The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [199]
Deciding Factors In the Pacific
The Japanese would lose the war based on some of the factors listed below in no particular order:
1. Japan’s false assumptions were the foundations of defeat. For example, Japan believed its fighting spirit was superior to the West. Japan viewed war as a spiritual fight most of all, and only Japan possessed the necessary spirit to win. Japan, limited by its prewar assumptions, stuck with their original war plan; however, the US Navy came up with stunning new ways of advancing across the Pacific which the Japanese failed to match. All their major prewar assumptions proved false.
2. The Americans broke the Japanese codes which led to American victories at Midway, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and other critical engagements. Assume Japan broke the American codes while the Japanese codes remained secure and the importance of code breaking becomes clear. Japan would know the US Fleet’s location, thus giving Japan a major advantage in each battle. Midway would turn into a terrible American loss, as would Guadalcanal and other crucial engagements.
3. Lack of Japanese war-production capability. The island nation of Japan had a good ability to turn out war materials; however, that capacity was far below that of the United States alone. Add in the production of Britain and Japan was completely outclassed. For example, this chart is the merchant ship tonnage produced during the war:
USA 33,993,230 tons
Japan 4,152,361
UK 6,378,899
Italy 469,606
4. Lack of production flexibility in developing better aircraft types, ships, or even small arms during the war. Japan could not effectively bring its war experience to its production lines, and failed to design newer and better weapons to place in the field.
5. Lack of doctrinal flexibility. Once the Japanese decided how to fight the war they stuck with those ideas. Meanwhile, the Allies changed war itself. Island hopping was one innovation destroying the Japanese assumption that each occupied island must fall for the Allies to reach their homeland. Japan’s planners also failed to account for the effect of submarine warfare on their merchant fleet. Japan’s merchant fleet incurred heavy damaged before the Japanese responded, and even the late response remained insufficient.
6. Staying with traditions too long. Because of the Japanese traditional belief in the decisive battle (one all or nothing battle), it became axiomatic to think about naval warfare those terms. The idea became an unstated assumption—which is the worst kind of supposition. This tradition (unstated assumption) remained unexamined and therefore unchallenged. Recognizing such an assumption is necessary for unclouded thinking. In fact, in a modern naval war the size of World War II many battles would take place and no one of them would be completely decisive. Another unstated, but natural, assumption was Japan would win the decisive battle. Even after several losses Japanese admirals kept saying that if they could bring the Americans into the decisive battle Japan could win the war. Japan’s leaders needed to recognize there were “decisive” battles, but Japan had lost them. In the Japanese mind this failed to compute, as Japan must win the decisive battle.
The Japanese assumptions about America refusing to fight long wars were closer to reality in 1940 than one might think. In War Plan Orange, the battle plan for war with Japan, US Naval planners assumed a war must be won quickly or US citizens would revolt. Even in 1919, Orange planners assumed the war must be won in less than two years or voters would tire of the effort and make the political decision to quit. The redoubtable Admiral Mahan concluded the American public could not even tolerate a two year conflict. He believed, as did the Japanese, that American society was fickle and had no stomach for hardships. Naval planners predicted that Orange (Japan) would wage a war