Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable?

by James B. Wood

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742553408
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	08/05/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.07(w) x 9.13(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

James B. Wood is Charles Keller Professor of History at Williams College.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Pacific War Redux
Chapter 1: Going to War
Chapter 2: Losing the War
Chapter 3: Winning the War
Chapter 4: Missing Ships
Chapter 5: Sunk!
Chapter 6: A Fleet-in-Being
Chapter 7: The Battle for the Skies
Chapter 8: The Army in the Pacific
Conclusion: The Road Not Taken

Editorial Reviews

Wood has raised many provocative points worthy of debate. Recommended.

Choice Reviews

[Wood's] carefully constructed arguments stem from a wide reading and understanding of the war's historic literature, and his suggested alternative courses of Japanese actions are entirely credible. .. [his] careful examination of alternative possibilities in the Pacific War is an impressive example of good counterfactual history.

The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists - Col. Stanley L. Falk

Wood has raised many provocative points worthy of debate. Recommended.

CHOICE

[Wood's] carefully constructed arguments stem from a wide reading and understanding of the war's historic literature, and his suggested alternative courses of Japanese actions are entirely credible...[his] careful examination of alternative possibilities in the Pacific War is an impressive example of good counterfactual history.
— Col. Stanley L. Falk

The Journal of The Australian Society of Archivists

This impressive counterfactual analysis demonstrates that the course of the Pacific War was not set in stone. Wood demonstrates, through careful analysis of alternatives actually discussed by Japan’s leaders, that the decision to go to war was not an exercise in national suicide. Instead, specific choices closed a window of opportunity for Japan to have bought more time and might well have altered fundamentally the war’s conclusion.

Dennis E. Showalter

Wood has raised many provocative points worthy of debate. Recommended.

Choice

[Wood's] carefully constructed arguments stem from a wide reading and understanding of the war's historic literature, and his suggested alternative courses of Japanese actions are entirely credible . . . [his] careful examination of alternative possibilities in the Pacific War is an impressive example of good counterfactual history.--Col. Stanley L. Falk "The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists "

This impressive counterfactual analysis demonstrates that the course of the Pacific War was not set in stone. Wood demonstrates, through careful analysis of alternatives actually discussed by Japan's leaders, that the decision to go to war was not an exercise in national suicide. Instead, specific choices closed a window of opportunity for Japan to have bought more time and might well have altered fundamentally the war's conclusion.--Dennis E. Showalter, Colorado College; author of Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century

Wood has raised many provocative points worthy of debate. Recommended.--CHOICE

From the Publisher