No Pearl Harbour Attack?

[GTX_Admin]

What would be the effect if Japan did not attack the USA?

[elmayerle]

I presume not just at Pearl Harbor but also the Phillipines and some of the Southwest Pacific islands?

[Volkodav]

Are you thinking along the lines of Japan declaring war on the allies but deliberately not the US giving all their territories and areas of interest a wide berth?  Would the US have entered the war without a direct attack on their sovereignty, would Roosevelt have been able to convince the nation that entering the war was in their interest if Japan was making it very clear they did not want war with the US?

Very Interesting.

[finsrin]

Are you thinking along the lines of Japan declaring war on the allies but deliberately not the US giving all their territories and areas of interest a wide berth?  Would the US have entered the war without a direct attack on their sovereignty, would Roosevelt have been able to convince the nation that entering the war was in their interest if Japan was making it very clear they did not want war with the US?

Very Interesting.

Yes - very interesting.
Germany and Japan both have time to increase strength.  While US sends arms to allies.  US arms production increase is not "all out".  Isolationist/peace organizations still have influence.  Japan sucks up SE Asia land and resources.  Increases its production base, military bases and amount of arms on them.  IJN increases number of combat and logistical ships as fast as possible.  Longer US stays out of war,,, Japan gains more combat experience and force size.  Germany expands Middle East holdings and has more forces to throw at Russia.
Later; when US enters war, the situation is more precarious than in Dec 1941.
Think - Luft/Japan 46 and beyond - Nazi atomic bomb & missile & jet progress - without hindrance of US bombing attacks all German production and research can be greater.
Lotz to consider here..........

[Volkodav]

Manhattan Project (called something else) set up in Australia, Canada or South Africa, maybe even New Zealand.

[GTX_Admin]

I presume not just at Pearl Harbor but also the Phillipines and some of the Southwest Pacific islands?

Correct.  Basically Japan takes the Siberia option.  Though maybe they still take British, French and Dutch possessions in the SE Asia region.

[elmayerle]

Going North instead of South at that time would have the advantage of the Soviet Union already reeling from the German attacks.  A concerted effort toward Siberia might work quite well for them.

[jcf]

The Japanese did not go into Siberia because they had already tried that and the Soviets
handed them their ass on a plate. Nomonhan was a hard lesson and they had no reason
to expect a different result if they tried again, the IJA simply weren't equipped to face the
Red Army on an equal footing, regardless of the German invasion, and the IJN would be
of no use in a land war. The loss at Nomonhan was one of the reasons that the Imperial
command started looking to the South for resources, and any move into the European-US
zone of control was going to involve conflict with the US.

An attack on solely European Colonial possessions only combined with a scrupulous avoidance
of US targets in the Philipines would require a very careful use and placement of IJN carrier
groups. Basically you'd need to have them placed to give support when needed, but also be
placed to intercept any direct US response, if one came. An attack on solely colonial targets
and avoidance of US territories would put the US government in a very difficult position,
especially as the hardcore of the organised isolationists were almost fanatically anti-British,
so intervention would be a hard-sell. This would probably lead to a political delay which,
combined with the logistical and purely temporal realities of the USN sortieing from Pearl,
would give the Imperial forces a breathing period of at least several weeks, possibly as
much as six months.

However none of this means that the US would not become involved as the realities of already
existing US involvement in the Atlantic submarine war, and the depth of materiel support and
financial involvement, meant that the US was going to be directly involved at some point.
The Pearl Harbor attack served to advance the timeline.

[raafif]

I discussed this in the "Japan invades Australia" scenario .... Japan is sucessful in Manchuria but Russia stops them from heading west.  Instead they head south so no Pearl Harbor but they do take Guam & the Phillipines .... to the USA, the loss of Guam and the Philippines is a bitter blow - but coupled with the government's non-combative policies & the established civilian desire to stay out of the war in Europe, with no direct attack on Hawaii or the US mainland America is set to continue it's passive stance.

With no US involvement in the Pacific or European wars the A-bomb is not invented.

[jcf]

Japan controlled Manchuria from 1932 to 1945, so I'd say they were very successful.

The US government under FDR was not non-combative, they were very interventionist and
regularly skirted the edges of the Neutrality Act, as Republicans in Congress constantly
pointed out. The US was also in the midst of massive rearmament schemes and force
expansion well prior to Pearl Harbor, and an official position of neutrality should not be
confused with a passive stance. The US had been involved in an all out economic war on
Japan for years prior to actual combat, and had taken part in naval actions against
the Germans in the Atlantic. The US was going to go to war, the only question was when
and why.

Any attack on the Philippines would have been considered a direct attack on the US.

British and US atomic bomb research projects predate Pearl Harbor, and the proposal to
coordinate programs dates from October of 1941. No Pearl Harbor attack does not equal
'no bomb'.

[Nexus1171]

I agree with JCF here, even if Pearl Harbor never got socked, we'd probably gone to war over if they went into the Philipines

[Volkodav]

How about Japan throws a real spanner in the works and sides with their old friend England when Germany invades Poland, they then go a step further and declare war on the USSR when they join Germanys adventure in Poland.  Japan avoids a land war with the USSR but attacks and harasses from the sea, while providing limited support to the Allies in western Europe.

Japan uses their new alliances to gain access to previously denied natural resources  and ramps up production for their own forces and in support of their allies as well as negotiating territorial gains and diplomatic recognition of previous gains in exchange for their support.

Japan was burnt and shamed following WWI and perceived that they were being treated more as a vanquished opponent than a victorious ally , maybe instead of turning to the dark side, as it were, they do some very effective negotiation and gain much of what they need through diplomacy while providing material support to the UK.  After the Netherlands fall for instance the UK could force the Dutch to cede territory to Japan in exchange for other assistance.

[Cliffy B]

Now there's an idea!!!  Wonder how that would play out in the future?

[elmayerle]

Given Roosevelt's documented interventionist attitudes and his efforts, both directly and through his partisans in the media and elsewhere, to attack and destroy those who opposed him, I can see him pushing things for war with Japan in the event of an attack on the Phillipines and/or Guam and then working to expand it to include Nazi Germany.  The people of the US might not have wanted it, but Roosevelt needed that war to deal with the unemployment problem and economic problems his first two terms had continued and exacerbated.

SeeLindbergh vs. Roosevelt, The Rivalry That Divided America by James P. Duffy for a whole lot more exposition on this.

Imperial Japan would have to renounce their treaty with Germany and Italy, or never sign it, for Volkodav's scenario to occur, but that could mean, or lead to, other differences between that Japan and what happened here.

[GTX_Admin]

Having Japan Allied with the UK but also attacking the UK's allies could get really messy politically.  I suppose the deciding factor for the UK would be what level of support the Japanese were giving in the fight against Germany.