James Wood: Japan could have won
In his book "Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable?" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) historian James Wood challenges the conventional wisdom that Japan's defeat in the Pacific was historically inevitable.
Although the economics of the war in the Pacific were squarely in America's favor, even so, Wood argues, "the defeat of Japan took such a long, arduous, and uncertain road [raising] fundamental questions about the possibility of alternative outcomes and [suggesting] that the ... end date of the Pacific War may have been more malleable and changeable than usually thought.
"Most counterfactual military histories tend to focus on individual episodes and to rely on dramatic reversals of fortune."
In contrast, his book traces the active strategic imperatives that Japan focused on and contrasts them with those Japan could have chosen. Often, Wood argues, it was not so much a decision of one strategy over the other but of a poor allocation of attention.
The book argues that the Japanese army and navy had both the opportunity and the capability to have fought a different and more successful war and Wood outlines 10 key factors that might have led to any number of alternate outcomes for the Japanese-American showdown in the Pacific....
James Wood is the Charles R. Keller Professor of American History at Williams College. He received his bachelor's degree from Eckerd College in 1968 and his doctorate from Emory University in 1973.
Read entire article at http://www.iberkshires.com
Although the economics of the war in the Pacific were squarely in America's favor, even so, Wood argues, "the defeat of Japan took such a long, arduous, and uncertain road [raising] fundamental questions about the possibility of alternative outcomes and [suggesting] that the ... end date of the Pacific War may have been more malleable and changeable than usually thought.
"Most counterfactual military histories tend to focus on individual episodes and to rely on dramatic reversals of fortune."
In contrast, his book traces the active strategic imperatives that Japan focused on and contrasts them with those Japan could have chosen. Often, Wood argues, it was not so much a decision of one strategy over the other but of a poor allocation of attention.
The book argues that the Japanese army and navy had both the opportunity and the capability to have fought a different and more successful war and Wood outlines 10 key factors that might have led to any number of alternate outcomes for the Japanese-American showdown in the Pacific....
James Wood is the Charles R. Keller Professor of American History at Williams College. He received his bachelor's degree from Eckerd College in 1968 and his doctorate from Emory University in 1973.