Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Grew was certainly right, but so were Roosevelt and his economists. If Japan went to war---they would lose. And what nation in it's right mind would start a war they KNEW they couldn't win? That was the crux of the position. Neither side really understood the other. The Japanese lived in a "Fantasyland" where their "superior fighting spirit" was going to allow them to ignore economic reallities...,

In the context of Japanese history - Japan had never lost a war in modern times - and Japan had defeated a power ten times its size in the 20th century - it didn't seem quite so much a fantasy. Also, the government was de facto an Army controlled entity, and the Army lacked much exposure to the world outside East Asia. It is doubtful even a militarist Navy government would have been quite so cavilier.

See International Conflict for Beginners by Roger Fisher. You almost never compel a nation to do anything. Japan had decided for war (in a strange way- it was NOT a government decision - it was a clique who ended up getting their way when they BROKE policy) with China. It had invested too much in the war to turn back. We knew it. Getting in the way of a nation at war for 6 years is a good way to get in that war yourself. We knew that too. But we WANTED that. So lets not pretend otherwise.

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You do not direct three ships to break the rules of the road, do so under no colors, then falsely claim to have been knowingly engaged by IJN if you don't WANT a war.

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OK - I see you never went to US Navy boot camp. The US Navy teaches all its boots it is OUR duty to insure Japan gets oil!!! There is an agreement - if there is a big oil problem - the USA will ship US oil to Japan EVEN IF WE GET NO OTHER OIL - no matter the cost to US citizens.

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

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OK - I see you never went to US Navy boot camp. The US Navy teaches all its boots it is OUR duty to insure Japan gets oil!!! There is an agreement - if there is a big oil problem - the USA will ship US oil to Japan EVEN IF WE GET NO OTHER OIL - no matter the cost to US citizens.

It does???? I must have missed that lecture during boot camp!

Why in the hell would the US Navy be teaching international politics and economics in boot camp? We barely teach our own naval history any more.

Chez

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Were you sleeping in class again Chez?

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My take is someone mentioned during boot camp that it was their duty to defend the free world. Now this leaves a lot of room for interpretation...one interpretation being ..."insure Japan gets oil"

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During that period Japan fought :

no less than two wars with the USSR = Check the scoreboard on these. Not exactly a steller performance on behalf of Japan.

Occupied Indochina = You mean during a period of about 6 months in 1940, Japan "forcefully negotiated" away IndoChina from Vichy. No shooting required.

Continued to defend Japan proper = Against whom? Last I checked, there were no invasion fleets heading to Japan at any time between 1936 and 1941.

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This is where we will have to dissagree. Roosevelt did want to get the US involved in the war..., against Germany!. Getting involved with Japan would detract from that effort. And while you point out correctly that the Japanese Militarists, with their quite insular point of view, might have felt that Japan had a chance in a War with the West, you give no credit to the other side of the coin. That US Industrialists and Capitolists and even the Military (which had the only School of War Mobilization and Production of any great power) simply could not believe that Japan with it's small and limited industrial base and glaring lack of resources would actually DARE to attack the US. From our "production based" point of view it would be an act of lunacy! Surely if we just "twisted the leash a little tighter" the Japanese Government could be brought to it's senses? That's what I meant by neither side understood the other.

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The problem here is that the USS Panay had been bombed and strafed by Japan a few years earlier and the USS Reuben James had just been sunk by a U-boat. Neither event produced a general outcry for war by the citizenry.

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While I agree that FDR most certainly wanted war with Germany, what makes you think that 3 small yachts (of which only one would likely have been engaged) would form a better genesis for war?

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During that period Japan fought :

no less than two wars with the USSR = Check the scoreboard on these. Not exactly a steller performance on behalf of Japan.

Occupied Indochina = You mean during a period of about 6 months in 1940, Japan "forcefully negotiated" away IndoChina from Vichy. No shooting required.

Continued to defend Japan proper = Against whom? Last I checked, there were no invasion fleets heading to Japan at any time between 1936 and 1941.

"It is obvious that you have greatly over-estimated my regard for your opinion." - Me

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Ok, let's go down this road.

It was Matthew Perry not Dewey.

Correct. Dewey is the commander in 1898 at Manila Bay - Perry is the one who threatened to bombard Japan in the 1860s.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Kagoshima was bombarded 10 years after Perry had left by the RN in response to a murder of one of their officials or merchants. They were attacking a particular daimyo, not the whole country. It wasn't even for the murder per se, it was for his failure to pay compensation. It didn't have anything to do with being forced into the modern world.

While I do not doubt you have an incident in mind, there are a whole series of such incidents, involving not just British but also French and Dutch warships, spread over many years of time. Wether they can be justified (in this age) is not the point (people should be judged by the standards of their age, not ours) - the point is the Japanese knew from direct experience what bombardment by modern artillery meant. I might have been mixed up about which bombardment - but I don't think so - I suspect you are picking on a later one than I am. The point remains - Japan was dragged out of isolation by pressure from foreign powers - and the leader of the pack was the USA. We WANTED a Japan that was going to trade - to the point we required it. You cannot escape the consequences for the policy you used to have - even if you don't like it today. Cutting trade to Japan in 1941 is not the same as cutting trade to almost any other nation in almost any year. It is a much more severe threat - and many historians in Japan regard it as a proper causus belli. The ONLY mitigator here is that Roosevelt did not intend to make it total - and that is a minor one - command responsibility is still his.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Who is the "we" in "No problem, we said - we will always trade with you"?

I suggest you read the history of the first US diplomat in Japan.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Countries try to dictate to each other all the time, it's called diplomacy. For a country to expect a second country to continue to supply it with oil and other raw and manufactured materials needed to conquer a third country (especially when that third country was not an aggressor, when that second country is bitterly opposed to anyone's expansionist policies in the Pacific other than its own, and when that second country was the specific object of a treaty designed to dictate to it its own policy) that's called fantasy.

You are confused. Economic sanctions are not in general effective, and they are never effective very fast. But the victims of economic sanctions are not purely, or even mainly, the leaders and wealthy profiteers whom you may have political disputes with. IF Japan was a democratic country, and IF Japanese voters had opted for the policy you dislike, penalizing everyone in the Empire might make some moral sense. But Japan was not close to a democratic country, nor even close to a unified country. Grew's term "government by assassination" has a grim bit of accuracy to it (in spite of being grossly oversimplified). The people with policies you might regard as reasonable were either dead or terrified into inaction (with rare exceptions). In the world of realpolitik, what matters are the realistic possibilities, whenever you consider a policy. And realistically, it was clear that the decision for war with China was not reversable in 1941.
It probably was reversable five years before. WE were too timid to try, and having made that policy choice, if the ONLY subject were China, we should have lived with it. Because the ALTERNATIVE was WAR - no other option was on the table for this policy. What may justify the choice to do the embargo - and the choice to make it 100% - is that it may have been in OUR GLOBAL interests to go to war. But if THAT is the reason for the policy, don't hide behind the smoke screen of saying "it was Japan's fault." They were not angels. Neither were we. It may have been POLITIC to get Japan to act - given the power of the Neutrality Party in Congress - but that is not the same thing as pretending we didn't do this on purpose. We did. Our expert on Japan told us so - and accepted our choice. So do I. But I do not pretend we went to war to "save China" - and in the event we failed to do that. We didn't even deal with the war criminals who launched the biggest BW campaign of all time in China in that war. Friends of China? Not very.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Japan saw the US as its rival in the Pacific and, I'm pretty sure, they thought the US thought likewise. Honestly, on what planet does a country actually think it is the duty of another country to supply it with the resources and materials necessary to make it a stronger, more powerful rival to that country?

OK - I see you never went to US Navy boot camp. The US Navy teaches all its boots it is OUR duty to insure Japan gets oil!!! There is an agreement - if there is a big oil problem - the USA will ship US oil to Japan EVEN IF WE GET NO OTHER OIL - no matter the cost to US citizens.
The US has learned its lesson. You cannot cut off Japan from oil and not have horrible consequences. This is not a policy of a political party - it is national policy - in all administrations. But few outside the Navy and diplomatic service every hear it explicitly. Japan is a special case - no other country might actually die if it had to feed itself - and so it will do whatever it must in extreamus. We have found that such a guarantee is in our interests - it gives us Japan as an ally instead of as an enemy.

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What you talkin' 'bout Willis?!

-THIS- is what I said, nothing more:

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During that period Japan fought :

no less than two wars with the USSR = Check the scoreboard on these. Not exactly a steller performance on behalf of Japan.

Occupied Indochina = You mean during a period of about 6 months in 1940, Japan "forcefully negotiated" away IndoChina from Vichy. No shooting required.

Continued to defend Japan proper = Against whom? Last I checked, there were no invasion fleets heading to Japan at any time between 1936 and 1941.

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Correct. Dewey is the commander in 1898 at Manila Bay - Perry is the one who threatened to bombard Japan in the 1860s.


If he threatened to bombard Japan, it would have occured in the 1850s.

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Speaking of realpolitik, do you find it reasonable that Japan expected America to provide it w/ the oil and scrap iron (as well as other resources) needed to conquer China and help it become a stronger rival to the US? I'll stand by my previous statement and call that fantasy.

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No, I never went to navy boot camp. No lesson was learned, only a change in circumstances. How you deal w/ a pre-war rival and post-war ally are usually two differenct things. Our post-war choice to ensure that an ally's, Japan's, oil supply wasn't a moral or legal obligation, it's strictly because they could have fallen under the USSR's or China's influence or control. Neither event was perceived at the time to be in the US's best interest. Japan hasn't invaded or attacked too many countries post-war, which I think was the point of our pre-war choice to dick around with a rival's oil supply.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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No, I never went to navy boot camp. No lesson was learned, only a change in circumstances. How you deal w/ a pre-war rival and post-war ally are usually two differenct things. Our post-war choice to ensure that an ally's, Japan's, oil supply wasn't a moral or legal obligation, it's strictly because they could have fallen under the USSR's or China's influence or control. Neither event was perceived at the time to be in the US's best interest. Japan hasn't invaded or attacked too many countries post-war, which I think was the point of our pre-war choice to dick around with a rival's oil supply.

Forrest and trees. Interesting how you miss the point: the policy is why Japan is an ally. The cut off policy meant it was an enemy. It always would have worked that way. Note - if you doubt this - that IJA ALWAYS wanted to "strike North" - only reluctantly went for "strike South" - and only because of the embargo. IJA as an institution developed vehicles and planes for the cold of the north, for the ranges (short) of a land war instead of (long) a sea war, and otherwise regarded the main enemy as the USSR - not the USA. Many of its problems in a longer terms sense arise because it was ill equipped (mentally and physically) to deal with a naval war against a naval power - having focused on a land war with a land power. IJA intel on the US was dismal - even IJA intel on the British Empire was ad hoc (if fairly impressive for the short time it was developed in) - and partly a gift of the Gods (the Andromeda Affair - putting a critical report in Japanese hands because of a German naval officer). Unlike the Navy - modeled on RN - long focused on the USA as a rival - or even the Foreign Ministry - with plans vs Hawaii dating to 1910 - the IJA - which RULED - was not really interested in war with the USA.
We changed its mind. The only question is this: were we stupid or clever - did we do it on purpose - or not?

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Speaking of realpolitik, do you find it reasonable that Japan expected America to provide it w/ the oil and scrap iron (as well as other resources) needed to conquer China and help it become a stronger rival to the US? I'll stand by my previous statement and call that fantasy.

You are using loaded language - prejudicial language - and betraying thereby (being kind) confusion about the situation (unless you are deliberatly trying to mislead - the other reason for loaded language).
I assume you are just well read and using the formulations we would have at the time - which is reasonable and innocent. But it is nevertheless quite misleading about the actual situation.

In a nutshell, you cannot separate "iron and oil" (actuall iron, rubber and oil) for war with China from "iron and oil" for the civil economy. A TOTAL embargo of all three MUST NEEDS go way beyond the elements needed for that war and MUST NEEDS threaten nothing short of starvation writ large for a nation in the unique situation of Japan (it has less than 2% tillable land and, after being "encouraged" to become a trading power and abolish its severe policy on restricted population, it must manufacture and trade to get food itself - not "it would be nice" - MUST). We actually understood this perfectly well - and we also understood that Japan - under even the most liberal admistration - would never permit a foreign power to dictate its foreign policy. We would hardly have done after five years in any of the major wars we ever fought - except I can't think of any major ones that lasted that long. When the ostensible political object of a policy is not possible, the real object must be something else. We were not really trying to come to terms with Japan - and we were never that great of a champion of China - although I believe we were less colonialists in China than the other colonial powers were - thinking of the "open door" - remember the point was WE wanted a SHARE in the spoils too - and we enforced our policy with gunboats INSIDE a different "country" WITHOUT permission - a very odd policy for a democratic nation.

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Crushing Japan in WW2, physically occupying it, and being the major voice in the creation of its post-war government are the reasons why Japan became an ally not oil.

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Having its ass kicked at Nomohan in 1939 did more to cool the IJA's north first strategy than the embargos in 1940.

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You can separate the oil, rubber and iron used by the civ population and the military. Japanese agriculture was not mechanized in any significant way.

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You can separate the oil, rubber and iron used by the civ population and the military. Japanese agriculture was not mechanized in any significant way. Cutting off oil, rubber and iron would not affect their production of food. Coal provided the vast majority of their electrical power, transportation and industrial needs. Their own oil production was sufficient for their agricultural uses. I can't seem to find the havoc wrought upon the civilian economy that occured from the scrap metal embargo in 1940 or the one on aviation gasoline in the same year. Rubber wasn't a factor, Japan could import all it needed after occupying French Indochina. They didn't seem to mind dictating foreign policy to France there, did they?

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You say that the US was never really trying to come to terms with Japan. I'm saying that there wasn't a point in trying. Hypocrisy in diplomacy is nothing new, but saying that a country won't tolerate having its foregn policy dictated to while doing the same to other countries, doesn't provide a rational basis for any sort of negotiation. Neither is expecting a country to provide you with the raw materials for you to expand territorily and militarily.

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ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

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OK - I see you never went to US Navy boot camp. The US Navy teaches all its boots it is OUR duty to insure Japan gets oil!!! There is an agreement - if there is a big oil problem - the USA will ship US oil to Japan EVEN IF WE GET NO OTHER OIL - no matter the cost to US citizens.

It does???? I must have missed that lecture during boot camp!
Why in the hell would the US Navy be teaching international politics and economics in boot camp? We barely teach our own naval history any more.
Chez