If the Japanese won World War 2 how would the United States be changed?

[Mark Rand]

If the Japanese won World War 2 what changes would've occurred in the United States?

 

Offhand, I can think of three.  First, Japanese would be an official language.  Second, the Japanese flag would replace Old Glory.  Third, many people would practice Shinto and Buddhism.

 

What say you?

[death tribble]

One of the things you need to address is how they won.

 

Certain things come to the fore.

The attack on Pearl Harbor catches the submarines as well and maybe one or more of the battleships are blocking the channel.

Midway results in all the Japanese carriers getting away and at least one of the American carriers are sunk.

Yamamoto is not killed.

The A bombs are not dropped or possibly not even developed.

The pacifist movement in America is stronger and prevents Roosevelt helping Britain and France against Germany.

And is all of America taken over or is it like The Man in the High Castle ?

[Greywind]

I don't think it would be so much that the Japanese won the war as the Axis did. Germany would produce atomics before the US. Maybe nuking DC and New York. As Tribble points out, there would be some reversals in the Pacific theater that would give the Japanese the upper hand there.

[Cygnia]

Wasn't there also plans of the Axis powers divvying up North America too?  Japan got the west, Germany got the east and Italy would get Central America?

[steriaca]

Japan would control the entire West Coast. Expect a bloodbath once they learn if the internment camps. That or role reversal, with whites being forced into the camps or fleeing to the center of the country.

 

Anyways, the parts of the United States and Canada would have been split between them, via East Coast (Germany), and West Coast (Japan). In general, anime would not be as developed as it is now, nor manga (as both forms benefited from a pore country needing money to rebuild, which does not describe WW2 winning Japan). American superhero comic books are destroyed on site, with whatever characters surviving as part of the underground resistance network. If any manga is published in Japan controlled America would be about the history of Japan, Japanese war heroes of the divine war (as they would call WW2 if they win), the divinity if Emporer Hirohito, Mikado of Japan and occupied countries, etc.

 

What whites who are not incarnated in camps find themselves living a hand-to-mouth existence, as unlike the United States, Imperial Japan is not interested in nation rebuilding, but wealth plundering.

[Mark Rand]

My thought was that while the Allies were fighting Germany and Italy, Japan made advances and took Hawaii and began attacking the west coast.

[massey]

1 hour ago, Mark Rand said:

If the Japanese won World War 2 what changes would've occurred in the United States?

 

Offhand, I can think of three.  First, Japanese would be an official language.  Second, the Japanese flag would replace Old Glory.  Third, many people would practice Shinto and Buddhism.

 

What say you?

 

I don't think any of those would happen.  Japan simply doesn't have the population to occupy the US, and the changes that you're talking about (particularly language and religion) take a very long time to take effect.  The US has effectively "occupied" Japan since 1945 and their official language is still Japanese and they haven't all converted to Christianity.  There's also virtually zero history of Shintoism in the United States.  The Japanese aren't even particularly religious, and they don't practice any kind of evangelism (i.e., trying to convince others to convert).

 

I think for a realistic scenario, you need something like this:

 

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is more successful than in the real world.  The carriers are in port when the attack hits and are destroyed.  The Japanese follow up with attacks on San Francisco and San Diego, hitting the naval bases there.  They also mine the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, meaning any ships from the Atlantic fleet have to make a very long voyage around South America.  This prevents the US from effectively engaging them until they've secured sources of oil and steel, and they dig in deep on islands throughout the Pacific.

 

Let's say the Nazis then develop the A-bomb first, and the war in Europe grinds to a halt once they nuke London and Stalingrad.  The British and the Russians sign a peace treaty with Germany, letting them keep whatever they've got conquered at that time.  We'll say Poland, much of eastern Europe, and half of France.   At this point, the Axis consolidate their holdings.  Germany has most of Europe, and Japan holds most of East Asia.  They've got control over Korea, the Philippines, and much of the Chinese coast.  Now the US is facing the prospect of trying to continue WWII on its own, against enemies that have nukes.  Eventually we sign a peace treaty and that's that.

 

Fast forward to today, and what is different?  The US is still an independent country, but it never experienced the massive increase in prestige and economic prosperity that we did after WWII.  We don't rebuild Europe, the Germans do.  The Cold War never happens the way it did in real life.  The US remains isolationist and Germany and the Soviet Union are the ones who have a Cold War.  The 1960s probably plays out a lot differently.  Vietnam might be a conflict between the Japanese (who see all of Asia as theirs) and the Germans (who see the former French colony as belonging to them), but the US sure isn't involved.  The US probably has somewhat friendly relations with the USSR.

 

Overall, we'd probably be a strongly populist country.  FDR's policies would have stuck around longer.  The anti-communism that dominated the last half of the 20th century wouldn't have happened.  We wouldn't have had a Civil Rights movement either -- with public knowledge of the Holocaust much more limited (and much easier to deny), and without the Soviets using civil rights problems in the US as negative propaganda, the problems are much easier to ignore.  You also wouldn't have the same economic prosperity, so most people don't have TVs in the 1960s.  They don't actually see the protests in Alabama, and the effect is much smaller.

 

The US would still be a very strong regional power.  Alaska and Cuba get added as the 49th and 50th states (Hawaii being under occupation by Japan).  US military adventurism is confined to the western hemisphere.  Without the lesson of WWII being "conquering your neighbor is bad", or the formation of the UN, expect even more interference by the US in South America.  Mexico may have a puppet government.  Some South American countries are going to be very friendly to the Nazis, particularly as a hedge against the US, so there's probably a strong German presence down there, and there may eventually be some "jungle wars" that take place there instead of in East Asia.

 

Anyway, the Axis really never had the capabilities to actually invade North America.  But depending on how things went, they would have had the opportunity to "win" the war, as in accomplishing their actual objectives.

[eepjr24]

https://www.abebooks.com/books/war-alternate-reality-fiction-history-turtledove/alternative-histories.shtml

 

[Greywind]

1 hour ago, Mark Rand said:

My thought was that while the Allies were fighting Germany and Italy, Japan made advances and took Hawaii and began attacking the west coast.

 

As I recall one of the Japanese leaders was asked what he would need in terms of manpower to take the US. His estimate once they got to the mountains would be one million men a month.

[archer]

At the beginning of our involvement in WWII, Japan had 2/3rds the population of the US and the majority of its standing army was already fully...occupied...with occupying China, Burma, etc.

 

So if there was any Japanese victory in WWII, I'd think it would have come from forcing the US to abandon the war either immediately after Pearl Harbor when the Pacific fleet was sunk or at least early in the war before Japan lost most of its fleet assets.

 

I made up an alternate Earth for my PC's to visit in that setting.

 

The US after its initial surrender re-started the conflict with multiple nuclear weapons followed by a ground invasion into what was expected to be a decimated enemy. The tactic backfired as the radiation event mutated a number of Japanese, mostly civilians, into Japan's first superheroes. The US invasion force, ships and men, was ruthlessly crushed with few survivors. Japan did a few punitive raids and got reparations but the resumption of a full scale conflict didn't happen.

 

Given the defeat in the Pacific, FDR for his fifth term in office invited "Mr. Republican" Robert Taft to be his running mate, thinking he needed a truly bipartisan coalition government in order to continue the war in Europe. FDR ended, and apologized for, the Japanese concentration camps, embraced the Republican ideal of racial equality and civil rights for blacks (given their heroic efforts in the war), and apologized for quashing former First Lady Coolidge's efforts to bring in Jewish orphans to save them from the Nazi regime prior to our involvement in the war in Europe. FDR's repudiation of racism splintered the Democrat party with the Southern Democrats forming a segregationist party and the remainder still embracing FDR, the New Deal and other Democrat values.

 

When FDR died, Taft became president (rather than Truman) and the Republicans faced no nation-wide opposition party.

 

The Nazis were still defeated in the European theater due to US help, Hitler's repeated blunders, and the efforts of Supreme Commander of the Allied forces George Patton. None of the Japanese mourned Hitler's passing. The west and Africa ended up much the same as in the "real" world. Japan eventually consolidated its holdings throughout the Pacific, Siberia, Southeast Asia, and India. The Allies narrowly managed to fend off Japanese aggression in Australia.

 

Japan's military junta was gradually replaced with a shadowy coalition of supers, with the military and the emperor working as their catspaws.

 

Taft transitioned the Republican party away from isolationism and turned the country back toward a Coolidge-style fiscal conservatism. Some New Deal initiatives were rolled back while others were modified with an eye toward being financially sustainable over the long run. Vice President Patton eventually was elected president when Taft retired. (Notably, no presidential term limit exists.)

 

The US became more militaristic, training school age children in combat skills much like the Japanese were doing prior to the war. This effort was helped along by refugees from China and Tibet who introduced various martial arts to the American public. Street crime such as mugging is more rare today because you can't tell whether the little old lady on the street has a black belt or not. But you can guarantee that everyone know how to defend themselves in hand-to-hand combat. Citizens of Asian descent tend to be fanatically loyal to the US and aggressively police Asian communities of every ethnicity looking for spies (think former Cubans living in Florida's attitude toward the loving the US and hating Castro in the first couple of decades after Castro came to power, except even more fanatical).

 

Rumors are that Japan has been irradiating volunteers for decades in order to supplement their supply of superpowered beings. Western powers instead tend toward having highly-trained spies and soldiers who have a lavish amount of gadgets and technical support with fewer actual supers. Japan controls about half of the world population and has a much larger conventional army. The West, including Imperial Russia, has a more technologically proficient army and lots of nukes...which they are terrified to use for obvious reasons.

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well, you have two ways of breaking this down.

 

First: Japan stops by conquering most of Asia and the south Pacific.  They take China, most of Russia, India, Australia, etc.  But (for now at least) they leave America and Europe alone.  You can even assume an uneasy peace between Germany and Japan where Germany takes North Africa, the middle east, Western Russia, and Europe.  This ends up with America being a fairly minor power in the world, without a huge economic book after WW2 by being the main surviving industrial and agricultural power.  In this scenario, America very likely ends up with a Huey Long kind of president and probably tilts pretty hard left but isolationist.

Second: Japan conquers the world, taking everything.  While this is insanely unlikely, in an alternate universe anything is possible, so you can just presume the USA is under Imperial Japanese power.  That would result in a heavy pullback on tech and liberty, with a constant rebellion going on between Americans who grew up culturally for generations with an absolute animosity toward kings and tyranny, and an increasingly tyrannical Japanese Imperial government so far from their Emperor that they are impacted by the US culture.  Its not impossible that in time, America becomes sort of what Japan is today: high tech wild and freaky place fascinated with cute things and tentacles, with Japan being increasingly isolated as stuck in the past.

[bubba smith]

karate  would replace baseball  as the national pastime

[Cancer]

Depends strongly on what version of "victory".  The original Japanese goal was to last long enough the US would give up and let Japan keep their conquests on their side of the Pacific.  This would leave the US unconquered, aside from its Asiatic empire: the Philippines, Guam, Wake, which they had taken from Spain at the turn of the 20th Century.  While that keeps the US from becoming the global superpower it actually became, I don't think it alters the fundamental character of the US from what it had been in the first third of the 20th Century.

 

If the entire Axis won, I still don't believe the US gets conquered, though all of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East is in German-Italian hands, and Great Britain is conquered (though its government, I think, would escape to Canada).  I think the Soviet government also disintegrates, and you have something in Eastern Europe like happened in early 1918, with a big chunk annexed into the Germany, but much of the rest of the former Russian Empire gets fragmented into a bunch of Fascistic client states.  The US then again returns to a quasi-1920 state, but I think it militarizes drastically and annexes everything in the Caribbean and south to the Panama Canal for continental security.

 

Both of these necessarily posit that the Manhattan Project either is not initiated at all, or suffers a major failure and is cancelled before warheads are delivered.  I cannot see an Axis victory of any kind without that.

[Cassandra]

Rising Sun Victorious  edited by Peter Tsouris is a book where various scenarios of a Japanese Victory in World War Two are examined.  None of which have Japan taking over the United States.  Victory is defined as surviving the war in better shape then when they started it. 

 

Scenarios include

 

Invading The Soviet Union instead of attacking Pearl Harbor.

 

Fighting The U.S. Pacific Fleet off the Philippines.

 

Invading Australia after winning the Battle of the Coral Sea.

 

Winning the Battle of Midway and bombing the U.S. West Coast.

 

Invading India.

 

 

 

 

[Cassandra]

The Divide by William Overgard is a 1980 novel where Germany and Japan won the Second World War in 1946, and Hitler and Tojo are going to meet in the middle of the former United States.  It does describe some aspects of life in the Japanese occupied West, including the China Lake Battlefield Memorial where a Japanese General using Tiger Tanks defeated Patton.

[dsatow]

3 hours ago, bubba smith said:

karate  would replace baseball  as the national pastime

You do know that baseball is more popular in Japan than in the US.

[dsatow]

Here's my take on it.  Assuming Japan won the war and not going into details of how or why:

 

Every US state, South American country and Canadian province touching the Pacific would be taken over.  Assuming Italy and/or Germany took the rest of the United States, some type of border conflict would probably happen in Nevada, Arizona and probably Mexico.  The head of state would probably be Japanese until the province was well under Japanese control, after which the heads of each province would predominantly be Japanese but the occasional Caucasian or East Asian might hold the position.

 

Language wise, English and Spanish would still be predominant but Japanese would probably be used in government functions.  The atmosphere would be conservative but more liberal in matters of the environment.  An informal class system would emerge and people would tend to treat each other more formally.  The right to bear arms would be restricted.  The free press and freedom of religion would be restricted.  Religious organizations would not be allowed any political influence.  The press would be held more accountable to the possibility of fake news/slander.  Violators would be removed from their position for first offense.  Jailed for the second.  Prisons would be much harsher though strangely less racially divided.  Executions would go off more often and there would be probably an allowance to commit suicide.  Immediate families would bear the pain and stigma of criminals as well as any financial burdens.

 

Schooling would probably get better but would probably follow a more Japanese style with a home room and teachers coming into the classroom rather than students going to various classrooms.  Education would be used more to transcend the class system though schooling would be more difficult with exams to pass each grade level.  Educational opportunities would depend on the scores of the exams.  University/college education would probably remain the same except possibly more crowded.  Workdays and schooling (except university and colleges) would probably about 20% longer (6 instead of 5 days a week).  Japanese would be a requirement in all middle and high schools.

 

Business dealing would be formalized and there would be less social media.  There probably wouldn't be any anonymous internet though the internet would still be likely.  Medical, agricultural, and computers would still be as advanced if not a bit more.  Entertainment advances such as games and social media probably not so much.  Medium to big business would probably be more Japanese in style and formality.

 

Unions would become radically different than how they are thought of now and treated by companies differently.  Unions would be more concerned about the welfare of the company.  Corporate heads would be more concerned about the health of the company than lining their own pockets.  More public transit and better healthcare would be available.  The Elderly would be treated better. 

 

Prostitution would be probably legal for non-Japanese women but not men of any race.  The Porn industry would be mostly unaffected as well as the movie industry.  Perhaps strangely, the porn industry would be allowed to go into more fetish/taboo subjects but not allowed to advertise as much.  Hollywood would probably be a bit more censured especially as to what they could say about the government.

 

Animation would be more advanced in story and style.  Comics would be about the same.  Newspapers would not be suffering as much and bookstores would be more prevalent.  Personal electronics would be about as or slightly more advanced.  Diets would change and be less fat based as more lands would probably be allotted to agriculture rather than ranching.  Chicken would probably be more prevalent.  Eggs would never have been considered unhealthy.  There would be probably more golf courses and more Asians visiting the former US.  

 

I would guess that at some point, there would be a rejection of the Japanese way of doing things in the 60s and 70s.  If this mirrors like in reality, then students will protest and some will kill themselves in a predominant American way.  Probably reminiscent of a hanging or revolvers to the head in protest of the Japanification of society.

[unclevlad]

Yeah, a lot depends on when things change.  People have talked about Pearl Harbor, but another turning point would've been Midway.  Say the Japanese took less damage in the Battle of the Coral Sea, which then led to a victory at Midway.  The US push is seriously blunted.  With that, the US pulls back and has to concentrate on building up the fleet...again...while concentrating on Europe first.  So, the relative timelines shift, enough so the Nazi atrocities in Europe are allowed to come to light *before* the island-hopping in the Pacific can advance.  The Russia-US aspect of the alliance gets shaky.

 

So...the US starts worrying more about the European situation.  Russia (say) is not as hammered, so a larger presence is necessary.  This, along with the urgent rebuilding, and the Holocaust aftermath, put the Pacific on a lesser footing.  Japan consolidates the eastern Pacific and coastal China, and doesn't become...an ally...but as the Communist Menace starts to loom, it's viewed as more expedient to let Japan and Russia battle it out.  Especially as this keeps the Chinese Communists more contained.

 

In this construction, the war with Japan never really ends.  Japan 'wins' by holding onto the old colonial holdings.  The islands (Marshalls, Gilberts, Wake, Midway) form the effective DMZ.  The Korean War, if it happens at all, has no US involvement.  The Cuban crisis, on the other hand, DOES recur because the Russians are feeling even more boxed in.  Here, tho, the US response is likely much more forceful, and Castro's tossed out.  Cuba becomes a protectorate.

 

Now, an interesting twist:  with Cuba and Puerto Rico controlled, and the ongoing decline of British influence, Jamaica and Bermuda agree to a Caribbean alliance, to which Haiti and the Dom Republic eventually join...it's a mini EU.  Cuba's economy never tanks.  South Florida develops much more slowly.

 

Moving forward...if the Russians remain belligerent...so they stomp in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as they did...then an uneasy truce, if not a full alliance, can firm up between the US and Japan, with the goal of keeping the Communists contained...especially if the Russian system of gulags is fanned to create an image of a Second Holocaust.

 

Would this be stable?  No.  The US never drops atomics here;  that creates different tensions.

 

Fundamentally, tho...I don't see Japan ever trying to occupy more than this:

 

http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/imperial_powers_pacific.htm

 

 

They never had territorial ambitions further west.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its important to recognize the very strong difference between Imperial Japan before and during WW2 ... and Japan after WW2.  There was a huge change in culture and attitude.  They were humbled and shocked and changed significantly to adapt to the modern reality they had been so isolated from.  That would be the biggest influence on how Japan would behave as conquerors, they wouldn't be modern neon lights, schoolgirls, anime, drift hot hatchback Japan.  They would be more like Feudal Samurai Japan with modern tools.

[archer]

12 hours ago, dsatow said:

You do know that baseball is more popular in Japan than in the US.

 

That's cool. I'd assumed it was imported to Japan during the post-WWII occupation.

 

But it turns out that they had professional baseball in Japan as far back as the 1920's.

[archer]

12 hours ago, dsatow said:

  The atmosphere would be conservative but more liberal in matters of the environment. 

 

LOL, I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to communicate with that sentence since it depends on knowing your internal definitions of "conservative" and "liberal" and whether you are talking in the frame of reference of what those might mean in Japan or whether you're speaking of what those words might mean in the US (and which era in the US).

 

Would you mind re-phrasing the sentence so I can tell which atmosphere you are speaking of (social, political, economic, etc.) plus defining what you mean by "conservative" and "liberal"?

 

I'm glad you mentioned the fact that you see the Japanese restricting freedom of worship in its subject peoples. They allowed other cults and religions to exist in Japan even in the war years as long as they subordinated themselves to emperor worship. I could easily see several Christian sects knuckling under (not necessarily Catholics but the Emperor being God's avatar on Earth in a similar manner in which some have seen the Pope as having that role) plus the existence of new religions such as Scientology rising as long as they complied with the law. A Heaven's Gate-style suicide cult wouldn't even necessarily be against the law. So "restricting" is the perfect word to describe how they'd be likely to approach the situation.

 

[bubba smith]

14 hours ago, dsatow said:

You do know that baseball is more popular in Japan than in the US.

yes I AM aware of that

[Brian Stanfield]

21 hours ago, bubba smith said:

karate  would replace baseball  as the national pastime

 

Karate isn't even more popular than baseball in Japan.

[dsatow]

6 hours ago, archer said:

 

LOL, I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to communicate with that sentence since it depends on knowing your internal definitions of "conservative" and "liberal" and whether you are talking in the frame of reference of what those might mean in Japan or whether you're speaking of what those words might mean in the US (and which era in the US).

 

Would you mind re-phrasing the sentence so I can tell which atmosphere you are speaking of (social, political, economic, etc.) plus defining what you mean by "conservative" and "liberal"?

 

Japan is a very group think sort of culture compared to the US.  People who act out of place are more ostracized and changes happen slower if it goes against what is considered normal.  

 

So, if the nation believes and perceives all corporate business should have people wearing suits, then a company which wears jeans and a polo shirt would be considered unprofessional and unreliable in matters of business.  That company would find it easy to be in the news as the strange and the odd but would have a hard time getting deals with other businesses.

 

This extends to most facets of life, political, economic, social, etc.  Its less an exact stance on certain issues than a resistance to go against society as a whole.  And the resistance is less about active measures but more a treatment of being odd and being pushed out of society.  The closest thing to this would be the treatment of the extremely obese in society or the LGBT community in say the 50s.

[DShomshak]

IIRC, I read once that Imperial Japan amassed a gigantic arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, though it never used them. So one scenario might be: For some reason the Manhattan Project never happens, but the US still slowly closes in on Japan. The invasion of the min islands is about to begin. US generals and admirals know this is going to be a meatgrinder, but too much blood has been shed to accept anything but surrender. Faced with the choice between humiliating surrender, endless guerilla war and destroying the world, the high command decides to use their arsenal.

 

The chemical weapons are locally destructive, but  it's the plagues -- perhaps delivered by balloon bomb if nothing else is available -- that devastate the US and everyone else. Perhaps this gives Germany a chance to develop an atomic bomb before the plagues wreak their full damage;perhaps not.

 

North America becomes Mad Max-style post holocaust chaos.

 

Seven decades later, what's left of America is still fragmented. Germany and Japan have rebuilt quicker than most other people because of their ruthless internal discipline and industrial base. They play a Great Game using the Disunited States of America, claiming some as outright satrapies, allying with others, and setting their pawns against each other. The largest power on the continent is the New Confederate States of America -- an eager Nazi ally, as Germany heartily endorses the restored "oeculiar institution" of black slavery. Germany has even resumed the slave trade from its extensive African possessions. The Confederate gentry ape German manners, while the "white trash" are kept docile with the opiate of racial superiority.

 

The West Coast is thoroughly under Japanese dominance. The chief interest is in resource extraction. They don't give a crap about American culture or religion, only obedience. If any Anglo attacks one of the colonial masters, retribution is harsh and indiscriminate.

 

The desert and mountain West is no-man's-land in the Great Game, still in Mad Max chaos. Raiders erupt now and then to pillage settlements on the coast or plains, or attack the heavily armed convoys that must still pass through now and then. Mining campas, set up under German or Japanese auspices, are fortresses under siege. But the tribes and villages of the Drylands can always be set against each other with bribes of weapons because, well, desert people.

 

I'm leaving out possible superbeing involvement since the original post didn't ask, though it's a natural supposition for a Champions thread.

 

Dean Shomshak