What would have happened if Japan did not attack PH but instead went all out on China/Asia be4 anything else?

Question

QuiteNew - PLEASE learn some history!!!

Answer 1

They'd probably have China at least.  Why did they attack PH anyway?  Seems like a dumb move now that I think about it.  Maybe they just always had their eye on beautiful Hawaii and thought we wouldn't bother about it since it's so far away from the states?

Answer 2

I think things would have gone more poorly for Japan more quickly.  The United States was supporting Chinese forces a major push by Japan into China would have drawn the U.S. into the war, though perhaps with not as much gusto as did Pearl Harbor.  Admiral Yamamoto, who was in charge of the Japanese fleet during the war, had studied in the United States and knew that Japan could not survive a drawn out conflict with the U.S. due to it's industrial capabilities.  Therefore, it was necessary to break the back of the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in order to buy Japan time to win in China and elsewhere.  To complete this plan, Japan needed to destroy the U.S. aircraft carriers at Midway, but failed (Enterprise survived).  

Had Japan not attacked at Pearl, the U.S. fleet would have remained intact and could have immediately responded to major attacks on China.  Meanwhile, the U.S. war machine would have been churning out ships to supplement the fleet.  I think this very well may have caused Japan to have been defeated earlier.

On a side note, the destruction of most of the U.S. battleships at Pearl caused the U.S. to restructure it's fleet to be centered around aircraft carriers rather than battleships, which is of course how modern navies are organized.  So, although tragic, the attack helped to modernized the U.S. fleet.

Answer 3

The thing nobody seems to be mentioning here is why Japan decided to attack the US in the first place.  

By December of 1941, Japan's war with China had already been going on for a full decade.  And it was going pretty well for them.  Japan already controlled Manchuria, most of northern China, Taiwan, and almost all of Indochina.  

Their growing problem was a precious resource they needed badly: oil.  And the place for them to get that oil was Indonesia.  Between Japan and the oil was the Philippines, a US protectorate since the war with Spain.  Japan had to knock the US Navy out of action in the Pacific if they were to get the oil they needed across the Philippine Sea and up to Japan.  

If they had not attacked Pearl Harbor, the highly mechanized war machine they built would stall.  (Hitler ran into the same problem, as you may know.)  By the end of 1941, to continue its ambitions in China, Japan had almost no choice but to attack the US.  

Hope that helps give some context for what happened.

Answer 4

They attacked Pearl Harbour to further their attack on China.

Japan had been going 'all out' in China since 1937, but the fantasies of the Japanese military leadership failed to match events on the ground: the Chinese were constantly 'defeated', but always retreated to fight another day.

Rooselvelt imposed an oil and steel embargo on Japan in 1941, and this would have prevented Japan from continuing the war. Without the resources of European-controlled Asia and from US exports, Japan simply could not continue the war. This course was unthinkable for the jingo maniacs who had usurped democracy and the power of the Emperor in Japan.

Most thinking Japanese- Yamamoto and Yamashita and the Emperor himself- had extreme reservations about their ability to defeat the US and then have the US beg for peace. This was the thinking behind the Pearl attack. With the Burma Road cut early in 1942 it was very difficult to supply China, which made China less of a problem for Japan, even if they couldn't secure victory over China.

When the results were not achieved the arrogant japanese military leadership was happy to have the whole nation killed- literally- rather than do what no modern Japanese had had to do: go begging for peace themselves. The nuclear attacks were a very logical and morally defensible response to these policies.

In the end, China, like Russia for Germany, or Vietnam for the US, was simply too big and beyond the resources available.

Answer 5

of course history would not have been the same.

However, think back. Japan was on an imperialism / world dominance mode. It would not have served Japan any purpose in 1945 to attack China. China was desperately poor at that time, and would just have been an encumbrance instead of an asset