Now that the smoke of battle has long since cleared over the Hawaiian Islands, now that the damage done by the Japanese attack has been repaired, and that we can look at that event with greater objectivity, we may well ask ourselves: Why did the Japanese make that ill-fated move in the first place? Was it the only way for them to give the war an initial turn in their favor, or was it, at least, the best among several possibilities open to them? Did the attack achieve the purpose the Japanese had in mind? Why did they not follow up their success by a full-fledged invasion of Hawaii itself, or even of the American continent? Interesting as the answers to these questions may be per se, they might also prove of value in helping us to answer other even more important questions, by revealing the general mold in which Japanese naval thought is cast, by indicating the typically Japanese psychology which engendered that attack and which will continue to shape Japanese strategy in the future.
In undertaking an analysis of national strategy, we must keep in mind that, in addition to a consideration of existing conditions, such as geographic location, aims and objectives, and relative naval power, the psychology of the nation under observation must also be taken into account. A study of the material factors involved may tell us what the over-all plan of a campaign must be, or at any rate what it should be. But the precise manner of execution of that plan cannot be foreseen in this way, for no two strategists would solve a problem in exactly the same fashion. Even if all circumstances are alike, there is still room for individual differences in carrying out the general design. National habit and preference, working through the mind of the appointed leaders, will give the actual course of events its peculiar drift. For instance, in any plan we work out we are subconsciously guided by considerations of fair play, while the Japanese just as unconsciously apply their own national concept of bushido.
To be sure, the basic strategy of the Pacific war was dictated by a set of circumstances which the Japanese could not alter. Since their home land is an island country, any move towards expansion on their part, even if limited to Asia itself, is bound to carry across the sea. This involves the moving of large bodies of troops, and hence Japan, in order to secure these shipments, must prevent the enemy’s fleet from cutting her lines of communication. The surest way to do this is to defeat that fleet in a battle at the very beginning of the conflict. Considering, however, the distances to be traversed and her opponent’s naval strength, Japan could not be expected to send her battle fleet across the Pacific on such a doubtful mission. Since the Navy is Japan’s first and last line of defense, she must husband it with exceeding care. Moreover, in view of Japan’s scanty resources, she must be satisfied with waging a war of “limited objective,” which means that she cannot attempt to conquer a more powerful foe, but must try, by means of quick and painful body blows, to stifle his will to fight before his entire might can be mobilized. If this type of warfare does not seriously endanger the victim itself, he may soon feel ready to make concessions to the aggressor rather than to continue an unpopular and costly war—especially if these concessions concern far-away and foreign lands.
In mapping out the details of this general plan Japan had the choice of several gambits, each one of which might have produced the desired results. One was for the Nipponese to proceed on their Asiatic conquest regardless of the American fleet, only making sure of the capture of Guam. With this intermediary base lost and the Philippines endangered, an American admiral would have thought twice before venturing into Asiatic waters, through a screen of Japanese-held islands, many of which represented unsinkable aircraft carriers. Had he done so, however, in a spirit of reckless daring, the Japanese fleet might have intercepted him at the proper time and place, reinforced by hundreds of shore-based planes to increase its chance of victory. It is quite possible that under such circumstances we might have suffered a crushing defeat, as indicated by the fate of the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse. We must remember that our Pacific fleet was not as strong then as it is now, and that we were not yet fully aware of our own weakness or of the real strength of Japan. Yet a defeat of our fleet in open battle would have been a much more serious affair than even a successful surprise attack on ships in port, as it would have involved the permanent loss of numerous vessels.
We may assume with a high degree of probability that such a course, namely the drawing out and annihilation of the opponent’s fleet, would be the one favored by the British Navy.
Another possibility was to cut our existing avenues of approach to Japan and East Asia by attacking and seizing the main bases along those routes. There are three of them: the northern one, leading along the Aleutians; the central one via Hawaii and Guam; and the southern route via the South Sea Islands. The capture of Guam by the enemy sufficed in itself to cut the middle line; to deprive us of the other two, the Japanese must establish themselves in Dutch Harbor on the one hand, in Samoa and Fiji on the other. If successful in this—and there is no reason why at that time it should have been harder than the attack on Pearl Harbor— they could have prevented our interfering with the progress of their Asiatic conquests and put an end to our aid to Australia. In fact, the Japanese themselves realized the need and tried to make up for their initial neglect as soon as the completion of their Asiatic program freed enough naval power for that purpose. But by that time their great opportunity had passed. Their belated attack on the northern lane netted them only temporary advantages and permanent grief. Their attempt to extend their control of the southern route ended in defeat in the Battle of the Coral Sea. When they tried to make doubly sure of their domination of the central line they were frustrated in the Battle of Midway. Coming late and hence lacking the element of surprise, all three Japanese moves to deny our fleet access to the Far East were thus thwarted, enabling us eventually to change over to the offensive, to extend our lines of approach farther and farther into the conquered empire, closer to Japan herself.
The parallelism of this second course with the German “round-the-seas plan” suggests that it would have been the one chosen by Hitler’s admirals as the opening move of a Pacific war.
Yet instead of either of these two possibilities the Japanese followed a third course, that is, a surprise raid on our main naval base before a declaration of war, to cripple our fleet and thus to prevent it from interfering with their Asiatic plans. In view of the fact that—as we know now—the attack on Pearl Harbor did not preclude but only postponed an American offensive, while either of the two other possible courses might have made it altogether impossible, it is evident that the master strategists of Japan had what they considered well-founded reasons for starting the war in the manner they did. A survey of their naval history will provide evidence of how these reasons came to be so well established in their minds.
For most maritime countries generally act according to a pattern which has been established early in their naval career and to which they are apt to resort if similar conditions prevail. A knowledge of these traditional patterns, which in the last analysis are expressions of a nation’s psychology, should be of great benefit to the naval leader. That Nelson, for instance, knew this is shown in his maxim: Close with the Frenchman and out- maneuver a Russian, meaning that advantage should be taken of an opponent’s chief tendency or weakness. There is no doubt that tradition has a deep influence on the decisions made in Tokyo.
In our historical investigation we can limit ourselves to the period after Japan s emergence from her self-imposed isolation. The objective of modern Japan’s first aggressive move was Korea. In 1894 she came to blows with the vast and seemingly powerful, but peaceable, slow, and disunited realm of China over the question of who should control that hapless country. After months of diplomatic bickering and preparations for war by both contending parties, hostilities began without a declaration of war on either side. On July 25 of that year, a Japanese squadron met a Chinese force near Chemulpo, both sides intent on protecting their troop movements to Korea. No one seems to be sure who started the shooting, but the encounter ended with the rout of the Chinese warships.
After this demonstration of Chinese naval weakness, the Nipponese lost no time in throwing their armies into Korea and driving out the opposing forces. But the bulk of the Chinese Navy, about equal in paper strength to that of the Japanese, still existed. Although it had been forbidden by the civilian authorities to venture out into the Yellow Sea, it constituted a potential threat to Japanese communication lines. A few weeks later, however, the two fleets, again convoying troop transports, met by chance and locked horns in the Battle of the Yalu River. Again the Chinese suffered a humiliating defeat, even though the Japanese, afraid to risk their precious ships, refrained from fully pressing their advantage. They thereby enabled their enemy to withdraw to Port Arthur and eventually to Wei-hai-wei, where he remained without any attempt to interfere with Japanese shipping. But even that seemed too risky for the Nipponese, so they proceeded to besiege that port with their Army, while the Navy blockaded it without risking any of its major units. As soon as Wei-hai-wei fell and the Chinese fleet was definitely eliminated, the Japanese sent their ships south to conquer Formosa and the Pescadores Islands, in order to gain additional pawns for the peace negotiations. Tired of the war that had brought only humiliation and expense, China was ready to conclude it even though it meant territorial and economic concessions on her part.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 perfected and clarified the strategic pattern established by the previous conflict, without changing it in fundamental aspects. According to E. A. Falk’s Togo and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, it generally followed step by step the campaign of 1894-95; in some respects this predilection for the once- beaten path even hampered Japanese effectiveness. However, since it was conducted on a larger scale and since conditions more closely paralleled those of the present war, it is of special interest for us.
Again Japan coveted territory controlled by a much larger and potentially more powerful nation. Superficial judgment, taking into account only statistical data, gave Japan no great odds. The Russian East Asiatic squadron alone was about equal to the total naval strength of Japan. In man power and resources Russia far exceeded anything the Japanese could muster. But the Russians, whose fighting prowess no one will doubt today, did not put their heart into a struggle that occurred thousands of miles away from their homeland. Although they knew the psychology of the Japanese well enough from previous contacts with them, they failed completely to act upon their knowledge. In a book on the Imperial Russian Navy, Fred T. Jane, the well-known naval authority, included a passage expressing the general Russian opinion on the Japanese Navy: “We do not like the Japanese. Their navy is good —too good; but they would never fight Russia fairly. They would invite us to dinner, and poison us, or something like that! Treacherous: you can’t trust them.” The book was written in 1899!
In fact, however, the Russians trusted them too much. When trouble started brewing between the two countries over the Manchurian problem, the Japanese at once put their Navy in fighting condition, while the Russians played along with halfhearted measures. After a prolonged diplomatic struggle, Japan broke off relations with Russia on February 6, 1904, thus giving a clear warning of impending war: But instead of getting the fleet ready for it, the Russian Viceroy in the Far East, Admiral Alexeieff, withheld the report from the crews in order not to make them nervous. A day later, however, the rupture became known through the newspapers, which even warned of a possible surprise attack on Port Arthur, the chief Russian naval base in the Pacific. Nevertheless, the Imperial Fleet remained outside the port, utterly unprepared and practically unprotected. Upon leaving the fleet on the evening of February 8, the Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral Vitgeft, reassured the commanders that no danger was to be expected.
At half past twelve that night the Japanese struck, Admiral Togo sending ten destroyers to attack the unsuspecting Russians. Well informed by his spies, he knew the exact position of every one of their ships. Approaching in the darkness, his destroyers were sighted by two Russian patrol boats outside Port Arthur; but since the Russians had orders not to fire on any account, lest they provoke the Japanese, all they could do was precede the suspicious craft to report their coming. They reached their fleet together with the enemy, and their report on board the flagship coincided with the explosion of the first Japanese torpedoes. When the Nipponese departed again, followed by the confused firing of the Russians, they left behind them two battleships and one cruiser damaged, the rest of the Russian fleet and Russia as a whole shocked and dispirited.
In contrast to the fight off Chemulpo in 1894, the attack on Port Arthur was not due to a chance meeting, but was a deliberate surprise, planned to obtain a quick initial advantage over a slow opponent. Considering the tremendous endurance of Russia, Japan’s only chance of victory lay in a series of stabs which would destroy Russia’s will to fight before she could mobilize all her resources against the small island empire. To gain that advantage Japan was quite ready to ignore all international conventions.' As Tikowara Hesibo, in his book Before Port Arthur in a Destroyer, expresses it: “I cannot help thinking that those stupid Russians were very far from suspecting that matters would come to a head so soon, without any declaration of war coming first—a rather ridiculous and inexplicable European custom which is completely ignored by us.”
The Russian attitude, on the other hand, is typified by the words of the fellow-traveler of Commander Semenoff, quoted in the latter’s book Rasplata (The Reckoning). On their way to Port Arthur, just before the news of the Japanese attack leaked out, the Passengers of the Trans-Siberian train were heatedly discussing the situation. One of them, trying to allay the apprehensions of the others, exclaims:
They will never dare! Never! Why, it would be playing va banque for them, or even worse a game already lost. Assuming even that they scored a success at starting, what would be the next step? Surely we should not throw down our arms after the first reverse? I could almost wish them an initial success. Just think what the effect of this would be! The whole of Russia would rise like one man, and never sheathe the sword until...,
to which Semenoff himself replies: “God grant it may be only a reverse, and not a serious defeat.”
Who does not hear in the words of that Russian traveler the claims of our own prewar optimists that the Japanese would not be foolish enough to commit hara-kiri by attacking us, as we could smash them within six weeks, or, better yet, between breakfast and lunch?
The material damage done by the Japanese during the surprise attack on Port Arthur was not fatal by any means. Compared to what they achieved at Pearl Harbor, it was a mere pin prick. Russian casualties amounted only to 7 dead and 8 wounded, in contrast to some 3,300 fatalities among our own men. But the effect on the morale of the Russians was appalling, especially as the first blow was quickly followed by a series of other reverses chiefly due to previous Russian negligence. And in addition to the losses suffered before the war had even begun officially, a division of ships that was on its way from the Baltic had to turn back in view of the impossibility of breaking through the Japanese blockade of Port Arthur. Thus the Russians were left without hope, at least for quite a while, of making up their losses by new arrivals from Europe. No wonder they were demoralized and paralyzed, while the Japanese, their wildest hopes surpassed, were sent into a frenzy of ecstatic war effort, and felt sufficiently safe to dispatch a large army to Korea.
But the torpedo attack was not Togo’s sole attempt to put the Russian fleet out of action. On the morning of February 9 he took his whole battle fleet to Port Arthur to finish the job with his guns. But though disorganized and disheartened, the Russian warships and forts answered the enemy’s fire, damaging some of the Japanese units, and demonstrating to Togo that his quarry was still able to bite. Realizing his mistake, the Admiral quickly turned away and from then on contented himself with a blockade of Port Arthur, which achieved the desired result of safeguarding Japanese troop movements without involving heavy losses to his fleet. His cautious strategy was greatly facilitated by the lack of aggressiveness on the part of the Russians. Immediately after the first attack, Alexeieff forbade the fleet to take the risk of proceeding to sea, and withdrew it to the inner harbor to lick its wounds and to let its spirit deteriorate until the Russian crews became obsessed with the idea that their foe was invincible.
Only once during that first year of the war was the Japanese command of the sea called in question—when Admiral Makarov, Russia’s ablest naval leader, took command of the Port Arthur squadron. He vigorously attacked the task of repairing the material and psychological damage and of welding the various units of the Imperial Fleet into an efficient fighting team. Taking them boldly out to sea almost every day, he gradually instilled in his men a new spirit of hope and a new will to fight. But this promising interlude came to an abrupt and tragic end when Makarov’s flagship, while pursuing Japanese cruisers, struck a mine and sank with the Admiral on board. With him Russia’s hope and faith perished and his death was followed by black despair. Now the advocates of passiveness gained the upper hand again; the fleet returned to port to resume its enervating inactivity.
Yet even though it harbored only the soulless body of a fleet, Port Arthur remained a thorn in the Japanese flesh. Being the enemy’s most important stronghold close to the theater of operation, it had to be eliminated if the war was to be won. Since the Mikado’s fleet could not do so without incurring considerable risk, it devolved upon the Army to storm the fortress. That was done after a siege lasting many months and costing the Japanese a tremendous toll in lives. In the meantime their fleet had nothing to do but to wait outside for the moment when the Russian ships would be forced out of their shelter by the advancing besiegers. When that moment arrived, the once proud and mighty squadron made a halfhearted attempt to escape to Vladivostok, which was at once intercepted by the watchful Togo. Every last ounce of fighting spirit beaten out of them, the Russian fleet returned to Port Arthur never to leave it again.
While this was going on, Russia made a great effort to relieve Port Arthur and to reinforce her fleet there by a new squadron organized in the Baltic. Placed under the command of Admiral Rodjestvensky, this Baltic fleet was quite powerful on paper, but actually consisted of weak units, with untrained and inexperienced crews. Yet even while the relieving force was still on its long and tortuous way, Port Arthur fell and with it the last hope of success. Still the Russians ploughed on, only to suffer a complete defeat in the Battle of Tsushima.
The battle and its outcome vindicated Togo’s cautious tactics before Port Arthur. To save his ships for the final encounter, he preferred to sacrifice many thousands of Japanese soldiers, because they were an expendable commodity, while warships were irreplaceable. Even to the very last moment he remained careful and patient. He might have gone out to meet Rodjestvensky and defeated him long before the Russians ever entered Japanese home waters. But that would have involved another unnecessary risk, and so Togo chose to wait until he had all the advantages on his side. Once the enemy was in the trap, however, and there was no danger of more to come, there was no reason for holding back any longer and so Togo pounced upon the enemy with all his might.
The Battle of Tsushima definitely broke the Russian will to continue the war, and peace was soon afterwards restored. Even though Japan did not gain all the advantages expected of her victory, she emerged from the conflict as one of the world’s great powers, with a whetted appetite for more and bigger conquests and the confidence of being able to take on even bigger and stronger opponents.
Thus the pattern of Japanese naval warfare emerges: First comes a paralyzing blow which stuns the surprised enemy while giving the Nipponese time to effect necessary overseas troop movements; then maneuvers calculated to harass the enemy and whittle down his strength at no great risk to the Japanese battle fleet, even if this means the loss of many Japanese lives; and finally, the luring of the opponent’s main fleet into a region where the forces of the Rising Sun may have the best chances of victory.
Whenever Japan faces a similar situation, that is, whenever she opposes another apparently more powerful enemy, this pattern of strategy, twice proved successful, will be used again. It has been followed quite faithfully so far, and so we can accept it as a pretty good indication of what we must expect of them in the future.
That war was brewing between Japan and the Allies was fairly obvious to any observer of Far Eastern affairs. Only the timing of the outbreak was doubtful. As in former cases, diplomatic negotiations were carried on by the Japanese to gain time for final preparations. When these were complete, and nothing was to be gained by prolonging peaceable relations, the initial blow was struck. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, without a previous declaration of war, this time even without the preliminary warning of a diplomatic break. With this event the course of the new naval war began to take shape according to the pattern developed by the Nipponese during previous conflicts. Naturally they expected that it would result in eventual victory just as it had done in the past.
As far as material damage was concerned, the Pearl Harbor attack was even more effective than that on Port Arthur in 1904. According to the Navy Report, it temporarily disabled every battleship and most of the aircraft in the Hawaiian area. In conjunction with the capture of Guam it removed for the time being any danger of our interfering with Japanese plans of conquest in East Asia. Hence it did exactly what the Japanese had hoped for, proving the efficacy of their traditional strategy.
Having thus established what we may call the typical Japanese pattern of naval action, we now can utilize it in answering the questions raised at the beginning of this discussion. For instance, why didn’t the Japanese follow up the attack by an invasion of Hawaii? Evidently, such an ambitious undertaking was not in their plans. The “limited objective” they had in mind was the conquest of East Asiatic lands and resources, not an invasion of the American continent, for which the capture of Hawaii would have been a necessary preliminary. The Nipponese master minds knew quite well that there was just as little chance for such an invasion as there had been for a conquest of Russia proper in 1904. All that was needed was the temporary elimination of the American fleet to enable them to launch their Asiatic conquests. The raid on Pearl Harbor did just that, and so it seemed to serve its purpose well. Furthermore, Togo’s naval attack on Port Arthur on the morning of February 9, 1904, had demonstrated that a serious assault on a well-fortified port might become very costly for the aggressor. Yet the Japanese fleet could not risk serious damage as long as there still existed another American fleet and the British Navy to reckon with. Moreover, an invasion over thousands of miles by a large body of troops would have required such elaborate and evident preparations that they could hardly have escaped American observers in Japan. It is one thing to make a quick raid with a few fast warships, and another to move some hundreds of slow transports over a long and exposed sea lane.
We can also see now why the Japanese chose their sneak attack as the opening move of the Pacific war rather than either of the other possibilities outlined above. Superficially, conditions were so much like those prevailing in the Russo-Japanese War that the Pearl Harbor attack seemed to be a smart beginning. Actually, however, the Nipponese misjudged the situation in several fundamental aspects. To be sure, America was slow in mobilizing her potential power, just as China and Russia had been in the past; before Pearl Harbor American public opinion was not wholeheartedly in favor of a war with Japan; and the crippling of the American Pacific fleet did enable the Japanese to complete their Asiatic program. But—and here is where the Nipponese made their worst mistake—the American character is quite different from that of the Chinese in 1894 or the Russians in 1904. While the first unexpected successes of the Japanese really disheartened, demoralized, and paralyzed those nations, such a reaction was hardly to be expected from the American people. If the leaders of Japan had studied American psychology more carefully, and American history more critically, they would have known that an initial defeat is the very thing to make Americans wake up and get ready for a real fight. What was only a pious and fallacious hope on the part of the Russians of 1904, namely that the first reverse would unite their nation more strongly and increase their will to fight, was a reality here. At the beginning of American naval tradition stands John Paul Jones’ famous exclamation: “Struck? I have not yet begun to fight!” an utterance truly symbolical of the American way of waging war. Lulled into complacency by the talk of American softness due to overluxurious living, and the belief that peaceable America would soon tire of war if the continent itself were not endangered, the Japanese naturally expected the same reaction to their raid as that encountered in previous opponents. Even as late as the Battle of Midway they still seem to have acted on the conviction that the Pearl Harbor attack had reduced not only America’s ability to fight, but also her will to fight. Otherwise they would never have risked even a part of their valuable fleet by sending it into our own sphere of superiority. The disillusionment following that battle must have been a worse blow to the Japanese war lords than the material losses they suffered.
We may be sure that they interpreted that painful setback as due to a deviation from their traditional policy. It only strengthened them in their conviction that Togo was right when he refused to imperil his main force, keeping it in readiness for the supreme moment of the final and decisive fight. According to the pattern established by him, that battle must not, however, be fought far away from Japan. Rather let a few islands, transports, planes, or soldiers be lost. Distressing and dangerous as that may be, the battle fleet must not be risked on account of such losses. It must wait patiently until the enemy is drawn deeper into Japan’s spider web where every advantage can be used to give maximum assurance of a Japanese victory. When that moment arrives, the Japanese will be ready to throw into the fight everything they have. There is no alternative for them, for a final victory might yet save Japan, while a defeat will mean the irrevocable collapse of the proud empire. If this passive waiting causes impatience and criticism among the people, the war lords can point to the divine hero Togo, who under similar conditions calmly faced reproach, but in the end justified his caution by a final and glorious victory.
The lesson to be drawn from these reflections is that we must proceed carefully in order not to fall into the Japanese trap. We must not again become over-confident because at present we find comparatively little opposition to our offensive moves. We must not be led to believe that this is a sign of crumbling morale on the part of the Japanese. The final test, the day of reckoning is yet to come, and it is for that day that the Japanese are trying to conserve their strength. To be fully prepared for it ourselves, we must be sure not only of qualitative but also of considerable quantitative superiority so as to sustain the inevitably heavy losses. While we must not slacken the pace of our relentless offensive against the Japanese, we must refrain from premature stabs against Japan herself until we are sure of enough reserve power to face the cornered enemy in his own den.
But while the thought that the final reckoning is still to come and that it will be a hard fight may help to allay the fears of the Japanese, it need not intimidate us. The study of their history indicates that their pattern of strategy was efficacious only because they faced inferior opponents. The Russians and Chinese were actually defeated before the war had started, because they lacked the firm will to fight and win. Japanese initial successes only served to make obvious what had been hidden under a thin veneer of strength. In this war, however, the Nipponese are facing a foe whose naval tradition is just as bright as their own. Even now the situation is entirely different from what it was in their earlier wars. Then they could follow up their first success, gained by surprising an unsuspecting enemy, with a succession of defeats which never gave him time to catch his breath. Now it is the Japanese themselves who are reeling under a shower of blows, who are falling back on the defensive, and whose strength is rapidly being whittled down. And their fleet opposes not such a conglomeration of old, unseaworthy, poorly manned tubs as was Rodjestvensky’s squadron, but the mightiest naval concentration in history, composed of the most modern battle units in existence. Most important of all, however, their opponent, despite Pearl Harbor, is not at all discouraged and decadent, but vigorous, eager to fight and to win, well trained and ably led, and therefore sure of himself and of final victory.
The Japanese tradition-bound adherence to a previously successful scheme, the rigidity with which they follow the precepts of their national heroes, without taking into account differences in the character of their opponents, may yet in the end prove to be one of the main factors in their own downfall.