Record - A war it was always going to lose: why Japan attacked America in 1941

A WAR IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO LOSE

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Why Japan Attacked America in 1941

JEFFREY RECORD

Copyright 2011 by Jeffrey Record

Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Record, Jeffrey.

A war it was always going to lose : why Japan attacked America in 1941 / Jeffrey Record. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59797-534-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. World War, 19391945Causes. 2. World War, 19391945Japan. 3. JapanMilitary policy. 4. JapanPolitics and government19261945. 5. JapanForeign relationsUnited States. 6. United StatesForeign relationsJapan. 7. World War, 19391945Pacific Area. I. Title.

D742.J3R44 2010

940.53110952dc22

2010030347

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

Potomac Books, Inc.
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First Edition

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I was born during the later years of the most destructive war in human history, and I have long been fascinated by its origins. Especially intriguing to me were the folly of Anglo-French appeasement of Hitler, culminating in the sacrifice of democratic Czechoslovakia at the infamous Munich Conference of 1938, and Japans seemingly suicidal decision, taken in 1941, to attack the United States.

In The Specter of Munich: Reconsidering the Lessons of Appeasing Hitler, published by Potomac Books in 2006, I investigated the phenomenon of Anglo-French appeasement and the mythology that has arisen around it, much of it promoted recently by neoconservatives enamored of preventive war. I concluded that nothing short of Hitlers removal from power via assassination, coup detat, or foreign invasion could have prevented the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. The argument of anti-appeasers that Hitler could and should have been deterred from war by firm threats of war by the democracies or by the resurrection of a grand alliance of Great Britain, France, and Russia fails on two counts. First, it ignores Anglo-French military and domestic political realities of the 1930s as well as the prevalent (and at the time) reasonable view that Hitlers ambitions were limited to the rectification of the injustices the democracies had unwisely imposed upon Germany at the Versailles Conference of 1919.

Second, and more important, the deterrence claim ignores the simple fact that Hitler was inherently undeterrable because his goals in Europe, The threat of war cannot be expected to scare off a regime that welcomes war or regards war as inevitable. In this regard, Hitler was fundamentally different from Stalin. Stalin was patient and cautious, his ambitions in Europe were limited, and he responded to credible deterrence.

In the present volume, I examine the road to the Pacific War of 19411945 between Japan and the United States, focusing primarily on Japans decision to attack the United States. The Pacific War arose from Japans determination to subdue all of East Asia, including resource-rich Southeast Asia, most of which lay under the control of Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States. Like Nazi Germany, with which it entered into military alliance in 1940, Imperial Japan of the late 1930s and early 1940s was an authoritarian, revisionist power bent on massive territorial conquest at the expense of the democratic West and the Soviet Union. Also like Germany, Japan was undeterrable: Japanese leaders believed that their countrys survival as a great power depended on swift imperial expansion, and they were prepared to use force to seize East Asia. By mid-1941 most Japanese leaders had come to regard war with the United States (and Great Britain) as inevitable and a preventive military strike against the United States in the Pacific as imperative.

Yet while Hitler came very close to conquering Europe, including the Soviet Union, the outcome of the Pacific War was never in doubt. Japan was doomed to catastrophic defeat from the moment the first Japanese bomb landed on Pearl Harbor. Nothing the Japanese could have doneor not have doneafter December 7, 1941, would have altered Japans fate. Japan had no chance against the combination of Americas overwhelming material superiority and rage over Pearl Harbor. If there were ever one side that was destined to defeat from the start, it was Japan in the Pacific War.

Why, then, did Japan start that war? Japanese leaders in 1941 were well aware of Americas huge superiority in industrial might and latent military power, and all recognized that the American homeland, if not the Philippines and Hawaii, lay beyond Japans military reach. Most also understood that a fully mobilized United States had the capacity to project enormous military power across the Pacific into East Asian waters, including those surrounding the Japanese home islands; indeed, traditional Japanese naval strategy rested on the assumption that the U.S. Pacific Fleet would come charging across the Pacific to defend the Philippines. Yet against such enormous odds, the Japanese nonetheless opted for war. Why?