Why did Imperial Japan think starting a war with The U.S. was a good Idea?

[Eliar]

Sunk Cost Fallacy is probably a major factor here?

Japan had sunk an ungodly amount of resources, treasure,blood and political capital in its Chinese adventure and lets face it was in a sort of proxy war against the US for some time now or at least US supplied Chinese forces.

In 1941 there is now way in hell any Japanese politician with power or upper military officer would accept the sort of withdrawal the Hull Note suggested, no matter how one sees it.

At that point the powers probably had no idea what a proper "superpower" was all about. Sure the Japanese knew in abstract that the US had an overwhelming advantage when it came to numbers, economy or production.

I doubt tho they could internalize the difference between Great Power and... Well the US.

They had beat European powers before. The US was probably to them just a wee bit tougher challenge.

 

[Ironanvil1]

Considering that America was working it's way up to war with Evil aggressor nations, that it already did everything short of war to 'kill Japan'...

Click to shrink...

And that's the point - the US declaring war on Japan is a rather different prospect than a Japanese sneak attack launching the war.

Giant unsinkable aircraft carrier under control of a hostile power building up it's military might right next to your major shipping lines needed to supply utterly everything.

Click to shrink...

Not when said "aircraft carrier" itself needs supplied and is 5000 miles from the nearest viable support.

 

[SpeckofStardust]

And that's the point - the US declaring war on Japan is a rather different prospect than a Japanese sneak attack launching the war.

Not when said "aircraft carrier" itself needs supplied and is 5000 miles from the nearest viable support.

Click to shrink...

Preventing it from getting said supplies would be an act of war.
Without the 'advantage' of launching the first blow, which was the only small and honestly pathetic chance of Japan not getting completely wreck in the inevitable war against America.

 

[Ironanvil1]

Preventing it from getting said supplies would be an act of war.

Click to shrink...

Yes, so any supplies the US puts in pre-war are just some more stocks on an isolated island that cannot feasibly be supported once war is ongoing.

Without the 'advantage' of launching the first blow, which was the only small and honestly pathetic chance of Japan not getting completely wreck in the inevitable war against America.

Click to shrink...

That's the fallacy that Yamamoto fell into. The only way for Japan to "win" a war against the US was to have the US get bored and not wish to continue. This is exactly the thing the US Navy planners were worried about, a problem which the Japanese kindly relieved them from having to deal with via bloodlusting the entire US population...

 

[CV12Hornet]

But you're not better off starting the war sooner, not if it comes at the cost of removing almost all political obstacles in the way of Washington prosecuting a war against you. Unless you're so deluded that you think rolling tanks into Washington is a viable endgame a good outcome of the war involves a negotiated settlement, giving the American Navy a bloody nose makes it less rather than more likely that will happen. You take the Dutch Indies and if a war breaks out it gets fought in the Dutch Indies because the US is years away from being able to project power all the way to the home islands. Just maybe you can extend that conflict long enough that the fathers and mothers of America get sick of sending their sons to die for the Dutch Empire.

Click to shrink...

How long are you advocating Japan wait? In six months, once they occupy Indochina (and since you talk about the oil embargo, that's when you're talking about), they just flat-out run out of oil. In three years, the US Navy completes the Two-Ocean Navy Act (the contents of which weren't exactly kept secret) and is entirely out of Japan's reach to defeat. And by 1950, there's a good chance their economy, never in the best of shape, just straight up collapses.

 

[SpeckofStardust]

That's the fallacy that Yamamoto fell into. The only way for Japan to "win" a war against the US was to have the US get bored and not wish to continue. This is exactly the thing the US Navy planners were worried about, a problem which the Japanese kindly relieved them from having to deal with via bloodlusting the entire US population...

Click to shrink...

No one is saying that they didnt effed it up, we are saying why they thought it was a good idea at the time.

 

[Mistborn]

How long are you advocating Japan wait? In six months, once they occupy Indochina (and since you talk about the oil embargo, that's when you're talking about), they just flat-out run out of oil. In three years, the US Navy completes the Two-Ocean Navy Act (the contents of which weren't exactly kept secret) and is entirely out of Japan's reach to defeat. And by 1950, there's a good chance their economy, never in the best of shape, just straight up collapses.

Click to shrink...

You don't wait you grab the Dutch Indies now, the oil fields there where almost able the fill the gap left by the embargo otl. The war starting later down the line is might be bad but it doesn't matter. In three years the US is going out Navy you anyway even if the war goes outlandishly well because the US industrial base too big and too far away for anything else. You only get to "win" if the US is unwilling to commit the resources to defeat you.

That willingness is very much in doubt 1941. The US is not terribly keen on going to war hence why Roosevelt is mucking around with embargoes and Lend Lease. Subjugating Japan is a monumental undertaking and the US may very well not be willing to commit that level blood and treasure over another nations colonial possession, especially if they get drawn into the European theater.

It completely possible that Imperial Goose is already cooked by 1941, the odds aren't good regardless of what option you pick. Trying to avoid war with the US or limit the scope of war is still low percentage, but it sure as hell is higher percentage than opting in to a total war with half the world industry and hoping for a miracle.

 

[Night]

They drew every possible wrong lesson from Tsushima, and believed they could execute a second Tsushima, despite the fact this was probably a fantasy born of their own unrealistic training and wargaming.

Really if you want to trace the Japanese decision to go to war with the US it goes back a very, very long way, into the 1920s and 1930s strategic planning of the Japanese navy, their belief that the Americans were their obvious opponent, their choosing a fairly doctrinaire quality-vs-quantity argument for how to achieve victory, their dedicating everything towards achieving this, and the increasingly unrealistic fleet and map exercises they envisioned to achieve that victory, creating in the Japanese military a conceit that not only was beating the Americans what the Navy was for, the Navy could actually do it.

Even having constructed a strategic and tactical fantasyland based on successful misdirection and detailed complex maneuvering by non-supporting forces (and thereby throwing Clausewitz and a fair bit of Sun-Tzu under the bus in exchange for the worst bits of Sun-Tzu's advice), they still recognized that they either fought and won a war against the Americans by mid-1943 or they were screwed. They convinced themselves this was possible, even after all this, by not confronting important strategic questions, such as what was to be done about Australia or how, if it was at all possible, they would deal with forcing the United States to the bargain with them if it was unwilling. The failure states for the war Japan ultimately launched were built into their lack of endgame contingencies, their lack of considering that it could go any way but the one they envisioned. This was compounded by opening the war with the Pearl Harbor strike, which actually invalidated the majority of their pre-war operational planning by ensuring that there would be no decisive battle with a US fleet advancing to relieve the Philippines.

It was a willful blindness, a refusal to examine one's preconceptions in the knowledge that doing so will reveal everything you are doing is a lie. A similar issue can be seen in German planning to invade the Soviet Union, where they restrict themselves to discussing tactical and operational issues, where their approach to strategic questions is to assert unsupported and unexamined axioms; of course the Heer could beat the Red Army. Of course the Soviet Union will collapse if we reach Moscow. Ideas that can only be arrived at by never asking serious questions about the strategic-scale dynamics of such a campaign and the strength of an opponent.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

@Night hits a lot of the important notes, but i would also liek to add that there was an aspect of buying into one's own ideo-mythology too much.

Of course Yamato-Daimishi was unbeatable and would win out in the decisive battle.

Of course there would be a decisive battle.

Of course, america, being a soft democratic nation lacked the will to contest against hard man facists.


AFAICT, many if not most of the top military officers in Japan thought fighting america was a terrible idea, but by the mid 1930's it was arguably already too late to change course. The american war plans for punching out Japan dated back to the early 20's, And Japan had seen american as it's ultimate enemy for at least as long. If the japanese admirals were talking about preemptive strikes on the US, it was because ase they saw war with the US as functionally inevitable.

They were probably right about that last bit, too.

Heck, I'm not even sure they were wrong to focus on decisive battle. They litterally had no chance of winning an attritional fight, so the knock out blow, even if unlikely to work, was the *only* option to go for.