Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable?In this provocative history, James B. Wood challenges the received wisdom that Japan's defeat in the Pacific was historically inevitable. He argues instead that it was only when the Japanese military prematurely abandoned its original sound strategic plan--to secure the resources Japan needed and establish a viable defensible perimeter for the Empire--that the Allies were able to regain the initiative and lock Japanese forces into a war of attrition they were not prepared to fight. The book persuasively shows how the Japanese army and navy had both the opportunity and the capability to have fought a different and more successful war in the Pacific that could have influenced the course and outcome of World War II. It is therefore a study both of Japanese defeat and of what was needed to achieve a potential Japanese victory, or at the very least, to avoid total ruin. Wood's argument does not depend on signal individual historical events or dramatic accidents. Instead it examines how familiar events could have become more complicated or problematic under different, but nevertheless historically possible, conditions due to changes in the complex interaction of strategic and operational factors over time. Wood concludes that fighting a different war was well within the capacities of imperial Japan. He underscores the fact that the enormous task of achieving total military victory over Japan would have been even more difficult, perhaps too difficult, if the Japanese had waged a different war and the Allies had not fought as skillfully as they did. If Japan had traveled that alternate military road, the outcome of the Pacific War could have differed significantly from that we know so well--and, perhaps a little too complacently, accept. |
Other editions - View all
Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable? James B Wood Limited preview - 2023 |
Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable? James B Wood No preview available - 2023 |
Common terms and phrases
advance air forces aircraft airfields airpower Allied amphibious areas attack battle Bergerud boats bombers Boyd and Yoshida campaign carrier forces casualties central Pacific China combat Combined Fleet construction convoys decisive defeat destruction divisions early effective empire enemy escorts fight fought Guadalcanal Guinea Home Islands I-boats IGHQ Imperial Japanese invasion Iwo Jima Japan Japanese Army Japanese fleet Japanese forces Japanese Merchant Marine Japanese Navy Japanese submarines kamikaze land land-based late Leyte Gulf logistical MacArthur Manchuria Marianas merchant shipping Midway National Defense Zone Naval Institute Press Naval Operations numbers OCMH offensive Okinawa Operations in World outcome Pacific Fleet Pacific War Parillo Pearl Harbor Philippines pilots planes Rabaul resistance Saipan Solomons South Pacific southwest Pacific Spector strategic bombing Submarine Force submarines Suicide Squads tactics Tinian torpedoes troops Truk U.S. Navy U.S. submarines victory victory disease vulnerable warfare warships Washington World War II York
Popular passages
Page 2 - ... World War II? This is such a straightforward question that we assume it has an obvious answer. Indeed the question itself is hardly ever asked. Allied victory is taken for granted. Was their cause not manifestly just? Despite all the dangers, was the progress of their vast forces not irresistible? Explanations of Allied success contain a strong element of determinism. We now know the story so well that we do not consider the uncomfortable prospect that other outcomes might have been possible.
Page 4 - To understand how racism influenced the conduct of the war in Asia has required going beyond the formal documents and battle reports upon which historians normally rely and drawing on materials such as songs, movies, cartoons, and a wide variety of popular as well as academic writings published at the time. In some academic circles these are not respectable sources, and they are certainly difficult to handle.
Page 4 - ... Pacific theatre of the Second World War. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York, 1986). Dower points out that the Americans and Japanese viewed each other in distinctly racist ways, and this was a culmination of years of negative stereotypical beliefs. He argues: 'The greatest challenge has not been to recall the raw emotions of the war, but rather to identify dynamic [historical] patterns in the torrent of war words and graphic images.
Page 4 - ... to bring such abstractions to earth by demonstrating how stereotyped and often blatantly racist thinking contributed to poor military intelligence and planning, atrocious behavior, and the adoption of exterminationist policies.