[Grady Clay]

How Japan Should Have Won WWII.
An exercise in speculation.

This stems from the single premise that the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy would have worked to a common purpose rather than at each other’s throats politically. Everything else is a strategy that that could have been pursued.

The basic strategy is to invade and occupy Hawaii as a joint Army-Navy operation. Using submarines to sink ships and damage the port infrastructure at Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, SF bay area, Long Beach and San Diego would have an immediate effect. Add only two small freighters of explosives at the upper gates of the Panama Canal and the canal would be out of commission for a decade.

I will speculate that the isolationist US would have abandoned SE Asia and hauled Macarthur’s army from the Philippines and the entire remaining Pacific Fleet to defend the west coast. The same would be true for the US islands in the Pacific (Midway, Truk, etc.)

If Japan had not made the slight timing error that caused this to be considered a “dastardly sneak attack” then the ire of the American people wouldn’t be so aroused. This could be further reduced by offering to repatriate anyone on the Pacific islands and pay some minor reparations. Imperial Japan could have drawn a “line of influence” between Hawaii and the US mainland.

Japan could then leisurely conquer all of resources rich SE Asia.

Well, we all know how it turned out - partially because of bickering generals and admirals.

So much for historical musings on a summer afternoon.

Best,
Grady