Hardly. The US was already in an undeclared shooting war with Germany in the Atlantic, and it did not serve Roosevelt’s purposes at the time to use either the torpedoing of the Kearny or the Salinas, or the sinking of the Reuben James by U-boats as an excuse to ask for a declaration of war against Germany.
But, the situation in the Pacific was different and Roosevelt could easily have been forced, in case of a Japanese attack on the Dutch East Indies to provoke some sort of incident which would lead to a formal declaration of war by the US. That such an incident was on his mind is clearly demonstrated by the Lanikai incident. The Lanikai was a US Navy auxiliary patrol vessel in the Philippines that Roosevelt, in late November, 1941, ordered to sail into the path of suspected Japanese naval forces and provoke it’s sinking. Roosevelt intended to use this incident as an excuse to declare war.
You and I disagree on this point. My take on it is rather simple: the Japanese were stupid and didn’t understand how our government works. They assumed that the Americans would react in the same way that they would react. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a huge mistake, an act of national suicide. If they had not done it, the US would not have gone to war to protect the British and Dutch possessions. I understand that you dispute this. I believe you are wrong, but you believe what you believe.
Applying this to other events, such as Western support for or attacks on various countries (notably Vietnam, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan), the same could be said of the West.
The West assumes, because of its current state of development of social, political, economic, cultural and religious values that everyone else aspires to the same things.
Which, of course, they don’t. Because they are at different stages of development and derive that development from different sources of the values applicable to their societies.
So we are doomed to failure in places where our own arrogance about the superiority of our culture and systems is equivalent to that of the Japanese in WWII.
Many of the Japanese leaders were an acute example of that arrogance and stupidity before and during WWII but, for example, Bush II was just as arrogant and stupid (in the sense of not understanding the enemy, it people, their attitudes and circumstances, and the consequences of attacking them) in excursions into the Middle East.
I have every doubt that we would have gone to war to defend the Dutch East Indies. There was no obligation or treaty to do so and even if we had wanted to help, our Asiatic Fleet was feeble to the point of uselessness. I’m quite sure that Roosevelt would have wanted to assist, but that’s not the sane thing as being able to assist either militarily or legally.
Stupidity is an equal opporunity employer. It is trans-national and changes over time, witness Bush 2’s war against an enemy that had not attacked us, or a woefully uninformed war against the Viet Minh and NVA which was really a civil war and which was never a threat against us.
C’mon, Rising Sun, the Dutch colonial army - the KNIL - was a complete paper tiger, utterly ill-equipped to resist a modern force. The only support the relatively few Dutch colonials had in Indonesia came from the Indoes - the mixed Dutch-Indonesians. These were good people. but few in number. The general population would have, and did, give up the Dutch for a cigarette or two, so while Queen Wilhelmina “denying” the Japanese access to Indonesia was true on paper, it wasn’t worth the electrons used to deliver the message over the shortwave. In the end, the Dutch were about as effective in defending Indonesia as the English were in repulsing the Japanese attack on Singapore. Of course, the British actually outnumbered the Japanese force that attacked them, which was not the case for the Dutch in Indonesia. The exception here were the Dutch submarines which were excellent, succored by the Royal Australian Navy, and which continued to plague the Japanese throughout the war.
This is a rather superficial view of the situation the Japanese, British, and Americans found themselves in just prior to the actual attack on the NEI.
True, both the US and British Empire forces in the immediate area were weak and there was no written treaty obligation for either country to come to the aid of the Dutch. However, there is absolutely no doubt that the US and Britain both would have viewed such an attack as a causus belli and would have declared war on Japan. Yes, it would have been difficult for Roosevelt to get enough votes in Congress for a declaration, but the US did have vital interests in the NEI and would have viewed a Japanese attack there as an indication that Japan was indeed joining the war in Europe; this would have been unacceptable to both Britain and the US.
In his book, “D-Days in The Pacific”, pages 5-6, Donald L. Miller states;
“America imported more goods from the Far East than any other place on earth. Three colonies alone – British Malaya, The Netherlands East Indies, and the Philippines – accounted for approximately one fifth of all American foreign purchases…In all, the area provided more than half of America’s needs for at least fifteen vital commodities, including chromium and manganese, metals essential in the steelmaking process. By 1940, key policymakers in the State Department were prepared to defend America’s freedom to trade for those resources, by war if necessary should they come in danger of falling under the control of the Japanese. Fascist Japan in possession of South Asia could cut off trade with the United States and Britain or dictate extortionate concessions to continue it. Secretary of The Navy Frank Knox put America’s interest in the region in the sternest possible language in his congressional confirmation hearings of 1940: ‘We should not allow Japan to take the Dutch Indies, a vital source of oil and rubber and tin…We must face frankly the fact that to deny the Dutch Indies to Japan may mean war.’”
It is a serious mistake to think that either Roosevelt, the American Congress or the American public had no interest in defending the NEI against Japan, or that Roosevelt wouldn’t have been able to get the votes for a declaration of war if Japan had limited it’s attack to the NEI. You may doubt such a scenario, but there is no historical support for such a conclusion.
Moreover, the Japanese Navy, after so much lobbying to get it’s Southern Strategy accepted as a national policy, refused, once the Southern Strategy was adopted, to participate, unless the plans included aspects that would clearly initiate a war with the US. This was because, only a war in which the US Navy was involved could justify the massive allocation of resources which the Japanese Navy was adamantly seeking. So the Japanese power elites were forced to approve unnecessary military strikes against US territories in order to get the Japanese Navy to agree to the overall plan. In essence, the Japanese could not have attacked just the NEI with any hope of success because the Japanese Navy would not have been on board with such a plan.
Superficial is assuming things that have no basis in fact. I never said that the US had no interests in the Netherlands East Indies. I said that the US would not have declared war on Japan based on a Japanese invasion. I am quite sure that President Roosevelt would have been inclined to do so but he was constrained at a number of levels.
You and I will have to disagree on this. You imply that it would have been self evident that the US would have gone to war absent an attack on the US. Really? We had vastly greater interests in Europe but I don’t recall Roosevelt declaring war on Germany as a result of the invasion of Holland, Belgium, France and the attack on the English. If what you say would be true in the Pacific, then it must also be true in Europe. Only it wasn’t. Faute de logique, mon vieux.
Superficial is assuming things that have no basis in fact. I never said that the US had no interests in the Netherlands East Indies. I said that the US would not have declared war on Japan based on a Japanese invasion. I am quite sure that President Roosevelt would have been inclined to do so but he was constrained at a number of levels.
You and I will have to disagree on this. You imply that it would have been self evident that the US would have gone to war absent an attack on the US. Really? We had vastly greater interests in Europe but I don’t recall Roosevelt declaring war on Germany as a result of the invasion of Holland, Belgium, France and the attack on the English. If what you say would be true in the Pacific, then it must also be true in Europe. Only it wasn’t. Faute de logique, mon vieux.
This illustrates one of the problems in trying, as Westerners, to understand Japan’s entry into and conduct of its war.
While we conventionally refer to ‘Japan’ and ‘the Japanese’ as if this represents the sort of unified national control of strategy and operations which, despite various political and inter-service and even intra-service rivalries, were typical of the English speaking Allies and the Soviets, the IJA and IJN were separate principalities not subject to overriding governmental control in the same way as the Allies mentioned.
The vigorous and at times bitter and almost violent February/March 1942 disputes between the IJA and IJN on the future conduct of the southern thrust exemplify how those two organisations determined from below what appeared from the outside to be national policy imposed from above.
I doubt that many, perhaps any, Western strategists understood this at the time, not least because Japan had been pretty much closed to the West from an intelligence viewpoint for some years before Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, I’m not sure that a clear understanding of it would have provided many opportunities for the Allies to improve significantly their operational or strategic positions as it seems there was little that the Allies could have done to exploit conflict between the IJA and IJN.
No, “superficial” is an adjective denoting an analysis or approach which is not in depth, or which merely touches the surface of the issue.
The fact is the US not only had vital trade and strategic interests in the NEI, the Roosevelt administration was determined, even at the cost of war with Japan, to protect those interests. Had Japan attacked the NEI, an ally of Britain, it would have been joining the European war on the side of the Axis. This alone wold have been enough to provoke the US into a war, as it was already in a shooting war in the Atlantic with Axis forces. Roosevelt would have been able to overcome the few remaining constraints against a declaration of war with Japan.
You argue that because the US did not immediately attack Germany when it went to war against Britain and France, the same reasoning could be applied to a Japanese attack against the NEI. This completely ignores the fact that the situation in Europe in 1939 was totally different from the situation in Southeast Asia in 1941. First of all, when Germany attacked Poland, initiating the European war, it appeared that Britain and France would be able to win the war on the European continent without military intervention by the US; it wasn’t until the late spring of 1940 that that view was proven false. By that time, it was also apparent that the US, with an Army just beginning to be rebuilt, was completely incapable of doing anything to prevent Germany’s victory on the Continent. Moreover, Britain, with the material help of the US, was able to achieve a military stalemate with Germany by 1941, and it was clear that neither the US nor Britain would be able to launch an offensive for at least another year; there was no point in declaring war on Germany until that was possible. As for trade interests in Europe, the US required no vital commodities from Europe and while there were strong trade connections with Europe, none were considered critical to the US economy.
The situation in Southeast Asia in 1941 was completely different. It was a given that no Allied forces in the Pacific would have any chance of standing against a Japanese attack without active US support. Furthermore, the US Navy was the only force that could provide that support and, though not completely prepared in 1941, the US Navy believed it could significantly slow or outright stop a Japanese attack against the NEI. And because the Roosevelt administration was determined to stop the Axis advance, Japan launching an offensive in the Pacific would have severe negative global consequences in the view of the Roosevelt administration.
Therefore, applying the logic of the European war to the scenario of Japan launching an attack solely against the NEI is faulty reasoning because it does not take into account the vast differences that pertained in the two different situations.
The British and Commonwealth forces in Malaya were capable of repelling a Japanese attack if (a) Percival wasn’t hamstrung by Churchill’s determination to keep British forces out of Thailand so that Britain wouldn’t be seen as the aggressor and thus risk losing US support for entry into the war against Japan and (b) if Churchill hadn’t denied Malaya the air resources his commanders advised were necessary and which were available if Churchill chose to divert them. Malaya wasn’t lost because of a lack of active American support but because of Churchill’s interference in its defence. Despite that, nowhere in Churchill’s or Percival’s planning was there any mention of or reliance upon America coming to Malaya’s aid when Japan attacked.
Australian forces reversed the Japanese advance on the Kokoda Track in 1942 and reduced their beachheads at Gona, Buna and Sanananda, albeit with American assistance at Buna.
Austalian forces were the first to defeat the Japanese when they repelled them at Milne Bay in 1942.
So far as the land war went in 1941-42, and for that matter in 1943 to early 1944 in the SWPA (which excludes Guadalcanal), Australia bore the brunt of the land fighting to hold and repel the Japanese in preparation for MacArthur’s thrusts with American forces.
American forces in the Philippines were defeated by the Japanese, so where was the active US support for them?
There wasn’t much in the way of ‘active US support’ in the Pacific, in the sense of ‘the Pacific’ including Nimitz’s and MacArthur’s areas of repsonsibility, in the critical early days from 7 December 1941 to mid-1942 to stem Japan’s land operations.
The fact is that the US didn’t give any ‘active support’ to stem the Japanese land advances to mid-1942 in Allied areas outside its own interests in the Philippines, because it didn’t have the forces to do it.
That belief turned out to be entirely wrong, starting with the sinking of the USS Houston less than three months into the war, shortly after HMAS Perth went down in the same action in the Sunda Strait as they attempted to defend the NEI while failing to stop a Japanese landing force.
LOL, Wizard, have it your way. We simply disagree and no amount of “suasion” on your part changes what I know from my in depth study of the subject matter.
Yes, but unfortunately neither of those conditions actually existed at any time either before or after the Japanese attack.
And if American support wasn’t desired in the defense of Malaya, why did Churchill try to get the US to station several capital naval units at Singapore prior to the war?
In any case, defending Malaya successfully is not the issue; it was the defense of the NEI in which it was a given that only the US could provide sufficient naval support to generate any hope of making it successful.
Of course they did and more glory to them, but all that ignores the fact that the US Navy had turned back the Japanese Navy at the Coral Sea in May, 1942, and stopped it dead in it’s tracks at Midway in June, 1942. Moreover, the Japanese were forcing the Australians off the Kokoda Trail until late August, 1942. By then the US had invaded Guadalcanal which meant the Japanese could no longer count on reinforcements for the Kokoda battles. Milne Bay, of course, wasn’t fought until late August, 1942, by which time the Japanese had focused on retaking Guadalcanal.
Moreover, such a pronouncement ignores that fact that the Australian troops relied heavily on American aircover and air transport to support their logistics. It’s really a stretch to imply that Australian troops, without strong American support could have stepped the Japanese short of the Australian continent.
But again, the issue isn’t New Guinea, but the defense of the NEI.
No doubt about it, the Australians did do much of the ground fighting in New Guinea. But without US naval and air support, it’s very questionable whether that fighting would have been successful, or whether it could even have taken place.
In the scenario in question this would not have taken place and would have been completely irrelevant.
The scenario pertinent to this thread is that Japan launches an attack only on the NEI; that means no Pearl Harbor, no attack on the Philippines and no attack on Malaya, so the US reaction probably would have been quite different in terms of deployment of forces. Regardless of the irrelevant points you have put forth, the US was the only country that had any military forces strong enough to challenge a Japanese attack on the NEI and that was a given. Neither Britain nor the Netherlands had any chance of stopping such an attack. Without Pearl Harbor, (and consequently the German declaration of war against the US) it’s likely that the US Navy would have sent stronger forces to challenge the Japanese Navy and very possibly could have stalemated the Japanese offensive.
Not really. It’s true the un-reinforced US Asiatic Fleet had little chance against the Japanese Navy, but without Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war, it’s entirely likely that far stronger naval forces would have engaged the Japanese Navy in the defense of the NEI. As Coral Sea and Midway proved, the US Navy was strong enough to defeat the Japanese Navy and that would have spelled the end of any Japanese offensive against the NEI.
Same reason behind most of his other interactions with the US - he was desperate to get the US to enter the war on the British side. Japan entering the war against Britain without a US entry to the war would have been catastrophic - so basing US ships in Malaya was desired as it pretty much guaranteed the Japanese couldn’t invade without starting a war with the US.
How could he have achieved this when he had no power before the war?
But a given by whom?
What contemporary papers or statements support this?
That is not disputed.
I was referring to the land war, which is where the Japanese land advances were stopped.
That is not disputed.
But the Australians pushed the Japanese back up the Kododa Track and defeated them by the end of 1942.
Nor could the Japanese reinforce Guadalcanal because of their Papuan operation.
Then it’s surprising that the Japanese put so much effort into the Milne Bay assault with the intention of flanking the Kokoda operation if they were really focused only on Guadalcanal.
Not on Kokoda, where air support for ground troops was virtually non-existent and where air logisitics were little better.
As for Milne Bay, the RAAF provided the air fighting power.
The fact is that Australian land forces stopped and repelled the Japanese short of the Australian continent in Papua in the second half of 1942, without one American combat soldier involved in that campaign.
That is not disputed but, as I said in my original post, I was referring to the land war which was what stopped the Japanese land advance.
Land advances are what matter in the end because it is the taking and holding of land which usually wins wars.
That is certainly a stretch. Every historian I have ever read who has commented on the issue has said that the British wanted the US Naval units deployed to Singapore as a deterrent to a Japanese attack on Malaya and Singapore.
But perhaps you have some sources that say otherwise? I certainly would be interested in reading such sources if you would be so good as to cite them.
