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From what I've read, Japan never had anywhere near the industrial capability to pull any of that off. Even landing troops and maintaining a garrison at all on M
by ufmace 5y ago
From what I've read, Japan never had anywhere near the industrial capability to pull any of that off. Even landing troops and maintaining a garrison at all on Midway and the Hawaiian islands would stretch them to the limit - they arguably already didn't have the troops to spare to do that along with their other commitments in their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere plan.
Taking Hawaii at all is already outlandish, no chance that if they found a way to pull that off, they'd be able to supply it heavily enough to make it an active seaport, patrol the waters to the east aggressively, or carry out attacks against the US West Coast and their land-based defenses at a high enough tempo to impede shipbuilding there. Similarly, maintaining enough spies and subs to track ship sorties and ambushing them at the Panama Canal isn't in the cards for them.
WWII is ultimately a logistics war. Individual battles don't really matter that much, whoever makes the most stuff will win eventually somehow, and whoever is on the other side from them will lose. Japan was way too far behind on industrial capacity to have a chance. Maybe if they managed to pull off their Co-Prosperity Sphere plan without any interference and make the most of it, they'd have the capacity in 40 years. But that's doubtful too, since everyone else in their so-called Co-Prosperity Sphere hated their guts due to horrible occupation practices on the part of the IJA.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoYes Japan has almost no natural resources which is why they invaded Asian countries in the first place. But allied submarines and seaplanes were hammering their supply lines constantly to the point they could barely get anything shipped to Japan. The war was a Japanese gamble and quite a few intelligent Japanese predicted it would fail.
- magicsmoke 5y agoThat's the reason behind why Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. Japan's invasion of the rest of China though was an act of militaristic hubris that caused a net loss in resources over 4 years and led them to invade the rest of southeast asia to patch this hemorrhage which then drew the US into the conflict with its oil embargo. Japanese military planners in 1937 knew an invasion of China would be a waste of precious resources for little potential gain. But they were sidelined by younger military officers that wanted a shot at battlefield glory and ignored orders from above for a ceasefire after the Marco Polo bridge incident. And after the first battlefield victories started rolling in it became politically impossible to halt the momentum for continued war.