Japan and World War II

Japan's dramatically effective military expansion in the early 1940s, which established a perimeter across the Pacific Ocean encompassing Southeast Asia and most of China, and culminated in the devastating surprise attack on the U.S. Navy in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii gave it an enormous strategic and psychological advantage in its war against the United States. Why was it unable to use this great initial advantage to gain a quick and decisive victory in World War II?

My thesis is that the Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour, however successful in the short run, was ultimately a blunder that caused its defeat, because it could not compete in military production, resources, manufacturing capacity, and technological innovation with the United States in a total war, and was therefore doomed to defeat.

But apart from any specific cause for Japan's failure

to quickly capitalize on its initial successes after such a promising beginning in its prosecution of the war from a military point of view, it is the very unpredictability of a war once engaged upon, inevitably so widely at variance with the most sober calculations and reasonable assumptions made in the planning stages, that is the general cause of the failure Japan's ill-fated attempt to establish hegemony over most of the Pacific rim.

"Would Prussia in 1792 have dared to invade France with 70,000 men if she had had an inkling that the repercussions in case of failure would be strong

. . .
rship to plan a series of calculated steps to protect its interests. On the one hand they would secure their oil supplies by invading the oil-rich British and Dutch colonies of Malaysia and Indonesia. On the other they would defend themselves against the aggressive and intransigent United States by launching the most famous preemptive attack of recent history before the U.S. invaded Iraq in the second Gulf War. "The Japanese knew very well that they couldn't wage a prolongated war against the powerful industry of the United States, but they also didn't expect them to be so determined to pursue a war and mobilize tens of thousand of men to such a distant land" (Japan Reference 2). In historical hindsight, apparently the Japanese leaders did not expect the United States to launch an all-out war. They also miscalculated that the huge expanses of the Pacific Ocean would provide protection against any retaliation, in conjunction with their recently beefed up naval forces, which included some cutting-edge aircraft carriers. There are some who still argue that the United States forced Japan to attack - and that it was even allowed to happen by Roosevelt in spite of some intelligence warning of an impending attack - because he wanted
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Approximate Word count = 2073
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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