SDHF Newsletter No.342 Japan’s Master Plan for Victory: What Could Have Been

Japan’s Master Plan for Victory: What Could Have Been.
Hiromichi Moteki

Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, 2020

Originally published as Daitoa senso: Nihon wa shori no hoteishiki wo motteita (Heart Publishers, 2018).

Reviewed by: Tadashi Hama

The dominant narrative of the so-called Pacific War, the conflict between Imperial Japan, the West and its allies, is that Japan’s defeat was “inevitable,” even “irresistible”. “How could a country with a GNP [gross national product] about that of… Canada expect to win…” against the West? On the other side of the same coin, Japan was written off as “basically evil,” an “aggressor nation” showing a “total lack of sympathy or respect for her neighbors.”

Few Japanese historians, as well as most Western historians, have bothered to transcend the “dominant narrative” in order to clearly understand Imperial Japan’s motivation to go to war against the West. A few Americans, though, have mulled over Imperial Japan’s decision to take on the West such as Charles Tansill, in his Back Door to War. General Douglas MacArthur, former Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, stated his thoughts before a US Senate subcommittee in 1951. He stated: “[Japan’s] purpose… in going to war was largely dictated by security.”

Author Moteki Hiromichi picks up on the missing thread, of Japan’s strategic plan to ensure its own survival by grinding away at the US’s will to fight through a series of bold tactical, psychological, economic and military maneuvers. Moteki tells us that the missing thread that clearly showed that Japan thought carefully of her own survival, rather than world domination, was the “Draft Proposal for Hastening the End of War Against the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Chiang Kai-shek.”

This plan was duly adopted at a Liaison Conference between Imperial General Headquarters and the Imperial Government, held on November 15, 1941.

He analyzes the “Draft Proposal” as the strategy for Japanese victory In fact, Moteki points out that Prime Minister Churchill’s expressed his concern to President Roosevelt on April 15, 1942, in that should Japan control the Western Indian Ocean the British position in the Middle East would collapse and supplies to Russia would be cut. With the UK in a weakened position, according to the “Draft Proposal,” the US would “lose the will to continue hostilities against Japan.” Indeed, as we have seen with the US, a war without a strategy leads to a humanitarian disaster.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/review-article/1861/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/JapansmasterE.pdf

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact