How Yamamoto screwed the poochFollow

I'll knock this scenario out in a couple games of Axis & Allies and get back to ya.

Perl harbor had a fairly sizeable and alert marine contingant at the time of the attack. The concern that basically doomed the air response (aside from the fact that most of the airplanes were brewster buffalos and had they taken off the crews would have been slaughtered) was one that sabatoge was likely. So they had all the airplanes rounded up and placed under armed guard round the clock, rather than stationed on the ready pads as normal. The island itself had a very large detachment of Military Police, and small arms were in ready supply, accessable, and as it turned out, were largely untouched by the attacking planes. During and after the attack, there was an immidiate effort to put out fires and salvage some of the ships, however if a landing force had been inbound, there would have been a large amount of manpower available to man guns.

There were not many tanks on hand at perl harbor, but the tanks the japanese had at the start of the war were crap even compared to the ones we started with. We did have fully emplaced hardened artilliary along most of the key potential landing positions, and most of that wasn't hit by the fighters, so it theoreitically would have been available to destroy landing craft. Obviously if they were planning on landing, those emplacements would have been a priorty target, but to attack them you have to take away from the aircraft assigned to bomb the ships.

Either way, the other issue a landing would have faced was the destroyer screens for Perl were mainly intact some were sunk, along with some of the cruisers, but there were still plenty afloat. Unless they sent a battleship in with the landing craft, or diverted air power to take them out, landing craft would have been obliterated by even the most obsolete destroyer on the scene.

Japanese landing craft at the beginning of the war are also generally much slower than their other military assets. The carriers would have been forced to make a much slower approach then they did otherwise, and spend more time in danger of a retaliatory attack. Had the B-17 bombers on training in the area arrived earlier than they did, they might have been in time to catch the carrier fleet after the attack. they definitly would have arrived in time to bomb the crap out of an invasion force, though with mostly untried crews and light ammo loads there might not have been much they could have done.

Finally, Even with the damage the battleships took, had there been something to shoot at, at least one or two of the main guns would have been operational. The nevada definitly could have fired and rotated turrets for example before it was beached. Any military landing near that position would have been in range of at least some battleship fire.

If you theorize taking the entire phillipies occupation force and combining that with the pearl harbor raid, maybe. I don't think they could have supported it and held, especially since they were in B-17 range even then. if nothing else, we would have pounded the island flat rather than letting them have it. I think trying a landing would have risked slowing things down enough that the battleships would have been alert and cleared for action, with search planes out and hunting. If the battleships had caught the carriers, it would have been a very different outcome and a much shorter war for japan...

This thread has reminded me that I need to find a group for tabletop strategy games.

I recall reading somewhere that there were US plans to abandon the Philippines if that was the only US asset that was attacked.



It would likely be unpleasant for the Hawaiian population, for both Japanese-Americans and non-Japanese. Most people focus on the non-Japanese comfort women, and tend to forget that there were Japanese comfort women as well, a solid majority of them were. The Japanese on Hawaii would likely be treated similarly to Okinawans, as a sort of "lesser Japanese". Most of the Hawaiian population would be involved in light military industry or agriculture, not as sex slaves, but still worked under cruel conditions.

There would be, similarly to the Philippines, a significant resistance movement (Much of the 442nd did come from Hawaii, after all). Repercussions for resistance would be just as harsh if not worse for Japanese-Americans, since they would be seen as traitors to the Empire.

In an eventual US liberation of the Hawaiian islands, Imperial Japan would likely attempt to coerce many of the 150 000 Japanese on the islands to fight the off American Marines. This wouldn't be very successful. There would be significant civilian casualties however, for obvious reasons.