[Grovenet] Peace in Iraq

Fri Oct 6 21:45:04 PDT 2006

Yes, the stories I've read said that some of then landed in Oregon. One
wounded or killed some folks on a picnic who discovered the device where it
had landed but incendiaries failed to go off - until they picked it up. I've
seen pictures of bits of others found in trees. 

Also, a Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery near Santa Barbara with
some spectacular results when shells set some hillside tanks ablaze. Didn't
do a lot of damage, but the night-time fire was visible for many miles and
made for spectacular front-page photos in the papers. 

The Japanese had a firm plan to invade North America as part of their own
version of what we'd call "Shock and Awe" today. We studied it when I was in
the Army tactical college. The Japanese had done a lot of homework and their
experts, like Yamamoto who had attended University here, understood that
most Americans were very ambivalent about being involved in the "far east".
Only those in D.C. doing long term planning felt the far east was of
critical importance to the USA. So the Japanese formulated plan to cause the
American people to demand their government withdraw from any involvement
there. 

They knew we had absolutely no defenses on the west coast. If memory serves
me there were less than 2,000 soldiers on the coast between the Canadian and
Mexican borders, and, literally, only a handful of them had guns or
ammunition. There were no reserves, artillery or air force. The USA was a
pacifist nation who didn't want to deal with war ever again. Calls for
impeachment of FDR were being heard over his lend-lease of arms to Britain.
The rearming of America had begun at the highest levels but not yet at the
level of recruiting and preparing men to fight, or the public for the
possibility of any significant combat involving Americans. 

Huge sections of our coastline were virtually uninhabited, much less have
any armed presence. Also Los Angeles and San Francisco were totally
dependent upon the slender lifelines of the railroads and power lines that
crossed huge expanses of virtually uninhabited territory in Nevada and the
Southern California deserts. 

The Japanese plan was simple. Come ashore with moderate invasion forces in
two places, one north of San Diego and one in Northern California or
southern Oregon and drive eastward across the almost uninhabited countryside
with fast armor, joining up in Nevada where they would have cut power and
rail to Los Angeles and San Francisco. That whole effort could be
accomplished in less than a month. They anticipated that not only would
California be in a total panic, the entire nation would be in shock. Then
they'd offer to withdraw. The conditions for leaving the USA would be that
we get out of their 'back yard' in the far east. 

According to the classes I attended, our experts think it would have worked.
The American people, in a panic over Germany's threat and having little or
no concern with whatever was happening in far-off Asia, would demand
Washington withdraw from the far east. The Japanese had already 'snookered'
Hitler into agreeing to declare war on the USA if hostilities began between
Japan and the USA for any reason. They felt that a declaration of war on the
USA by Hitler would fix America's attention on Europe and the threat in the
Atlantic and not on something going on half a world away in the far east. 

To work it required two things happen correctly:

1) The Empire of Japan declare war on the USA as provided by international
conventions. At that point we'd be on high alert, expecting an attack
against our bases in the Philippines. 

2) Japan successfully strike Hawaii and take out the US Carriers - the only
naval force the Japanese considered a serious threat to an invasion force.

Neither one happened. Due to the diplomatic screwups the declaration of war
was delayed until the attack had already occurred. By sheer chance, no
aircraft carriers were at Pearl Harbor as expected. 

It was a total disaster as far as the Japanese strategic plans were
concerned although the tactical operations were amazingly successful. Of
course, it was later that they discovered that the complete surprise was
because the USA didn't know we were at war with Japan in advance as planned.

As a result, any subsequent plans for attacks against the US itself were
called off. 

Of course, hindsight is wonderful. It's unlikely we'd have discovered the
Japanese Pearl Harbor fleet for days, had it stuck around. We had only a
couple of ships who could search for them and no aircraft. The ships were,
at best, a heavy cruiser or two - absolutely no match for the Japanese
force.  If they had stuck around, they'd not only have done far more damage
to Pearl than they did already, they'd likely have found the carriers as
they returned. Even the third air strike that had been planned for December
7 would have done far more damage to our long-term use of the base than the
first two had done. The third strike was supposed to take out the fuel
installations on Ford Island and the drydock and maintenance facilities what
were essential to repairing any of the damaged ships. But the conservative
Japanese Admiral cancelled it.

What if - if only - all those things are part of life. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of Meredith Bliss
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 8:46 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Peace in Iraq

On Thursday 05 October 2006 21:51, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:
...
> At least in WWII they had the very real specter of foreign armies 
> invading our homeland. And it turned out that both the Japanese and 
> Germans had plans to attack the contiguous 48 directly if not actually 
> invade and occupy sections of our country.

Not just plans, the Japanese launched incendiary devices, by balloon if
memory 
serves, to light our forests on fire. Not very successfully, but they did 
give it a try. One of them landed around Bandon, as I recall.

----------------------------------------
Just happy to be here, but speaking 
only for myself!
Meredith Bliss --- www.rdrop.com/~mbliss
----------------------------------------
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