JAPANESE STRATEGY
Japan started the war in Asia and
in the Pacific to establish and protect a "New Ordern
in Ask2 In "Phase I" of
the war, the "operational objective" of the Imperial Fleet, in the
words of Combined Fleet Secret
Order Number One, issued on 1 November 1941, was
expressed as follows: ". . .
by ejecting British and American strength from the Netherlands
Indies and the Philippines, to
establish a policy of autonomous self-sufficiency and
economic independen~e."W~ illmott, in the same
vein, asserts that
. . .of all the major
combatants Japsn alone did not aspire to a final victory.. . . Japan's
goal was
to secure a negotiated
peace by limiting and winning the contlict she began . . . in 1941.
She
aimed to force
her enemies to come to terms with the gains she intended to make in the opening
months of the war.'
Asia was defied by those Japanese
who shared this vision of the immediate future as
including India and Indonesia, as
well as China, Manchuria, and all of Southeast Asia,
including the Philippines.
Australia was on the periphery of Asia, in danger of being
swept into its definition at the next favorable turn
of events.
Phase I of the Japanese master
plan for the conquest of this vast area actually ended in
the central and western Pacific
in March 1942, with the unexpectedly quick and easy
defeat of Australian, British,
Dutch, and American forces and the fall of Java. Heroic
American naval, ground, and air
forces on Corregidor did not capitulate until 6 May 1942.
The fall of Java, however, marked
the end of effective naval resistance in the entire region
from Singapore to New Guinea.
Flush with their uninterrupted
string of victories, Japanese army and navy planners
agreed, probably in late December
1941 or early January 1942, that the United States and
Great Britain must be prevented
from developing Australia as a base from which to launch
a counteroffensive. How this
ambitious goal was to be accomplished became a matter of
contention, however, and a
controversy developed between the army and navy over the
"propriety* of actually
invading Australia and India. The navy reasoned that, to keep the
U.S. and Great Britain on the
defensive, all Japanese military arms should be constantly
on the offensive. Amrdingly,
naval strategists recommended a far-reaching but vastly
unpopular menu of joint armylnavy
amphibious offensives throughout the central and
western Pacific and in the I n d i i Ocean to be
accomplished in the fist six months of 1942.
