Oil Logistics In The Pacific War In And After Pearl Harbor

Major Patrick H. Donovan

• Publisher: Verdun Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781786254061
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This research paper focuses on oil and its importance to operations in the Pacific during World War II. It specifically concentrates on the period before Japanese-U.S. hostilities, through the strike on Pearl Harbor, and concludes with operations in the Solomon Islands. A secure and reliable source of oil was one of the primary reasons that Japan chose to go to war with the United States that fateful Sunday in December 1941.The Japanese understood their country's need for oil and other resources, but never conformed their military strategy to achieve their national objective of economic self-sufficiency. The Japanese Navy pedantically espoused a maritime strategy that required the United States Navy to fight a war according to the Japanese playbook. The Japanese Navy never understood the importance that oil, including its storage and transportation, had to all Navies that tried to steam the great expanses of the Pacific. This lack of logistical foresight was to eventually play a major role in Japan's defeat in the Pacific.Commanders and their staffs must never forget the importance operational logistics plays in achieving operational and national objectives. This research provides the reader a valuable example of the importance of logistics in the execution of operational strategy while pursuing national goals. Although it is valuable to learn from one's own personal mistakes, it is usually less painful to learn from someone else's error, and thereby ensure that their blunder does not become your own.

PART 1—OIL’S ROLE IN JAPAN’S DECISION FOR WAR

“The shortage of oil was the key to Japan’s military situation. It was the main problem for those preparing for war, at the same time, the reason why the nation was moving toward war…Without oil, Japan’s pretensions to empire were empty shadows.”—Louis Morton, Command Decisions{1}

Oil played a crucial, if not the key, role in the Japanese decision to go to war with the U.S. in 1941. Due to the deteriorating political situation with the U.S., U.K., and the Netherlands East Indies, the future of Japan’s oil reserve and supply was in danger. When diplomatic efforts failed to resolve the political impasse, Japan made plans to seize militarily what she could not achieve diplomatically. An inevitability of this military option was war with the U.S. With this in mind, the Japanese planned to quickly eliminate any short-term American threat and seize needed oil at the same time. Time, like the Japanese oil supply, was quickly running out.

Oil available in the Netherlands East Indies

June 1941 was a pivotal month for the future of Japanese oil supplies. The Japanese had been in economic negotiations with the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) government in Batavia since September 1940. The Japanese were seeking a special economic position in the NEI. Previous embargoes of aviation fuel, iron, and scrap steel by the U.S. in July and October of 1940 (to counter the Japanese occupation of northern French Indochina) had sent the Japanese searching for alternate sources of raw materials. Also, the entrance of Japan into the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on 27 September 1940, a pact that was directly aimed against the U.S., further exacerbated U.S.-Japanese relations. The NEI seemed to fit this bill; the Nazis (a putative partner of the Japanese), had overrun the NEI’s parent country and its geographic location put the Japanese closer to the NEI than any of the latter’s allies. Thus, the NEI was deemed to be more malleable to Japanese desires than the increasingly recalcitrant U.S. Some of the Japanese demands included participation in NEI natural resource development, freedom of access and enterprise in the NEI, as well as a steady supply of oil. However, Japanese aspirations were about to receive a serious setback.{2}

The NEI government was willing to negotiate with the Japanese, but Batavia was not willing to yield special economic concessions to the Japanese (there were to be increases of non-petroleum products). Although these increases were less than what was sought, they did fulfill Japanese needs. Japanese requests for larger exports of oil were passed on to the NEI oil companies; but these requests were deferred. Also, Japanese requests to conduct military and political activities in the NEI were also rejected. On 17 June 1941, economic talks were broken off between Japan and the NEI.{3}

Almost directly on the heels of the breakdown in talks between Batavia and Tokyo was an announcement from the U.S. on 20 June 1941 that henceforth, no petroleum would be shipped from the U.S. East coast, or Gulf coast ports, outside of the Western Hemisphere. There was a shortage of fuel for domestic use on the East Coast of the U.S. in June 1941. To ship fuel out of areas with shortages to semi-belligerent foreign governments was politically untenable for the U.S. government. Thus from Japan’s point of view, the commodity most desired by them was being choked off.{4}

Due to this reversal of fortunes, Japan felt it must make a move towards securing a source of oil in Southeast Asia:

“Consequently, at an Imperial conference on 2 July, Japan decided to adopt the “Outline of the Empire National Policy to Cope with the Changing Situation.” By executing a daring plan calling for the occupation of southern French Indo-China, Japan hoped to gain dominance over the military situation in the southern areas and to force the Netherlands East Indies to accede to her demands.”{5}

Japan needs a secure source of oil

The move into southern French Indochina was not without some internal debate in Japan. In the end, however, it was decided that the military occupation of that territory was too good an opportunity to pass up. By occupying the southern half of French Indochina, the Japanese would consolidate their strategic position; it would stop the encroachment of the ABCD powers upon her economic “lifeline.” Also, the occupation would be a blow to the Chungking government and help settle the China issue; it would also put pressure on the NEI government to come to terms with Japanese demands.{6} The Japanese were not making this move as a step towards provoking the U.S., Britain, or the NEI to war; Tokyo wished economic negotiations to continue. The move into southern Indochina was a pre-emptive action that would help the Japanese if conflict with the ABCD powers became inevitable.{7} One wonders if the Japanese later realized that their actions eventually turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Japanese did not consider how the ABCD powers’ would react to Tokyo’s move into southern Indochina.{8} Indeed, Tokyo felt that this move was possible because it believed the threat of U.S. economic sanctions to their move to be less than 50%. The Japanese still moved forward, even though President Roosevelt had hinted to Nomura, the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., that sanctions would occur if Tokyo moved troops into southern Indochina.{9} However, the Japanese felt that the U.S. would not follow through with such a move, because it would provoke a war at a time when the U.S. was not ready to fight.{10}

There was some logic in the Japanese thought process. Since March 1941, the U.S. and Japan had been in dialogue to avoid such a war. However, as much as the U.S. wanted to avoid war, it would not do so at the sacrifice of basic principles of international conduct.{11} Therefore, reaction from the U.S. was swift. With the Japanese movement into southern French Indochina, the U.S. froze all Japanese assets on 25 July 1941.{12} The governments of Great Britain and the NEI soon followed with their own freezing actions.{13}

With this freezing action came a complete embargo of all oil products into Japan by these countries. It was not the intent of President Roosevelt to bring about a complete embargo of oil to Japan.{14} He was felt that such an action would cause the Japanese to invade the NEI and Malaya to seize the oilfields there. This would possibly suck the U.S. into an early conflict in the Pacific; a conflict that the U.S. was not prepared for and which would be at the expense of devoting energy towards the European conflict.{15} Roosevelt’s freeze order allowed the Japanese to apply for export licenses for oil; however, hard-liners within FDR’s administration acted if the freeze was total, so no licenses were ever approved.{16}

This situation put the Japanese into a quandary; they did not gain any oil by moving into southern Indochina. Now they had isolated themselves from 90% of their annual requirements. The Japanese did have a strategic reserve in place that they had been building up since the early 1930’s. So, some time was available to try and find a diplomatic way out of the impasse.{17}

Oil in the NEI cannot be secured without U.S. intervention

Throughout the summer and into the fall of 1941, U.S. and Japanese negotiators were at loggerheads. The U.S. led embargo would not be suspended until the Japanese stopped their militaristic expansion; indeed, she would have to roll back some of her gains. Included in the U.S. demands were calls for a retreat from all of French Indochina and China. This demand was unacceptable to the Japanese.{18} Likewise, the minimum demands of the Japanese stated that the U.S. must accept the current status quo in east Asia with vague promises that the Japanese would withdraw from disputed areas once peace had been established in the Far East on a “fair and just basis.”{19}

Meanwhile Japanese oil stocks were dwindling. If the Japanese could not get oil by negotiation, they would have to use force. The nearest available source was in the NEI. Would it be possible to seize the oil there without involving the British and the Americans? There were numerous reasons why Tokyo felt this was not the case.

The Japanese had come into possession of British war cabinet minutes that stated the British would fight alongside the Dutch if the Japanese invaded the NEI.{20} The Japanese were also aware that any conflict involving them and the British would draw the U.S. into the conflict on the side of the British.{21} The Director of the War Plans Division of the Navy Department, Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner confided this policy to the Japanese Ambassador to the U.S., Kichisaburo Nomura, “…that the United States would not tolerate, in view of its policy of aiding Britain and its interpretation of self-defense, a Japanese threat to the Malay barrier.”{22} The U.S. wasn’t limiting its interest to the British. In a note handed to Nomura from FDR, the U.S. stated any further aggression by Japan against her neighbors, that the U.S. would be forced “to take immediately any and all steps which it may deem necessary…” to safeguard U.S. interests.{23} Finally, the Japanese foreign office believed that some type of military understanding had been reached between Washington, London, and Batavia. The Foreign Office produced two reports that supported their claims that a joint ABCD defense understanding existed and was being implemented.{24}

Even with this potential alliance arrayed against them, could the Japanese afford to dismiss the U.S. warnings as bluster? As appealing as the thought was, the B-17’s based at Clark Field and the Cavite Naval Base in Manila Bay were too much of a strategic threat to the Japanese lines of communication. Any shipments of raw materials that the Japanese might acquire in the NEI or Malay barrier could potentially be attacked by U.S. forces stationed in the Philippines. Due to this fact, those U.S. forces would have to be dealt with if the Japanese could not get the resources she needed diplomatically.{25}

All these factors played into the Japanese...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABSTRACT
• PART 1-OIL’S ROLE IN JAPAN’S DECISION FOR WAR
• PART 2-OIL, PEARL HARBOR, AND THE U.S. NAVY
• PART 3-OIL LOGISTICS AFTER PEARL HARBOR
• PART 4-CONCLUSIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY