SDHF Newsletter No.250 Japan’s Master Plan for Victory 3

JAPAN’S MASTER PLAN FOR VICTORY:
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
By Moteki Hiromichi
Heart Publishers, Tokyo, 2018
Series No.3, Chapter 2: Draft Proposal for Hastening the End of War against The United States, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Chiang Kai-shek

September 4, 2019

“Japan’s Master Plan for Victory”, as I have mentioned previously, is nothing more than what I will call a “Draft Proposal for Hastening the End of War against The United States, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Chiang Kai-shek,” which was formally adopted at a joint Liaison Conference, of Imperial General Headquarters and the Imperial Government, held on November 15, 1941, just three weeks before the Pearl Harbor Attack.
Strangely enough, this grand design for war is not widely known. Even I became aware of this plan only 15 years ago and am greatly amazed with its content.
The purpose of this book is to show why the Draft Proposal can be said to be “Japan’s Master Plan for Victory”, not just as an abstraction but practically speaking. Furthermore, in the book, I’ll discuss why such a sound strategy was not at all executed as planned.
In this chapter, I’ll introduce the overall picture of the Draft Proposal, with explanations to the extent possible.
Readers will be surprise to know that core strategy was stated in Strategic Principle 1:
To ensure our nation’s survival and to exercise our right of self-defense, we shall expeditiously destroy American, British, and Dutch bases in the Far East. Additionally, we shall facilitate the overthrow of the Chiang government. We shall then act in cooperation with Germany and Italy to effect the capitulation of the United Kingdom, which will discourage the United States from continuing hostilities against Japan.
Readers may ask, “How will Japan strike the US?” Yes, I was caught up with such a question before I first read of this strategy. The answer is written in Tactics 1:
Using any and all means, we shall endeavor to lure the main strength of American naval vessels in a timely manner to an appropriate location, where we shall attack and destroy it.
Thus, Japan originally planned quite a different war from the one that we all know.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/1397/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Greater-East-Asian-War-No.3.pdf

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