Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

Did they really think they could defeat The United States who had 5 times the GDP and infinitely more resources?

>implying Japan wasn't btfoing the US in most battles before the Jews invented the nuclear bomb

They hoped they could sufficiently reduce the US capability and will to oppose them in the Pacific that they could have time to create a new status quo, where the US would accept the territorial gains they made for their "East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere."

Yes

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor with the aim of knocking out the Pacific fleet long enough to take Hawaii and establish a ring of defensive, fortified islands that could give it the air and naval supremacy necessary to minimize the comparative advantages the USA enjoyed which you have just mentioned

and they could have done it too, up until Midway, at which point eventual victory was guaranteed, and it still took four years to beat them after that

The US was kinda in an isolationist mode at this period of time and Japan falsely interpreted this trend as weakness. They were assuming that the American public would not be willing to accept the sacrifices of war, and that if they inflicted enough casualties in a short period of time they would be able to force the American government to accept a peace agreement giving them control of Asia.

Japan also was operating under the assumption that Hitler was going to sweep over Europe and then send them reinforcements when he was finished.

Japan, due to the oil embargo and wanting to continue imperial ambitions, needed a new source of the black gold. However, the only realitic source they could acquire in their reach was the dutch colonies in what's now Indonesia. The Dutch themselves couldn't do much to stop them from overrunning the place, but America had promised to defend the integrity of the Dutch government-in-exile's possessions.

Japan knew that they couldn't win a long total war against the U.S., but were gambling that any war against the Americans would be relatively short, and ending with a peace with honor, perhaps returning some territorial concessions of things they seized in their initial rush. The attack on Pearl Harbor was to cripple the Pacific Fleet in the short term, since it takes about 2 years to construct more capital vessels, CV and BB and the like. Knock the U.S. down a bit, and even if they lay down a whole new fleet the next day, it'll be years before it's done, and by then they'll have seized half the pacific and fortify it, and were banking on the U.S. not wanting to spend all the blood and treasure necessary to dig them out.

That last bit was wrong, terribly so, but that was the fundamental logic behind the Pearl Harbor attack.

Are you retarded?

What? Even with the Pearl Harbour fleet completely destroyed, the American still would have had a significant fleet. Also the Americans had a far more robust economy that could easily rebuild any lost ships. By the end of the war, the US has built thousands of new ships.

>apan attacked Pearl Harbor with the aim of knocking out the Pacific fleet long enough to take Hawaii

There was no way the Japanese were going to seize the Hawaiian islands and they had no intention of doing so. The places that the Japanese were hoping to take and hold were the Phillipines, Guam, and Wake Island (among U.S. possessions that is, there were more things they wanted to grab).

>and they could have done it too, up until Midway, at which point eventual victory was guaranteed, and it still took four years to beat them after that

You might want to look up some dates before you say more stupid shit like this, user. Not to mention that Midway didn't alter the fundamental long-term logic of the Pacific War; the U.S. was still going to outbuild the Japanese, and eventual defeat was one of when, not if, assuming unlimited U.S. commitment. Midway marked the point that Japan could no longer sustain an offensive posture, but that was coming, soon or late.

The embargo of US in gas to Japan a few months before didn't leave a lot of choises for the Japanese Emperor.

>Did they really think they could defeat The United States

I don't think Imperial Japan ever really labored under the delusion that they could overcome the United States in the context of total war.

The objective was to hit hard, and hit fast - a doctrine that the attack on Pearl Harbor was consistent with. Japanese leadership believed that if they could score enough decisive victories in rapid succession, the American public would simply fold and sue for peace. There wasn't much reason to think the USA would go in for a pound, since they only had minor colonial holdings in the Pacific on the line. The conflict was never supposed to go on for more than 12 months, at the very longest.

The only real mistake the Japanese made was underestimating the resolve of the United States to prosecute a full-scale war with major casualties.

One of the choices was to stop raping and pillaging Indochina

>isolationist

Um. No. America has never been isolationist. Also the reason America was hesitant with Germany was because they didn't want to fight Europe's wars. With Pearl Harbor, America had justification to fight a defensive war as their own territory was at stake.

For what it is worth, Isoroku Yamamoto (architect of Pearl Harbor) understood all too well that US manufacturing was going to crush them in any prolonged war, and he consistently advised the Japanese against making war against the US. To the point where he was often accused of being an American sympathizer.

But the Japanese government didn't listen and Yamamoto was order to make war against the US. He knew that any prolonged war would result in American victory, so he planned his strategy around trying to win the war as quickly as possible in the short-term in hopes of forcing a peace agreement.

Ironically, a large part of that resolve was galvanized over the reaction to Pearl Harbor itself. The "Cowardly sneak attack" outrage made for a public that woudln't settle for anything less than a total Japanese surrender.

Sometimes I wonder how things would have been different if the Japanese just invaded the NEI and called Roosevelt's bluff. Even if he does declare war over it (Would he have been able to?), a war to defend the right of the Dutch to hold a colony is way different than getting those dirty gooks back for attacking us for no reason, or so the public opinion thought of it at the time.

And what was his terms exactly?

>they had no intention of doing so.

No, not in the final plan, but there was considerable debate up until the attack plan was definitively finalized about whether the attack was going to be followed up with a ground invasion, so to say they had "no intention" is disingenuous, the high command were split over it.

>Not to mention that Midway didn't alter the fundamental long-term logic of the Pacific War; the U.S. was still going to outbuild the Japanese

The US was always going to outbuild the Japanese, but until Midway, Japan could have -- for lack of a better phrase - outsunk the US. As you say, Midway means Japan is on the defensive, which means it's no longer in a position to strategically counter US production advantages, which it might have done and planned to do

We'll never know, because the US government never entertained the idea of a peace agreement at all.

The only choise bothe US and Japan that the had was imperialism. The gas embargo of the US on Japan was an act of imperialism and of course didn't leave a lot of choices to Japan. They didn't think they could win, it was 50-50 for them...but they could not stop the attack it could happend sooner or later for economic reasons.

>No, not in the final plan, but there was considerable debate up until the attack plan was definitively finalized about whether the attack was going to be followed up with a ground invasion

user, do you have any idea what a ground invasion would involve? Nevermind that you have over a division scattered around the Hawaiian islands even before the attack, but your closest Japanese base is in the fucking Marshalls. And Kwajalein, the most built up of them, is almost 4,000 km from Pearl Harbor. And you want to launch a ground invasion that would necessitate troop levels in at least the tens of thousands to have any hope of success, when your nearest resupply is over a 2 week round trip away at top steam for your merchant marine?

There was no serious plan to seize Hawaii, and it would have been far out of the Japanese reach to try something like that.

>The US was always going to outbuild the Japanese, but until Midway, Japan could have -- for lack of a better phrase - outsunk the US

So what?

>, Midway means Japan is on the defensive, which means it's no longer in a position to strategically counter US production advantages

It was never in a position to strategically counter U.S. production advantages. They had no means of actually striking U.S. shipyards or economic centers, of which the reverse was not true.

>which it might have done and planned to do

Wut? How the fuck were they going to get their vessels to places like Newport News or Philadelphia, where the big U.S. warships were being built?

You make a good point, I was probably a little hasty in declaring Japan's "only" mistake to be their failure to anticipate the USA's commitment. Their own actions at Pearl Harbor have a lot to do with creating that untenable position. They might have been correct in their assessment of American zeal (or lack thereof) had it not been for the way Pearl Harbor was ultimately perceived.

The overall point here is that the entire Japanese plan was based around very flawed assumptions about the American public's willingness to accept casualties, as well as a general over-confidence in the abilities of their own navy. They also expected Hitler to win in Europe. In conclusion, they were operating under multiple false premises.

>ground invasion

I didn't say it was feasible, I said it was wrong to to say they had no intention of it, because it's well documented that they did entertain it

>so what

All of my points have gone completely over your head. Regarding Midway, you claim it made no difference in the long run because the US' production capacity made victory at Midway irrelevant. I disagreed because, bluntly, Japan's loss at Midway meant its ability to sink American ships was irrevocably fucked, making eventual victory impossible. That is an eventuality only achieved through American victory at Midway, so to say it didn't alter the balance is also disingenuous

>it was never in a position to strategically counter US production advantages

No, but it might have been if they were able to gain air and naval supremacy in the Pacific

>I didn't say it was feasible, I said it was wrong to to say they had no intention of it, because it's well documented that they did entertain it

user, a pie in the sky dream and some studies about it is not a solid enough basis to call something an intention. By that logic, Hitler intended to drain the Mediterranean sea, the interwar Canadian government intended to invade America, and Britain intended to attack the USSR in 1940.

>All of my points have gone completely over your head. Regarding Midway, you claim it made no difference in the long run because the US' production capacity made victory at Midway irrelevant. I disagreed because, bluntly, Japan's loss at Midway meant its ability to sink American ships was irrevocably fucked, making eventual victory impossible. That is an eventuality only achieved through American victory at Midway, so to say it didn't alter the balance is also disingenuous

It's more like they're retarded. Japanese ability to 'outsink' the USN is based on being able to bring more force to bear than the U.S. in given naval engagements and applying it. That advantage will erode whether or not you have a Midway like engagement, because the U.S. is turning out roughly 8 ships and planes for every one that the Japanese are, and even the most optimistic levels of Japanese success do not allow for them to actually hamper U.S. production. And even before Midway, the Japanese were not sinking U.S. ships at such a ratio that it could keep up with the U.S. shipbuilding advantage.

The war was always one about whether or not the American will to fight would give out, their material resources were never going to be the weak link.

1/2

>No, but it might have been if they were able to gain air and naval supremacy in the Pacific

user, that is so badly wrong it's both funny and painful to read. For starters, even if the Japanese retain their offensive position indefinitely (how?) they are in no position to achieve "Supremacy", which is defined as complete freedom of operation without any interference, i.e. sinking every American ship and shooting down every American plane and preventing the construction of more. No amount of Japanese battlefield success will be that total; and even if they completely wreck the USN, they have a little problem about their inability to take on land based air garrisons of defended islands, nevermind the mainland.

In any event, it's irrelevant. Even if we have aliens coming to earth and vaporizing every ship of the U.S. navy on December 8th, 1941, Japan can't actually get at U.S. shipyards or aircraft factories. They are not in a position to counter, or even affect, U.S. production advantages. At best, they can buy up a few years until the U.S. has built a few dozen Essex class vessels and crushes their island bases, one at a time.

>>implying Japan wasn't btfoing the US in most battles before the Jews invented the nuclear bomb
But they weren't. They got BTFO in the island hopping campaigns

>Um. No. America has never been isolationist.
Holy shit

America has never been isolationist? Not that user, but there were isolationists, people who express America should isolate itself from foreign affairs during the great depression, but they have never actually pursued a governmental practice of isolation.

>what is Monroe Doctrine

Japan had been taken over by militarists who didn't think in the long term and Japan's conformist society was all "this is utterly insane but ok".

the japanese government at the time was completely dominated by the military, there were no diplomats or foreign policy experts present when it was decided to attack pearl harbor

They merely looked at a map and said war with America is probably inevitable, their control of the Philippines is quite problematic as it will cut our empire in half. We need to do a sneak attack and take them before they can organize a proper defense. If we attack in a shocking manner and keep up the pressure America will surely fold, they're just a weak decadent democracy anyway. They didn't ask anyone from the diplomatic corps who was an expert in America if their assumptions were correct.

casualties in the Pacific War were something like 12:1 Japanese to American and they weren't only losing men but land too. After Midway America had a pretty much unbroken string of victories across the Pacific.

A persistent theme of WW2 is that the Axis had great generals but lousy intelligence agencies and even worse diplomats.

This. Japan saw America as weak for being isolationist and figured Hitler would sweep Europe. However, some even disagreed with Pearl Harbor and the attack (like the guy who said you could never invade America because there's a gun behind every blade of grass), but they did it anyway hoping their gambit would work. That by making a big bang they'd make America unwilling to fight. Instead, they woke up a sleeping giant much like Hitler did when he invaded Russia.

sounds civilization v as fuck

An interesting mixture of overconfidence and desparation.

...

>America had promised to defend the integrity of the Dutch government-in-exile's possessions.
Got a source for this? One of the primary reasons America had been so opposed to involvement in WW2 was the perception of the war being one waged for the protection of European colonies. It's hard to believe they'd make such an agreement, let alone act on it. They certainly didn't after the war when the Dutch petitioned the Brits to reinstall them in Indonesia. In 1945 the French asked America to do the same in Vietnam but were flat out rejected, poisoning Euro/American relations in Indochina.

>like the guy who said you could never invade America because there's a gun behind every blade of grass

btw that quote is a myth. Yamamoto never said anything close to that.

Basically, after Japan went agro and sacked Manchuria, the US stopped selling oil to them in protest. This made up 60-80% of their oil supply. So they had to continue onto East Indies and other areas of the Pacific to garner other sources, and do so fast, before their current reserves were burned up. This couldn't be done with the US fleet ready to defend its various pacific holdings and those of its allies. The Americans had bases all over the Pacific - not just in Hawaii.

One fact that's often overlooked in this scenario that it wasn't "just" Pearl Harbor that Japan bombed. More than an hour before it was attacked, Japan attacked the British colony of Malaya. Then, after PH, they also attacked UK Hong Kong, and the US bases in Wake Island, in Midway, and the Philippines. This was part of a much broader assault plan.

The intent was twofold - hoping they would at least temporarily restrain the American presence in the pacific, buying them time to grab all that delicious clay, and thinking they'd give America enough of a bloody nose to cause a delay in the retaliation, but not generate so much anger as to bring about their full ire, say by attacking the mainland. The American people were largely anti-war at the time, so that Japan would be in a more secure position to negotiate their way out of it from a better position later.

They didn't really take into account that Churchill and Roosevelt had been hoping to bring America into WW2 full tilt since 41, or just how angry killing a bunch of US sailors would make the Americans in general, regardless of how far away the event took place.

So no, they never thought they could beat the US, and never intended to fight a full scale war. They just severely underestimated just how easy it is for a republic to enter a war, regardless of how reluctant its people are to do so. In short, Imperialist Japan had their own biased ideas as to the weaknesses of democracy, bet on them, and lost.

>"Supremacy", which is defined as complete freedom of operation without any interference, i.e. sinking every American ship and shooting down every American plane and preventing the construction of more.

the definition of supremacy has nothing to do with the production capabilities. You are not understanding the time factor here. Japan was not trying to destroy the US; they were hoping to be a big enough problem that the US would make peace in the short term. fully anticipating for the war to start again when the fleets were rebuilt.

Though it is true, Yamamoto had been advising against the idea of attacking Hawaii, and pissing off America in general, before he got stuck with the job of actually doing it.

But yeah, no one ever suggested taking the mainland. America certainly prepared for that possibility, but it was always more about propaganda and making the situation look as dire as possible.

Lead to this bit of comedy though.

That quote is a myth? Where did it come from then? I only ask because when I looked it up now it's only quote sites that have it and I can't find anything saying it's fake or out of context/misattributed.

I always assumed he said it because it made sense for him to have said something like that given he was against the whole thing.

Nevermind, found it. Jesus Christ, I hate when that happens. I believed that shit forever and even parroted it a few times. Makes ya wonder just how much other shit you think is true is actually myth or bullshit.

But thanks for letting me know.

>Kill American sailors
I don't understand this. Every country should know from a quick history check, killing American civilians or soldiers result in war.

That's the number 1 thing not to do if you don't want to get the US full involvement in a war.

The Japanese military was operating under the premise that democracies/republics were inherently weak and the American public would not be able to stomach losing so many sailors. They believed if they inflicted enough casualties upon the US navy/marines, Americans would riot in Washington D.C. until government agreed to some kind of peace agreement.

It is also important to understand that at this point, it looked like Hitler was winning in Europe. He wasn't, but it looked like he was. This gave the Japanese a sense of confidence that they otherwise would not have had. They saw how quickly France was taken over. In their minds, Hitler's apparent victory in Europe was proof that western democracies were weak and couldn't handle the sacrifices of war.

Keep in mind, there were people who knew that this was an incredibly bad idea. But they usually weren't invited to planning sessions.