Quote:
Originally Posted by Stealhead
and they also had to know the general prejudices towards them many truly believed that Japanese where near sighted and that their bodies where not capable handling advanced maneuvers in an aircraft there was a huge and foolish belief that the Japanese where inferior from a military standpoint and that was a very foolish and costly mistake and it always is such a thing to underestimate your enemy or potential enemy.I guess Japan just felt very confident at the start of the war and some high ranking leaders never lost that feeling.
The Japanese where very keen observers of other nations military success they where very impressed with the Royal Navy raid on the Italian Naval base in Taranto.And they also changed their tactics as the war progressed they learned to build complex very well inter connected defenses rather than the earlier war tactics that they had on Guadalcanal. A very good book that can give you a great impression of their later war tactics is "With the Old Breed" by E.B. Sledge himself a US Marine.
As to the Japanese failure to deal with sets backs who knows but I believe it can partly be blamed on the bitter rivalry between the IJA and the IJN.One could not look weak in front of the other needless to say they had a lot of problems and not very many real solutions beyond by the later part of the war making each gain of land by the US so costly that eventually a peace treaty seem a better option and this was not overly unrealistic though it did not work out that way in the end.
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You bring up some good points. Points that I felt would inevitably become apparent. Has anyone ever watched old Popeye or Looney Tunes cartoons, just to name a few. Or has anyone ever visited YouTube to explore the "Banned Cartoons" category. Deprecation is a very effective tool of war and, one not lost on the American populous during WWII. Don't forget that Japan blamed the U.S. for many of it's problems and this dates back to WWI, if not further. Children see, hear, and eventually inherit the predjudices of their parents. Probably, at first, their deep resentment toward the U.S. crept up slowly as it does with all forms of predjudice, before it culminated into precisely directed propaganda toward a nation that they knew could not be defeated. Even Yamamoto knew that. It was
he who informed the Emporer and his war staff that, after Pearl Harbor, he could not foresee military victories against the U.S. beyond a 6 month (approximated) time frame. Guadalcanal was proof evident of that prediction. Japan's alliance and assistance to the allied nations of WWI was viewed as a way to extend their position in the Pacific (the payback for services rendered effect) without the necessity for war. When their position did not materialize as expected, then the resentment began to set in. You have to realize just how close to poverty the Japanese people were after WWI and with each successive setback (e.g., the Washington Conference, Oil/Scrap Metal embargo, etc.) their prejudice toward this nation grew with a passion. After Yamamoto's prediction began to materialize (proof evident), their overall strategy became fixed on creating defenses that the United States would throw itself up against, and eventually tire of the high losses. But, when this too failed to stop US, true to their Bushido code of die rather than surrender, their passion, contempt and disdain for the US Military became fanatical, obviously under false hopes again.
Will the troops stand fast and fight
more against an enemy they know will obliterate them, or, will they stand fast against an enemy that is possible to defeat? It's one of the basic rules of war.