On this day in 1941 Isoroku Yamamoto (山本 五十六), following a conference with the Emperor and others, issued Combined Fleet Operation Order No. 1 committing Japanese forces to offensive action against the United States unless the US yielded to Japanese demands.
In essence, given the failure of diplomacy up to that point, and the unlikely chance that diplomacy would yield results that Japan regarded as favorable, the secret order committed Japan to war against the United States, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Tactically, it relied upon a strategy that Japan had successfully used in the past, which was to hit an opponents principal in theater naval base in port, immediately after a declaration of war, the same strategy which had been successfully used by Imperial Japan at the initiation of the Russo-Japanese War. In this case, however, the difficulties presented by the operation were vastly more difficult than those presented in the 1905 Port Arthur attack.
The reasons for what now seems an obviously doomed effort by Japan are surprisingly difficult to discern. Given as they tossed the U.S. into World War Two and resulted in the downfall of Imperial Japan, they are worth considering.
Japan had committed itself, of course, to war in China and in spite of years of effort it had never been able to digest the giant country or to defeat either of the two claimants to national supremacy there. The recognized government, the Nationalist, had proven incapable of defeating Japan to date, but they fought the war much more effectively than they've generally been credited with. If not winning, they really weren't losing in 1941 either.
The war in China had almost been accidental in some ways, but it demonstrated how deeply militarized Japan had become. In essence, the war commenced because Japan's occupation of Korea and portions of Manchuria were irreconcilable with China's sovereignty. Neither China nor the Soviet Union could really tolerate Japan's obviously imperial presence in the region. Japan's presence there was purely colonial, and in a way it differed very little from Germany's presence in 1941 on the Russian steppes. Japan had a large and growing population, and it had a concept of settling a portion of that population on lands that it regarded as suitable for them, views of the occupants of that land notwithstanding.
Japan's invasion of Manchuria inevitably lead to clashes with the Chinese Nationalist, and Soviet, armies. For its part, the Japanese army in Manchuria operated nearly independently. Ultimately clashes with the Chinese lead to full-scale war and an invasion by Japan of China.
While Japanese offensive operations were initially successful, ultimately China was too vast and too populous for the Japanese to defeat. The Chinese Nationalist held on, first with German and Soviet material help, and then with American and Soviet help The United States, sympathetic with the Chinese Nationalist started to put in place economic boycotts against Japan, fully aware that Japan could not continue to function without access to foreign raw materials. That made it plain to the administrations in both nations that Japan would have to go into diplomacy with the Chinese, or launch a war against the United States. In spite of the seeming obstacles of the latter, the Japanese did not back down and in fact expanded into French Indochina when the German occupation of France made that practical.
The Japanese Navy itself was a major factor in Japan's launching strikes against the West. A major world navy, it had not seen significant combat since the Russo Japanese War and was involved in intense rivalry with the Japanese Army. In spite of being bogged down in a quagmire against China, the Japanese Army saw a future war against the Soviet Union as being both inevitable and desirable, contrary to the views of some latter-day historians who assert that the Japanese Army did not have that in mind. It very much did, but did not view it as practical until China was defeated. The Japanese Navy, however, which was extremely dependent upon foreign oil, saw a quick sharp strike and series of invasions as a way for Japan to secure the raw materials it needed.
The oddity of that view is that it required the United States to acquiesce to defeat. In spite of some comments from within the Japanese Navy that suggest that it never regarded that as realistic, it did. The thought was that taking out the United States Navy at Pearl Harbor, including its aircraft carriers, would render the United States defenseless and that after Japan invaded the Pacific territories it wished to take, the United States would sue for peace.
It was completely unrealistic.
On the same day, as detailed below, the Joint Board of the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy agreed that in the event of a war, the primary goal would be to defeat Nazi Germany first.
By this point in 1941 the military, in spite of what the public still hoped, had concluded that full scale declared war with Germany and Japan was inevitable and it was preparing for it night and day. The Navy was already fighting the war, albeit unofficially, in the Atlantic. Military eyes on the continental US and the Administration were focused on the war in Europe, while also knowing that a war with Japan was coming. Even at this point, the decision had already been made to defeat Germany, regarded as the more strategically dangerous enemy, first. And indeed the decision was correct, given Germany's ongoing advance into the Soviet Union. Had Germany defeated the USSR the results of the Pacific War, in some ways, would hardly have mattered.
As an aspect of this, and we'll note more on this in a future post, this meant that the US was committed to a two front war right from the onset. While we frequently hear of Stalin's demands for the opening of a "second front", the Western Allies were always fighting on two or more fronts while the USSR was fighting on one.
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