Did Japan almost defeat America in World War 2?

Answer 1

I would say the main reasons America beated japan in WW2 was a couple mistakes japan made early in the war.

1. If japans third wave in pearl harbor was launched all the oil and ship repair dock would be destroyed, if so America would have a huge time recovering and the U.S. navy would recover months later. And with those months japan could invade midway, Hawaii etc.

2. If the U.S. aircraft carriers were at pearl harbor during the attack there (which they were suppose to be) the U.S. navy would have been wiped out because after pear harbor the only threats the Japanese navy hade was those carriers. If those where destroyed in Pear harbor the U.S. navy would have been destroyed.

3. In the battle of midway, Japanese planes on the aircraft carriers were preparing for a strike to the U.S. carrier but haven't found them. They were then fitted weapons to attack midway island but half way into it they found the U.S. carriers. Then when they found the U.S. carriers then they started unloading the airplanes and fitting them weapons to attack the U.S. carriers. Just then is when the U.S. bombers came and destroyed the Japanese carriers. If the carrier crew haven't wasted so much time refitted the planes with different weapons over and over and just lunched the strick against the U.S. carriers they U.S. fleet would be wiped out and Japan would easily win the war.

Japan would have won WW2 if she attacked Russia when Germany did instead of attacking the U.S.. The US would have been kept out of the war, Russia could not have won a two front war, and Germany and Japan would have a true alliance being able to trade, for example, German military technology for Asian minerals and rubber. They both would have shared Russia's resources.

Answer 2

Only if the US decided it was not worth fighting and gave up. This was what the Japanese were gambling on when they attacked the US. The idea was to knock the US on its heels so the US could not interfere while the Japanese grabbed what they wanted. Then, when the US was able to start fighting effectively, after six months or a year, the Japanese would be sitting on what they wanted and consolidating their defenses. They thought Americans were soft and lazy and would have no stomach for a long, hard bloody war, and would just negotiate some sort of peace settlement. What the Japanese did not anticipate was that their planned announcement of the breaking of diplomatic relations, basically a declaration of war, which they planned to have presented to the American State Department minutes before the attack reached Pearl Harbor, would be delayed by a slow typist and late in arriving. This made the attack on Pearl Harbor a complete surprise, a "sneak attack", and nothing could have united the American people better or filled them with more resolve to see Japan beaten.

Strategically, it is entirely possible that Japan could have won a war against the United States. However, there would have had to have been some very significant changes in decision-making, mostly on the Japanese side of the equation.

A "win" for Japan in a Pacific War with the United States (and its allies) really has two major components:

• Japan, which does not have the industrial and research capability of any of its opponents, must capitalize on its TEMPORARY military superiority in 1940-1942 to fight a quick war of conquest, then get its opponents to the peace table for a negotiated peace. Japan can afford to fight no more than a 2 year war.
• Japan keeps enough territory which enough key strategic war materials to keep its economy and industrial production going AFTER a negotiated peace.

The result of these realities is that a war-winning overall Strategy is thus:

1. Capture as much territory as possible, including all areas with strategic materials.
2. Destroy their opponent's existing military forces quickly
3. Capitalize on the sense of "doom and gloom" the above two cause in their opponent's countries, and offer a "generous" negotiated peace agreement, where Japan can bargain from a position of (temporary) strength.

Thus, Japan needs to maximize its war production and strategy to be as absolutely destructive and terrifying as possible in the shortest amount of time, followed by being very magnanimous in peace negotiations.

Here are some suggestions for both strategic and tactical decisions that Japan should likely have followed:

1. Do NOT arrange for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, or any other major U.S. installation. Rather, deliver a declared war statement to the United States on one day, then begin hostilities against the U.S. the next day. The minor time lag will not be enough for the U.S. to mount any sort of effective defense, but will remove any of the psychological effects that events like Pearl Harbor gave the U.S. In effect, you don't want to make your opponent so angry that they won't negotiate with you, even if giving up that military advantage means you take more casualties.
2. Redesign the attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, Find, Fix, and Destroy the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet, even if it costs you some casualties. Honestly, the best way to do this is to call off the Aleutian component of the Dec 7 attacks, and combine all IJN forces (along with IJA troop transports) in a huge fleet for a all-out assault on Hawaii and the US PacFleet. Do not target Oahu for invasion - instead, invade the Big Island; set up airbases there, and use that to harrass Oahu, all the while using submarines to blockade the entire hawaiian chain. The U.S. PacFleet will be forced to come out and fight in a large battle, where the superior IJN can annihiliate them. At the likely cost of a dozen ships or so (and likely, 2-3 carriers), the IJN can sink virtually ALL the US PacFleet in deep water. The U.S. would then likely be left with no more than 2 carriers in the ENTIRE US Navy, the loss of over 50% of its capital ships, and no way to force the IJA off the Big Island. As a consequence, the U.S. PacFleet ceases to exist, and Hawaii falls after a 6-month siege.
3. Forgo the Kokoda Trail path to invade Port Morseby. Instead, bypass New Guinea completely, and make an invasion of northeast Australia itself. Only a small force is necessary, as the primary goal is to panic the Australians into a peace treaty, not conquer any territory. This should be easy to do, and thus, by mid-1942, Australia and New Zealand are out of the war.
4. Mimic the British lessons on running merchant convoys. Japan's defeat is greatly hastened by the almost complete annihilation of the Japanese Merchant Marine by U.S. submarine forces, who, in a lesser-known capacity, actually succeed in the goal that German U-boats failed.
5. Recognized that "excellent" is the enemy of "good enough" in training aircrews, and redesign the aircrew training programs to quadruple or more the graduation rates. The IJN's carrier force is all but crippled by late 1943 not by losses of carriers or lack of aircraft, but the killing of virtually all its pre-war trained pilots, and a dearth of new crew to replace them.
6. Actually implement their promises of the "Asia for Asians" Propaganda campaign. If Japan had followed through on their slogans of asian self-determinism for many of the territories they had conquered, it would have been enormously more difficult for the Allies to re-take them. Japan would have been able to ring itself with a perimeter of friendly (if not allied) new nations made from the former imperial colonies of its opponents. In essence, Japan threw away the possibility of gaining new allies in its war, ones which would have greatly dragged out any conflict, and given Japan the opportunity to press for a negotiated peace.
7. Redo its antiquated message communications system; particularly, completely revamp its ciphers, most of which were broken by the Allies. Japan should have recognized that it was using cipher systems that were several decades obsolete, and replaced them with something current. This may not have stopped Allied codebreaking, but certainly would have reduced the volume of leaked information. In reality, by the end of the war, Allied codebreakers were reading virtually all Japanese communications almost in real time. Denying the enemy such intelligence would have been a huge advantage.

To summarize: if Japan wanted to win, it needed to (a) pick a quick fight, but not look like a sneaky bastard doing so, (b) fight hard and fast to beat their enemies to their knees, even if it took losses to do so, (c) immediately offer generous peace terms to end the war, keeping in mind that the only thing Japan really needed to retain was the strategic materials territories, and that everything else could be bargained away.

Answer 3

This is an opinion question but I do not mind answering. Japan had military might and many victories. I do not think the Japanese could have conqured the United States for these reasons.

• The United States had rescources the Japanese badly needed or did not have.
• The United States had the ability to keep building planes and ships whereas the Japanese did not have that ability.
• The United States had plenty of food, medical care and other basics the Japanese Island needed badly at the end of the war so they could not have continued with the war or defeated the Allies.
• The two cultures had entirely different concepts of conducting warfare. As long as the Japanese maintained the Samurai Warrior concept of committing suicide they would run out of experienced and smart military people to run the war and fight it.
• The Japanese did not have allies that were on their home turf fighting with them.
• The Japanese could not crack the Navajo code.
• The Japanese were just as stubborn and proud of their honor code as the United States Forces were of their honor code. Really, do you think the US Marines would allow themselves to be defeated after they defeated Nazis?

Answer 4

If the United States of America had the three aircraft carriers in pear harbor at the time the Japanese attacked then we would of been defeated by japan in the Pacific Ocean. The aircraft carrier isthe most vital weapon in the arsenal next to the battleship because the pilots and their planes play a big role in the whole war with japan.