Japanese Army and Air Force in China. Then they would launch a bombing campaign
against Japan’s Home Islands from Chinese bases and stage invasions of Japanese home
territory from the Chinese mainland.
Third, the US Navy could implement a variant of its thirty-year-old Plan Orange and
fight its way across the Central Pacific, seizing island bases and depending heavily upon
its newly developed fleet train for resupply under way at sea, defeating the Imperial
Japanese Navy as and when it offered itself in battle (Miller, 1991). Geopolitics and
geostrategy mandated that this drive must head for the Japanese Marianas. From there
the drive could veer north-westwards directly for Japan itself, move on Taiwan or reach
for the Philippines.
Which of the three options did the United States choose? In practice, it chose not to
choose. The drive north from Australia towards the Dutch East Indies, and eventually the
Philippines, was endorsed because it was MacArthur’s. After all, he had been created a
national hero by Washington for his supposedly heroic defence of Bataan and the island
of Corregidor in Manila Bay. Also, this land-oriented, albeit sea- and air-dependent,
thrust into the Japanese Empire appealed to the Army. The Navy’s understandable
preference for the ocean road to Tokyo was irresistible. Its strategic promise was high,
and it was complementary to MacArthur’s push. Exactly where the two thrusts would
meet – at the Philippines, Taiwan or Japan itself – would have to wait upon events. And
finally, the United States did attempt, seriously if unwisely, to construct an army in China
that could beat the Japanese and provide a safe continental haven from which a long-
range bombing campaign against the Home Islands could be conducted. But in 1944,
Japanese offensives in China were so successful that Chiang’s armies were obliged
to retreat deep into the country and US air bases for the bombing campaign were over-
run. As a result, China, the third threat vector, was belatedly taken off the American
strategy board, after the wasting of a mountain of matérieland thousands of lives. Japan
would be defeated by MacArthur from the south and Admiral Nimitz from the east. Was
it strategically essential to endorse both approaches? Probably not, though it may well
have confused the Japanese as to which threat was the main one. Since the Americans
themselves could not answer that question, one can excuse the Japanese for being
puzzled.
How was Japan defeated? In a material sense, by the US economy. The ‘Two-Ocean’
Navy Act of 1940 looked to achieve a 70 per cent increase in the size of the Navy, while
the country mobilized in depth in all dimensions of its war-making needs. The Japanese
were surprised by the scale and pace of the US mobilization, as well as by the character
and speed of the US Navy’s recovery from its losses at Pearl Harbor, the Coral Sea and
Midway. But Tokyo had never treasured any illusions as to the ultimate military-industrial
strength of the United States. It knew that it must lose a long war of attrition. It would be
a profound error, however, to attribute Japan’s defeat largely to the weight of America’s
military production. The US Navy and Marine Corps invented new ways of warfare, and
learnt to execute them effectively. With inadvertent assistance from Admiral Yamamoto,
the US Navy changed from being a battleship navy to being a carrier navy. The latter
assumed the fleet crown of being the ‘capital ship’ in the drive across the Central Pacific.
The thrust that from November 1943 until June 1944 took the Japanese-held Gilberts,
Marshalls, Carolines and Marianas on Tokyo’s 14,200-mile maritime defence perimeter
was led by joint carrier task forces. This was completely new in the history of warfare.
176 War, peace and international relations