or hold any part of Australia before Japan’s spectacular military successes of 1941-42.
But goes on to say…
Australia was included in Japan’s geopolitical considerations. There was a planned advance into Portuguese Timor in 1936 through the operations of the Nanko or NKKK, which co-operated closely with the Navy. The plan was to meet the wishes of the local governments and to guide the people to pro-Japanese attitudes through propaganda. Australia, therefore, had to be neutralised. There was concern that Broome offered safety to the Dutch, and Darwin to the US Pacific Fleet. Japan did not want Australia to become a strategic springboard for a counter-offensive by the United States. Thus early in 1942, Australia was seen as a menace to Japanese occupied territory in the “inner nan’y*” [or ‘‘Southern Expansion,’’ formally declared by Japan in 1935.] This led the Navy to push for total control of Australia, but the Army felt that ten divisions would be needed to hold the territory. Army-Navy conferences in February 1942 argued about invasion, but could only agree on the occupation of New Guinea and that the destruction of Darwin was important for Timor and Java.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Interpreting+"Japanese+activities"+in+Australia,+1888-1945-a0120109445
Agreed.
There is no evidence of any approved operational plan to invade Australia at any time.
However, Japan’s long term strategic aim was to include Australia in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, while the acquisition of the GEACPS was the overall strategic purpose of the war.
Japanese Imperial Policy
Policy Adopted at Imperial Conference, 2 July 1941
An Outline of the Policy of the Imperial Government in View of Present Developments
(Decision reached at the Conference held in the Imperial Presence on July 2)
I. PolicyThe Imperial Government is determined to follow a policy which will result in the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and world peace, no matter what international developments take place.
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Dip/IR-410702.html
There’s some discussion of the GEACPS here at #34 and# 36
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4617&page=3
As with Japan’s attitude to Australia as discussed by Frei, the extent of the outer limits of the GEACPS shifted, but by about March 1942 Japan’s Total War Institute was talking about Australia as a definite part of it. My recollection is that the Imperial Conference decision that approved Operation FS mentioned something to the effect that the question of Australia and India would be left to a later date. I can’t lay my hands on the sources for either of those statements, but the first comes from a paper prepared by the TWI around that time and the second from the text of Imperial Conference - or maybe the Liaison conference which effectively resolved the issues to be put before the Emperor.
It’s also instructive that Tojo was calling for Australia’s surrender during 1942 and threatening dire consequences if we didn’t surrender.
So, while no immediate military threat of invasion ever existed, Japan still wanted to conquer us, which inevitably meant an invasion or occupation after surrender.
Interesting and knowledgable thread fellows. I enjoy your points of view. Thankfully it will continue to not attract arguementative nationists who can’t stand to give credit to any place but their native lands.
He largely did in the early stages of the war.
It should be remembered that the IJA in China and elsewhere wasn’t purely a salaried officer corps just doing good works for the Emperor.
More like some South American or Asian governments (and especially China, but that’s heresy for a communist nation, especially since it went semi-capitalist and being in a senior army position didn’t advance one’s position and finances in the past ten or fifteen years) since WWII where army progression could equal social and financial progression.
What gets me is that the Japanese rampage through the Pacific was done with only eleven of their 54 or so divisions [although with strong air and naval forces]
Must have been scary times in Aus, with Singapore falling in Feb, and Darwin being bombed shortly after, [the first of over 60 raids on Darwin and almost 100 in total on Australian soil] Japanese midget submarines entering Sydney Harbour, and talk of a so called ‘‘Brisbane line’’
Have you [or anyone] read the papers of Dr Peter Stanley [principal historian at the Australian War Memorial for 20 years] called “He’s (not) coming South - the invasion that wasn’t”.
He seems to have opened a can of worms, with his opponents taking him to task on…
His book’’ Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942’’ is due to be published by Penguin in July 2008. Might be worth a read.
Not only have I read them, I’ve dissected them in detail. It’d take far too long to go into here, because just about every paragraph can be pulled apart.
Stanley’s papers are superficial and illogical, and don’t inspire confidence in the standard of historical analysis about Australia in the Pacific War coming from the AWM if those papers are representative of it, which I don’t think they are as the Australia Japan Research Project shows.
Cutting through all the crap, and allowing that it’s a long time since I’ve read either paper, Stanley’s very weak premise is that because Curtin had a Magic intercept (?May 1942?) and MacArthur’s assurance on arrival in Australia in March 1942 that Japan wasn’t going to invade Australia (cf. MacArthur’s private fear at the same time that Japan would invade Australia: William Manchester, American Caesar, Hutchison, Melbourne, 1978, p. 251) while everything else it was doing demonstrated that it was going to invade while demanding our surrender, then Curtin shouldn’t have misled the Australian people during 1942 into thinking that Japan intended to invade; that victory on Kokoda didn’t save Australia from anything; and that the war in the Pacific was won on the steppes of Europe, which must be a consolation for all those relatives of Allied service people who died fighting in the Pacific. This is all somehow linked, in Stanley’s confused mind anyway, to his post-war debunking of irrelvant myths about alleged and extremely trivial Japanese landings in Australia which show that Curtin (along with all the other Australian people who had worked out without any help from Curtin that Japan’s actions showed it intended to invade) was wrong during the war in thinking there was any risk of invasion.
Basing just about everything on the Magic decrypt, as Stanley does, shows that the possibility of false Japanese signals for strategic or tactical purposes is beyond Dr Stanley’s limited grasp of the subject and relevant considerations. It also shows that he wasn’t aware, or chose to ignore, the fact that the Allies hadn’t broken all Japanese codes and didn’t have knowledge of what might be passing under other codes. For all Curtin knew, the Magic intercept was one of countless false messages to deceive the enemy. Curtin didn’t have Stanley’s luxury sixty five odd years of knowledge and hindsight. Curtin just had the Japanese advancing remorselessly towards Australia while Tojo was demanding our surrender. Which, according to Stanley, should have forced Curtin on the basis of the Magic decrypt (and Stanley’s subsequently disproved myths of Japanese landings in Australia which had no bearing on Curtin’s thinking at the time) to the obvious logical conclusion that Japan had no intention of invading Australia. FFS!
Stanley’s total misconception and large ignorance of the GEACPS and Japan’s war aims affecting Australia are masked by a plethora of irrelevant trivia about minor events and myths which don’t bear on the larger, and real, picture.
If you want to see how deficient Stanley’s knowledge is and how he distorts the historical record, (I’m taking the references in this post from my dissection notes) just look at his statement on p. 8 of He’s Not Coming South that Curtin confirmed in an off the record briefing in March 1944 that there wouldn’t be any more risk to the eastern side of Australia but he was still raising the possibility of Japanese attacks on Darwin. Stanley presents this as evidence of some sort of deception or delusion by Curtin about the Japanese threat. His source for this comment is Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall, Backroom Briefings: John Curtin’s War, Canberra, 1997. Stanley ignores the following outline in that source of the developing situation which indicated that the Japanese might attack the major naval base at Fremantle. The threat was taken sufficiently seriously by the Chiefs of Staff, who made their own assessment and communicated it to Curtin rather than vice versa, to make major dispositions of naval and air craft to meet the threat. See the Official History, Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 3 – Air., Volume II, Air War Against Japan, 1943-1945 (1968 reprint) pp 134 -9. http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/histories/27/chapters/08.pdf
I encountered the site in your link a couple of years ago but haven’t followed it since. I don’t think the author is wrong in challenging Stanley’s silly papers and castigating the AWM for its sponsorship of sloppy scholarship.
So far as Stanley himself is concerned, a postgraduate military history student told me last year that he is extraordinarily approachable and helpful.
My impression of his papers is that he put something together for the first paper without having the detailed grasp of his subject that it required, as a busy public historian with wide knowledge but a lack of deep knowledge might do, and then, wounded by adverse responses, tried to justify his position but merely reinforced failure with the second paper.
Not if it’s as silly as his two vacuous papers.
Here it is, but it was a January rather than March 1942 paper.
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore De Bary, Donald Keene, Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press), Volume II, 1958, pp. 294-298.
THE WAR GOAL
Japan’s war planners envisioned a long struggle, in several stages, to achieve their new Asia. The new Asia was to be known as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Southern region would supply raw materials and surplus food, while Manchuria and North China provided the materials and basis for a heavy industry complex. The rest of Asia would become a vast market, defended and integrated by Japanese planning, tools, skills, and arms.
DRAFT OF BASIC PLAN FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE
[From Draft of Basic Plan, IMTFE, International Prosecution Section, Document 2402B, Exhibit 1336]
Part I. Outline of Construction
This document, produced as a secret planning paper by the Total War Research Institute, a body responsible to army and cabinet, in January of 1942, reveals the nature of long-range planning during the early war years before defeats began to take their toll of optimism and confidence.
The Plan. The Japanese empire is a manifestation of morality and its special characteristic is the propagation of the Imperial Way. It strives but for the achievement of Hakko Ichiu, the spirit of its founding… It is necessary to foster the increased power of the empire, to cause East Asia to return to its original form of independence and co-prosperity by shaking off the yoke of Europe and America, and to let its countries and peoples develop their respective abilities in peaceful cooperation and secure livelihood.
The Form of East Asiatic Independence and Co-Prosperity. The states, their citizens, and resources, comprised in those areas pertaining to the Pacific, Central Asia, and the Indian Oceans formed into one general union are to be established as an autonomous zone of peaceful living and common prosperity on behalf of the peoples of the nations of East Asia. The area including Japan, Manchuria, North China, lower Yangtze River, and the Russian Maritime Province, forms the nucleus of the East Asiatic Union. The Japanese empire possesses a duty as the leader of the East Asiatic Union.
The above purpose presupposes the inevitable emancipation or independence of Eastern Siberia, China, Indo-China, the South Seas, Australia, and India.
Regional Division in the East Asiatic Union and the National Defense Sphere for the Japanese Empire. In the Union of East Asia, the Japanese empire is at once the stabilizing power and the leading influence. To enable the empire actually to become the central influence in East Asia, the first necessity is the consolidation of the inner belt of East Asia; and the East Asiatic Sphere shall be divided as follows for this purpose:
The Inner Sphere- the vital sphere for the empire-includes Japan, Manchuria, North China, the lower Yangtze Area and the Russian Maritime area.
The Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere- the smaller self-supplying sphere of East Asia-includes the inner sphere plus Eastern Siberia, China, Indo-China, and the South Sea.
The Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere- the larger self-supplying sphere of East Asia-includes the smaller co-prosperity sphere, plus Australia, India, and island groups in the Pacific…
For the present, the smaller co-prosperity sphere shall be the zone in which the construction of East Asia and the stabilization of national defense are to be aimed at. After their completion there shall be a gradual expansion toward the construction of the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Outline of East Asiatic Administration. It is intended that the unification of Japan, Manchoukuo, and China in neighborly friendship be realized by the settlement of the Sino-Japanese problems through the crushing of hostile influences in the Chinese interior, and through the construction of a new China in tune with the rapid construction of the Inner Sphere. Aggressive American and British influences in East Asia shall be driven out of the area of Indo-China and the South Seas, and this area shall be brought into our defense sphere. The war with Britain and America shall be prosecuted for that purpose.
The Russian aggressive influence in East Asia will be driven out. Eastern Siberia shall be cut off from the Soviet regime and included in our defense sphere. For this purpose, a war with the Soviets is expected. It is considered possible that this Northern problem may break out before the general settlement of the present Sino-Japanese and the Southern problems if the situation renders this unavoidable. Next the independence of Australia, India, etc. shall gradually be brought about. For this purpose, a recurrence of war with Britain and her allies is expected. The construction of a Greater Mongolian State is expected during the above phase. The construction of the Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere is expected to require at least twenty years from the present time.
The Building of the National Strength. Since the Japanese empire is the center and pioneer of Oriental moral and cultural reconstruction, the officials and people of this country must return to the spirit of the Orient and acquire a thorough understanding of the spirit of the national moral character.
In the economic construction of the country, Japanese and Manchurian national power shall first be consolidated, then the unification of Japan, Manchoukuo and China, shall be effected… Thus a central industry will be reconstructed in East Asia, and the necessary relations established with the Southern Seas.
The standard for the construction of the national power and its military force, so as to meet the various situations that might affect the stages of East Asiatic administration and the national defense sphere, shall be so set as to be capable of driving off any British, American, Soviet or Chinese counter-influences in the future…
CHAPTER 3. POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION
Basic Plan. The realization of the great ideal of constructing Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity requires not only the complete prosecution of the current Greater East Asia War but also presupposes another great war in the future. Therefore, the following two points must be made the primary starting points for the political construction of East Asia during the course of the next twenty years: 1) Preparation for war with the other spheres of the world; and 2) Unification and construction of the East Asia Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere.
The following are the basic principles for the political construction of East Asia, when the above two points are taken into consideration:
a. The politically dominant influence of European and American countries in the Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere shall be gradually driven out and the area shall enjoy its liberation from the shackles hitherto forced upon it.
b. The desires of the peoples in the sphere for their independence shall be respected and endeavors shall be made for their fulfillment, but proper and suitable forms of government shall be decided for them in consideration of military and economic requirements and of the historical, political and cultural elements peculiar to each area.
It must also be noted that the independence of various peoples of East Asia should be based upon the idea of constructing East Asia as “independent countries existing within the New Order of East Asia” and that this conception differs from an independence based on the idea of liberalism and national self-determination.
c. During the course of construction, military unification is deemed particularly important, and the military zones and key points necessary for defense shall be directly or indirectly under the control of our country.
d. The peoples of the sphere shall obtain their proper positions, the unity of the people’s minds shall be effected and the unification of the sphere shall be realized with the empire as its center…
Continued
CHAPTER 4. THOUGHT AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
General Aim in Thought. The ultimate aim in thought construction in East Asia is to make East Asiatic people revere the imperial influence by propagating the Imperial Way based on the spirit of construction, and to establish the belief that uniting solely under this influence is the one and only way to eternal growth and development in East Asia.
And during the next twenty years (the period during which the above ideal is to be reached) it is necessary to make the nations and peoples of East Asia realize the historical significance of the establishment of the New Order in East Asia, and in the common consciousness of East Asiatic unity, to liberate East Asia from the shackles of Europe and America and to establish the common conviction of constructing a New Order based on East Asiatic morality.
Occidental individualism and materialism shall be rejected and a moral world view, the basic principle of whose morality shall be the Imperial Way, shall be established. The ultimate object to be achieved is not exploitation but co-prosperity and mutual help, not competitive conflict but mutual assistance and mild peace, not a formal view of equality but a view of order based on righteous classification, not an idea of rights but an idea of service, and not several world views but one unified world view.
General Aim in Culture. The essence of the traditional culture of the Orient shall be developed and manifested. And, casting off the negative and conservative cultural characteristics of the continents (India and China) on the one hand, and taking in the good points of Western culture on the other, an Oriental culture and morality, on a grand scale and subtly refined, shall be created.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/eas/restricted/geacps.htm
It’s obvious what Japan had planned for Australia in those thoughts when we reconcile them with its actions elsewhere.
Here it is.
GENERAL OUTLINE OF POLICY OF FUTURE WAR GUIDANCE,
ADOPTED BY LIAISON CONFERENCE 7 MARCH 1942 AND
REPORT OF PRIME MINISTER AND CHIEFS OF STAFF TO EMPEROR
13 MARCH 1942In order to bring BRITAIN to submission and to demoralize the UNITED STATES, positive measures shall be taken by seizing opportunities to expand our acquired war gains, and by building a political and military structure capable of withstanding a protracted war.
By holding the occupied areas and major communication lines, and by expediting the development and utilization of key resources for national defense; efforts shall be made to establish a self-sufficient structure, and to increase the nation’s war potential.
More positive and definite measures of war guidance shall be adopted by taking the following situations into consideration: Our national power, the progress of operations, the German-Soviet war situation, the relations between the UNITED STATES and the SOVIET UNION, and the trend in CHUNGKING.
Our policy toward the SOVIET UNION shall be based on the “Plan for Expediting the Termination of the War against the UNITED STATES, BRITAIN, the NETHERLANDS, and CHIANG Kai-shek,” adopted on 5 Nov 4a; and the “Measures to be Immediately Effected in Line with the Development of the Situation,” adopted on 10 Jan 42. However, under the present circumstances, no efforts shall be made to mediate a peace between GERMANY and the SOVIET UNION.
Our policy toward CHUNGKING shall be based on the “Matters Concerning Measures to be taken toward CHUNGKING, in Line with the Development of the Situation,” adopted on 24 Dec 41.
Cooperation with GERMANY and ITALY shall be based on the “Plan for Expediting the Termination of the War against the UNITED STATES, BRITAIN, the NETHERLANDS and CHIANG Kai-shek,” adopted on Nov 41.
Report to the Throne
We humbly report to Your Majesty on behalf of the Imperial General Headquarters and the Government.At this point, when our initial operations are about to come to a favorable end by dint of the august virtue of Your Majesty, the Imperial General Headquarters and the Government have, after a careful appraisal, since the latter part of February, of our acquired war gains and their effect, the changes in the world situation, and the present war potentialities of our Empire, agreed on the “General Outline on Future War Guidance.” We will now give our explanations.
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Regarding the general outline on war guidance to be effected hereafter in the war against the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN:
Various measures must be planned and executed in anticipation of a protracted war. It will not only be most difficult to defeat the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN in a short period, but, the war cannot be brought to an end through compromise.It is essential to further expand the political and military advantages achieved through glorious victories since the opening of hostilities, by utilizing the present war situation to establish a political and strategic structure capable of withstanding a protracted war. We must take every possible step, within the limits of our national power, to force the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN to remain on the defensive. Any definite measure of vital significance to be effected in this connection will be given thorough study, and will be presented to Your Majesty for approval each time.
Regarding the need for building national power and fighting power for the successful prosecution of a protracted war.
We deem it highly essential to constantly maintain resilience in our national defense, and build up the nation’s war potential so that we will be capable of taking the steps necessary to cope with the progress of situation.If a nation should lose its resilience in national defense while prosecuting a war, and become unable to rally from an enemy blow; the result would be short of her desired goal, no matter what victory she might achieve in the process. This is amply proved in the precious lessons learned from the annals of war.
Consequently, in our Empire’s war guidance policy, we have especially emphasized that, while taking steps to bring the enemy to submission, we must fully build up the nation’s war potential to cope with a protracted war.
Regarding the adoption of a new and more positive measure of war guidance. We have made it clear that the question of whether to adopt new and more positive measures for war guidance for the attainment of the objective of the Greater East Asia War should be decided after careful study, not only of the war gains acquired so far, but other factors of extensive and profound significance; such as, the enemy’s national power and our’s, especially the increase in the fighting power on both sides; the progress of our operations, our relations with the SOVIET UNION and CHINA, the German-Soviet war, and various other factors.
By “more positive measures of war guidance” we mean such measures as the invasion of INDIA and AUSTRALIA.
Regarding the measures to be immediately taken toward the SOVIET UNION.
We have made it clear that the measures to be taken toward the SOVIET UNION will be based on the established policy which was adopted earlier at a liaison conference. The essentials of that policy are as follows:Utmost efforts shall be made to prevent the expansion of hostilities.
JAPAN shall endeavor to the utmost to prevent war with the SOVIET UNION while operations are being conducted in the Southern Area.
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While maintaining peace between JAPAN and the SOVIET UNION, efforts shall be made to prevent the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN from strengthening their cooperation with the SOVIET UNION, and to alienate the latter from the former, if possible. However, this does not imply that our military preparations against the SOVIET UNION will be neglected, and it is our belief that all possible operations preparations should be made to achieve a quick and decisive victory in case of war.
With regard to the peace between GERMANY and the SOVIET UNION, not only does a compromise seem utterly hopeless, under the present circumstances, but we fear that our mediatory efforts at this point would be detrimental to Japanese-German relations, and would also mean risking a complication in Japanese-Soviet relations. Consequently, we have made it clear that we have no intention of taking any positive steps toward mediation.Regarding the measures to be immediately taken toward Chungking: We have made it clear that measures toward Chungking will be based on the policy which was adopted at the earlier conference that, “taking advantage of the restlessness in the Chungking Regime which was caused by our application of strong pressure on a vulnerable spot of theirs; our measures toward Chungking shall be shifted, at a proper time, from intelligence activities to activities to bring the regime to submission. The time and method therefore shall be decided at a liaison conference.”
Meanwhile, the campaign in BURMA is progressing faster than originally expected, and RANGOON is already in our hands. We believe that our progress in BURMA is already having serious effects on the Chungking Regime, but since we greatly fear that any attempt to bring the Chungking Regime to submission, at too early a stage, would produce an adverse result, our intention is to postpone it to a date that will be decided later.Regarding measures to be taken toward GERMANY and ITALY.
Since we keenly realized that strengthening cooperation with GERMANY and ITALY will become increasingly necessary to achieve our war aims, we have decided that we must adhere closely to the established policy regarding cooperation with GERMANY and ITALY.We hereby respectfully report to Your Majesty.
13 Mar 42
Prime Minister TOJO Hideki
Chief of the Naval General Staff NAGANO Osami
Chief of the Army General Staff SUGIYAMA Gen
… http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Strategy/Strategy-B.html
Good stuff RS.
A ‘what if’… and I know it’s easy talking in hindsight.
‘‘What if’’ Japan, as part of the Axis, didn’t attack Pearl Harbour, and instead just attacked the European colonial possessions while doing their best to placate the U.S. would America declare war?
The attack against Hawaii was probably the worst possible thing that Japan could have done.
But by making that undeclared attack on PH, it stirred up a hornets nest, and made sure the Americans would never stop until Japan was crushed, no matter what the cost.
Given the isolationist temperament of the U. S. Congress at the time, and the polls showing that 74% of Americans didn’t want to be involved in the war in Europe [even when Britain was the last Democracy fighting the Nazi’s and when American warships were being sunk and Americans killed] and 64% didn’t want war with Japan, is it questionable, even doubtful, that that the United States would have responded directly to the seizure of those foreign Colonial possessions by declaring war?
Roosevelt would probably conjure an entry into the war against Japan somehow, [and someone said without going as far as the conspiracy theories of Theobald or Toland or the many others around today about Roosevelt’s implication in the PH attack, there was more then one way to skin a cat] but it would take some pretty devious footwork.
Depends on whether Japan attacked the Philippines and America’s reaction to any attack there.
Up till about 1939-40, American war planning was based on letting the Philippines fall, if it came to that. That changed in the year or two before the war.
My inclination is that the American people wouldn’t respond too well to American troops and ships being attacked in the Philippines, so that an attack there could have led to war anyway.
Which was Japan’s problem. If America responded to an attack on the Philippines it was going to come from the fleet based at Hawaii, so Japan needed to neutralise that risk as part of its overall strategy.
If it didn’t take the Philippines, there would, or at least could, be allied air and naval bases astride its LOC from Malaya and the NEI, thus threatening its military and commercial LOC and the exploitation of its conquests.
Once Japan was going to take Malaya and the NEI, it was virtually forced to take the Philippines, which then virtually forced it to attack Pearl.
I think some other issues would have affected American military and perhaps political thinking even if Japan didn’t attack America anywhere. Notably, access to NEI oil, which overcame the Allied oil embargoes on Japan and gave it about a third of the world’s oil supply, with the potential to fight on forever and exclude Westerners from all resources and trade in the GEACPS.
Yep, I meant the U.S. or U.S. bases.
Roosevelt would probably conjure an declaration of war against Japan somehow, but I don’t think it would be easy, plus I wonder how much commitment would there be, if Americans thought they were fighting to preserve European colonialism.
Not much sympathy there, at popular or government levels, but governments are more pragmatic than the people and will always do deals with the devil if it suits them.
I always liked Admiral King’s hostility to the Limeys and his opposition to helping them to regain their colonies. In a way, he was ahead of the effects of WWII which destroyed European colonialism.
But what about Americans attitudes to preserving American colonialism in the Philippines?
Or China, which is where much of WWII started with the Western and certainly American contest for access to it?
I don’t know that it mattered that much to the average American at the time, but it mattered to the American government, as did access to China which was being strangled by Japan.