Japanese Amateur Leak (2024)

FAQs

Did the Japanese think they could beat the US? ›

And although the Japanese government never believed it could defeat the United States, it did intend to negotiate an end to the war on favorable terms.

On 7 December 1941, Japan launched a surprise air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Japanese forces also overran Allied possessions in south-east Asia and The Philippines. Japan hoped for a short war, seeking to quickly weaken US naval strength and capture strategically vital oil supplies.

Several of the downed planes fell in or near Pearl Harbor or the other targets and were recovered for technical examination, as was one "Zero" fighter that crash landed on a remote island in the Hawaiian group. These provided U.S. intelligence with its first close-up look at the new enemy's latest aerial equipment.

Various daimyō clans undertook major naval building efforts in the 16th century, during the Sengoku period, when feudal rulers vying for supremacy built vast coastal navies of several hundred ships.

In 1941, if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor or U.S. territories in Guam, Wake Island, or the Philippines, it is quite likely that the United States would have remained neutral and World War II would have been considerably shortened.

On Feb. 27 came another disastrous defeat for the U.S. and the Allied powers at the Battle of the Java Sea, where the Japanese struck the Allied naval force.

Keeping Hawaii supplied, with its much larger civilian population and garrison, would have been even more difficult. In short, the Japanese simply did not possess the amphibious and logistical wherewithal to assault, capture, and hold the Hawaiian Islands.

In fact, the entire warning apparatus the Japanese Foreign Office established to alert its diplomats failed. The warning message was sent well after the attack—useless for intelligence as well as a timely warning. In the end, Safford was simply wrong about the existence and importance of the warning phrases.

The Japanese could not possibly win, but they might be able to delay the end of the war into the fall of 1946. If the Americans found the rising casualties intolerable, they might settle for terms less than unconditional surrender.

One of the biggest mistakes the Japanese made was not destroying the smallest American ships in Pearl: our submarines. They survived and put to sea to destroy more Japanese tonnage during the war than the Americans lost at Pearl Harbor. And the biggest mistake of all? Underestimating the American public.

Why was there not a third strike by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor? ›

Admiral Nagumo had a long list of reasons for not launching a third wave, but the primary one was that he did not know where the American carriers were and he assumed (erroneously) that we knew where he was, which made him feel acutely vulnerable to surprise attack by the American carriers.

As we near the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Takeshi Maeda, Zenji Abe and Kaname Harada remain amongst the few surviving Japanese witnesses to the opening act of aggression which triggered the war against America in the last century.

Nagato survived the battle, retreating to Japan to be refitted for coastal defense. She also escaped serious damage from an Allied air attack in July of 1945 and was the only Japanese battleship to survive the war.

The Japanese military was often steadfast in its commitment to victory at any cost. The Bushido Complex was intricately woven and heavy indoctrination of nationalistic views had created a Japanese military which was almost incapable of imaging defeat.

The Japanese military was often steadfast in its commitment to victory at any cost. The Bushido Complex was intricately woven and heavy indoctrination of nationalistic views had created a Japanese military which was almost incapable of imaging defeat.

The Japanese underestimated Americans because of what they had seen throughout the interwar period: the Western democracy as a whole was either reluctant or ineffectual to stop aggressions by some rogue states.

The American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, after the U.S. and Japan signed a security treaty for a “peace of reconciliation” in San Francisco in 1951. The agreement let the U.S. maintain military bases there, and a revision in 1960 said the U.S. would come to Japan's defense in an attack.

The Roots of the Conflict

To a certain extent, the conflict between the United States and Japan stemmed from their competing interests in Chinese markets and Asian natural resources. While the United States and Japan jockeyed peaceably for influence in eastern Asia for many years, the situation changed in 1931.