RE: Could the Japanese have invaded the US?
A raid to destory the gates/locks of The Panama canal would have prevented us from moving ships from the east coast to the West Coast. The lake that fills the locks would have drained down into the oceans. We would have been required to replace the gates. That I am sure we would have done in record time. But it would have take a very long time to refill the lake to be able to move ships again through the Panama Canal. Also, being a native of California just taking and holding for a little while the ports of San Diego, L.A./Long Beach, San Francisco/Oakland, Portland, and Seattle would reduce our ship yard capacity to build ships and move men and material into the Pacific Theater. Image all that stuff having to go down around the tip of South Amercia and on fewer ships. The Japanese would just have put all their long range subs down at tip of South Amercia and maybe a surface task forced maybe based in Chilie to attack those convoys. The Japanses needed only to send ammo/uniforms for troops to West Coast. There is and was plenty of food from California farms rice farms in Sacramentro Delta produces a large portion of Rice for Asia to this day, and Oil fields in L.A. area for their planes, trucks and ships. Until we took those ports back we could do little beyond our shores to hurt Japan giving them time. Calif. population was much smaller then and even then L.A. basin was still mostly farmland then. We had few divisions to defend the country at the start with and had just started massive training of pilots and troops and naval building program.
Any aircraft manufacturing in Southern california would be lost as would Boeing building B-17's and B-29s in Seattle plants and warships and Liberty ships being built in West Coast Yards at that time would not be finished or ours to use until we took back those ports.
I think Japan would have held out for another 2-3 years and maybe even delayed us helping in Europe theater due to fewer ships in pipeline giving Germany a year or 2 more. So ending up with most if not Western Europe in including France under Soviet control. Our Industrial capacity would have still eventfully overwhlemed Japan in the end.
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