In the first months of 1942, Americans were
consumed by dire “what if?” scenarios that, for the moment, were not altogether
fantastic. Now the U.S. must fight for its life, read the lead headline of the
March 2 issue of Life. Less than three months after Pearl Harbor, the world was
collapsing before the twin onslaughts of the Germans and the Japanese, and the
United States seemed as vulnerable to Axis attack as the Philippines or the
Soviet Union. The invasion fears were well-founded. When the war began, there
were only 100,000 troops to guard the entire Pacific coast and precious little
ammunition to arm them with. Major General Joseph W. Stilwell, who in December
1941 was charged with defending central and southern California, noted in his
diary, “If the Japs had only known, they could have landed anywhere on the
coast, and after our handful of ammunition was gone, they could have shot us
like pigs in a pen.”
The same March 2 issue of Life served up a
chilling menu of invasion schemes, and to make the peril more graphic, the magazine
provided a series of artists’ conceptions of how the Battle for America might
unfold. Those pictures showed U.S. demolitions men blowing up the San Francisco
Bay Bridge just as a Japanese troopship arrived; the city was burning in the
background. Lines of Japanese troops plodded by Mount Rainier and tankmen
joined in a firefight at a southern California filling station. Indeed, these
scenes perfectly suited the plans Japanese strategists had for their suddenly
expanding Pacific empire. Overcome by what was known in Japan as the “victory
disease,” they contemplated sweeping through the Indian Ocean to Africa,
capturing Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii, as well as invading Alaska and
thrusting southward along the Pacific coast of Canada and into the U.S.
Northwest. And while they were at it, they would take over all of Central
America (including the Panama Canal), Colombia, Ecuador, and even extend their
domain to Cuba.
If the United States was as edgy as it was
unprepared, Australia faced a prospect that was even more dismal. By the end of
the spring, Japanese troops had established themselves on the north coast of
New Guinea, only a few hundred miles away from the island continent. Invasion
seemed likely in a matter of months, and there was little that could be done to
prevent it. The results of a Japanese beachhead could have drastically altered
the way the Pacific war was played out. Why that invasion did not happen is one
of the seldom-remembered episodes of World War II—except, of course, in Australia.
The battle for the Kokoda Trail over New Guinea’s Owen Stanley Range and the
Japanese attempt to reach and take Port Moresby, the settlement that would be
the staging base for their Australian operation, had an undeniably epic
quality. Though it is generally thought that the Battle of Midway in the first
days of June marked the beginning of the end for the Japanese empire, the
struggle for the Kokoda Trail and the bravery of a handful of young Australians
may have been equally important in the reversing of what had seemed an
irreversible tide. Only a few thousand men may have been involved on both
sides, but the Kokoda Trail was a perfect example of what has been called the
minimal rewrite rule of counterfactual history: that small events can have great
consequences.
The Australian defense of the Kokoda Trail
marked the first check on land suffered by the Japanese. Obscure events can
have big consequences. A Japanese victory would have changed the entire
calculus of the Pacific War. Once they had taken Port Moresby, an invasion of
the almost unpopulated northeastern peninsula of Australia, just a few hundred
miles away from Port Moresby, would have been impossible to stop. It would have
forced the United States to divert its resources, still fairly negligible in
mid-1942, to the defense of the island continent. (This was a time when more
American soldiers—close to 20,000—were in Japanese POW camps than were
available to fight.) Landings on islands like Guadalcanal and Bougainville
would have to be postponed, as would any thought of an island-hopping strategy.
Where could the Allies begin their opening thrust? Even if Japan could not
conquer the entire continent, a substantial foothold would have been enough to
provide a southern anchor for its empire. Imperial forces would have the
Pacific battlefield bracketed by the Australian and Chinese landmass. Moreover,
the securing of the Australia–New Guinea flank would have allowed the Japanese
to cut off American aid to Australia and to initiate an island-hopping strategy
of their own, with Hawaii as their ultimate goal.
The war may have turned on the struggle for
the Kokoda Trail as much as it did on the more heralded June naval victory at
Midway.
A wargame campaign designed for use with 28mm
miniatures
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