The US had already started, pre-Pearl-Harbor on a massive warship-building program, precisely expecting Japan to pull something along these lines. While Pearl Harbor being attacked was not expected, the Phillippines being attacked was considered likely. About a year-and-a-half prior to Pearl Harbor, the US had already initiated a major ship-building program and as I recall, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, already had more warship tonnage under construction than Japan had in her navy. The outbreak of war only accelerated that. For the US, naval reinforcements at large scale were on the way; all the US had to do was wait.
The Manhattan Project had been initiated – albeit with a potential war with Germany in mind, not Japan – shortly prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In general, over the course of the war, Japan made decisions aimed at a short, sharp war directed at American naval forces, all predicated on the theory that a severe naval loss would cause a loss of American public support for the war. America made plans aimed at a long war, and focused on macro-strategy; it aimed at moves that would cause the US to overwhelm Japan as long as the war continued for a sufficient period of time. Examples include: Japan having a high bar for training their naval aviators versus (but which could not be sustained in a war seeing significant attrition of them); expending naval air instructors in maximum-effort attacks when the pilot force could be exhausted, which traded long-term potential for short-term; not rotating forces out of combat (as opposed to US policy of using naval aviator veterans to train new aviators); Japan’s doctrine principally had Japanese subs going after American warships with submarines, whereas the US aimed for Japanese merchant vessels to degrade Japanese industrial capacity; Japan not seeking to optimize logistics around warplane production (in one example I recall reading that major portions of new Japanese Zeroes needed to be hauled by oxcart). In the event, the Japanese strategy did not work out; American public support for the war did not collapse.
So in sum, Japan’s gamble was not that the US would not respond, nor that the US didn’t have the theoretical ability to defeat Japan if the war kept going long enough, but rather a combination of believing that Japan could leverage local military superiority, and that the American public would not be willing to support an extended war. I think that in general, things like World War II – where publics in countries did hold out for a long time – have caused a rethinking of that position. Also, nuclear weapons are a factor today; Japan was not aware of the Manhattan Project at the time that it initiated the war. I don’t think that a repeat would be likely today, as the critical factors here have shifted.
China is another example. Here, China has done military occupations of small islets and shoals in the South China Sea, with small-scale military conflicts associated with these. These have been successful; countries with territorial claims in the region have not been willing to start a full-scale war with China over China occupying territory. But here, China is considerably more-powerful than they are; for Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, or the Philippines; an escalation to full-on war is a losing move for those countries. Also, these shoals and such are not occupied; you can’t have a guerrilla war if you’ve got nobody to be guerrillas, and there’s nowhere for someone to live or hide. Neither of those conditions would really apply to an occupation of overseas US territories. So I don’t think that this would be analogous argument for a country to go for an occupation of foreign US territories.
But, okay, let’s say that we imagine that a country isn’t deterred. With some foreign territories, the issue isn’t a lack of an ability to invade, but just that the ensuing likely consequences would deter an invasion. Lets say that China or someone does invade Guam and gets control of the territory. Okay. Then, will we see guerrilla warfare?
Guerrilla warfare is something that one is forced to, not something that one normally chooses as an alternative to conventional warfare. In a scenario where there are conventional forces coming, there is reason not to commit more forces to guerrilla warfare unless you have to; if there’s a conventional military coming, one would would rather fight the war on conventional terms; this is more-advantageous. In World War II, one idea was airdropping limited weapons – which would not be terribly useful to Germany even if captured, but were adequate for an occupied French population to make an occupation dangerous and difficult for the occupiers – to the French population. This did not sell well with the military forces involved, who preferred to just wait and conduct a conventional conflict on more-favorable terms, given that they were massing a superior force that would be coming.
That being said, there are forms of partisan activity that have been aimed at disrupting occupations even in such a “superior relief forces are coming” – providing information on the occupying force, disrupting enemy logistics, and disrupting that force’s movement behind the lines at the time that the relief force is coming.
The French Resistance mentioned above did provide information and did disrupt logistics during the opening of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe:
The plans for the Resistance in Operation Overlord were:
Plan Vert: a systematic sabotage campaign to destroy the French railroad system.[162]
Plan Rouge: to attack and destroy all German ammunition dumps across France.[162]
Plan Bleu: to attack and destroy all power lines across France.[162]
Plan Violet: to attack and destroy phone lines in France.[162]
Plan Jaune: to attack German command posts.[162]
Plan Noir: to attack German fuel depots.[162]
Plan Tortue: to sabotage the roads of France.[162]
General de Gaulle himself was only informed by Churchill on June 4, 1944, that the Allies planned to land in France on 6 June. Until then the Free French leaders had no idea when and where Operation Overlord was due to take place. On 5 June 1944, orders were given to activate Plan Violet. Of all the plans, Plan Violet was most important to Operation Overlord, since destroying telephone lines and cutting underground cables prevented phone calls and orders transmitted by telex from getting through and forced the Germans to use their radios to communicate. As the codebreakers of Bletchley Park had broken many of the codes encrypted by the Enigma Machine, this gave a considerable intelligence advantage to the Allied generals.
The US had Cold War plans to deal with a Soviet invasion of Alaska that involved asking some civilians to act as stay-behind forces, embedded in the population. These were not intended to conduct large-scale guerrilla operations, but were to provide intelligence to the forces coming to their relief; they were provided with pre-placed weapons caches.
Similar stay-behind forces were formed by NATO to counter a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe; in the event of an invasion, those small forces would not be able to outright contest the Soviet armies, but would be able to provide intelligence and disruption behind the lines to aid conventional relief forces coming.
Ukraine is a contemporary example; Ukraine has partisan activity behind enemy lines in occupied territory, with hit-and-run attacks, sabotage, and intelligence-gathering. But it isn’t the principal effort of Ukraine; rather, it’s structured so as to aid conventional efforts.
During World War II, the British and Commonwealth had coastwatchers in Oceania. These were outside the area controlled by conventional Allied forces, but did provide a great deal of valuable information.
Guerrilla warfare working really entails being able to hide, either in rugged terrain or in a civilian population, so that the guerrilla force can’t be forced to outright battle. Very small islets won’t permit for that, so a certain scale or population is required.
With Attu and Kiska, in the Alaska occupation, the US had (short) advance warning, and evacuated everyone who was willing to leave. There were about 30 people remaining, all of whom the Japanese removed and imprisoned in Japan. So there wasn’t much of an opportunity for guerrilla warfare.
In the Phillippines, there was guerrilla warfare. The Fillippinos had a tradition of guerrilla warfare; first against the Spanish Empire. Then when the US showed up and didn’t show any signs of going, there was a three-year unsuccessful war against the US. Several years before the Japanese invaded, the US granted independence, with a ten-year transition period. Japan invaded, and in addition to the conventional fighting, both of American forces defending against the invasion and then, several years later, liberation, there was also a substantial guerrilla campaign, with official US support.
Hawaii was never actually invaded by Japan in World War II, but I understand that there were potentially plans to do so, had Japan won the Battle of Midway, rather than it being a catastrophic loss. What I’ve seen of post-war analysis suggests that Japan probably would not have been able to successfully do so. We can’t know for sure what such an occupation might have looked like. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was initially a great deal of confusion, but one immediate response on the island was concern about an impending Japanese invasion. Many civilians did go and get firearms, and while their actions were haphazard, uncoordinated, and in some cases disruptive to official defense efforts – this included doing things like setting up roadblocks and questioning anyone who looked Japanese and randomly shooting at low-flying aircraft – they did act rather than just remaining passive; which to me rather supports the probability of an active resistance had an invasion occurred. Some of this was in ad hoc conjunction with official efforts:
He also called for runners from all groups in the battalion and established his command post at the parade ground’s south corner, and ordered the almost 150 civilians who had showed up looking for ways to help out to report to the machine gun storeroom and fill ammunition belts and clean weapons. Among other actions, he also instructed the battalion sergeant major to be ready to safeguard important papers from the headquarters barracks.
While Marines were busily setting up the 3-inch guns, several civilian yard workmen grabbed up rifles and “brought their fire to bear upon the enemy,” allowing Swartz’s men to continue their work.
In a number of historical defensive battles, American civilians did show up at the door of whatever conventional military forces were around, sometimes with firearms, sometimes not, and participated in them. The Battle of Wake Island, when Japan invaded that place:
Putnam had placed Captain Elrod in command of one flank of VMF-211’s defensive line, which was situated in dense undergrowth. In the impenetrable darkness, the squadron executive officer and his men–most of whom were unarmed civilians who acted as weapons and ammunition carriers (until weapons became available)–conducted a spirited defense which repeated attacks by Special Naval Landing Force troops could not dislodge.
That was not a guerrilla war; Wake Island’s terrain didn’t really permit for much of a guerrilla war, but a conventional action.
The American Revolutionary War in general had a fair bit of guerrilla activity.
In the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans is really conventional warfare, not guerrilla, but would perhaps be an example of mostly-militia and volunteer forces successful directly successfully-opposing conventional military forces. The War of 1812 had technically ended by that point, but word had not yet reached either British or American forces, and until then, fighting continued. The British sought to capture New Orleans and blockade the Mississippi River, then an even more-critical transport path than it was today; there were few roads back then, and the Mississippi provided access to the interior from the ocean; a British capture would not change the outcome of the war, but would provide the British with a stronger hand at the post-war negotiating table. The ~8,000-strong British attacking force consisted of regular members of the military, albeit a significant number of members of the Royal Navy being present who were not normally used as infantry forces. The great bulk of the American forces were militia or civilian volunteers who showed up; they won a pretty one-sided victory.
Even so, the British greatly outnumbered the Americans. Jackson’s total of 4,732 men was made up of 968 Army regulars, 58 Marines (holding the center of the defensive line), 106 Navy seamen, 1,060 Louisiana militia and volunteers (including 462 Black people), 1,352 Tennessee militia, 986 Kentucky militia, 150 Mississippi militia, and 52 Choctaw warriors, along with a force from pirate Jean Lafitte’s Baratarians.
The American Civil War had a variety of forms of guerrilla activity:
Bushwhacking was a form of guerrilla warfare common during the American Revolutionary War, War of 1812, American Civil War and other conflicts in which there were large areas of contested land and few governmental resources to control these tracts. This was particularly prevalent in rural areas during the Civil War where there were sharp divisions between those favoring the Union and Confederacy in the conflict. The perpetrators of the attacks were called bushwhackers. The term “bushwhacking” is still in use today to describe ambushes done with the aim of attrition.[1]
Bushwhackers were generally part of the irregular military forces on both sides. While bushwhackers conducted well-organized raids against the military, the most dire of the attacks involved ambushes of individuals and house raids in rural areas.
Looking that over, I think I can reasonably say that there’s pretty substantial historical precedent for there being civilian willingness and ability to conduct guerrilla warfare, as long as the population and terrain is sufficient to permit for it (i.e. we’re talking about something more like Guam than Howland Island). However, the government has historically also generally favored using volunteers willing to do so to provide information or otherwise assist conventional forces if that’s practical, maybe doing sabotage, rather than encouraging the public to independently conduct higher-intensity warfare directly against conventional forces, assuming that there’s a conventional relief force that can be sent. So my guess is that yeah, you could see something like Red Dawn, as long as you could come up with a scenario where an occupation could occur in a political and military sense, and there is some political and military precedent for countries trying to occupy part of countries. The American government – which would still be around, unlike in Red Dawn – has usually aimed for using such volunteers in either a conventional, non-guerrilla form, or at a lower level of intensity if a relief force coming; I doubt that the American government would likely actively seek to create a large-scale guerrilla warfare effort in such a scenario.
[continued from parent]
The US had already started, pre-Pearl-Harbor on a massive warship-building program, precisely expecting Japan to pull something along these lines. While Pearl Harbor being attacked was not expected, the Phillippines being attacked was considered likely. About a year-and-a-half prior to Pearl Harbor, the US had already initiated a major ship-building program and as I recall, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, already had more warship tonnage under construction than Japan had in her navy. The outbreak of war only accelerated that. For the US, naval reinforcements at large scale were on the way; all the US had to do was wait.
The Manhattan Project had been initiated – albeit with a potential war with Germany in mind, not Japan – shortly prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In general, over the course of the war, Japan made decisions aimed at a short, sharp war directed at American naval forces, all predicated on the theory that a severe naval loss would cause a loss of American public support for the war. America made plans aimed at a long war, and focused on macro-strategy; it aimed at moves that would cause the US to overwhelm Japan as long as the war continued for a sufficient period of time. Examples include: Japan having a high bar for training their naval aviators versus (but which could not be sustained in a war seeing significant attrition of them); expending naval air instructors in maximum-effort attacks when the pilot force could be exhausted, which traded long-term potential for short-term; not rotating forces out of combat (as opposed to US policy of using naval aviator veterans to train new aviators); Japan’s doctrine principally had Japanese subs going after American warships with submarines, whereas the US aimed for Japanese merchant vessels to degrade Japanese industrial capacity; Japan not seeking to optimize logistics around warplane production (in one example I recall reading that major portions of new Japanese Zeroes needed to be hauled by oxcart). In the event, the Japanese strategy did not work out; American public support for the war did not collapse.
So in sum, Japan’s gamble was not that the US would not respond, nor that the US didn’t have the theoretical ability to defeat Japan if the war kept going long enough, but rather a combination of believing that Japan could leverage local military superiority, and that the American public would not be willing to support an extended war. I think that in general, things like World War II – where publics in countries did hold out for a long time – have caused a rethinking of that position. Also, nuclear weapons are a factor today; Japan was not aware of the Manhattan Project at the time that it initiated the war. I don’t think that a repeat would be likely today, as the critical factors here have shifted.
China is another example. Here, China has done military occupations of small islets and shoals in the South China Sea, with small-scale military conflicts associated with these. These have been successful; countries with territorial claims in the region have not been willing to start a full-scale war with China over China occupying territory. But here, China is considerably more-powerful than they are; for Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, or the Philippines; an escalation to full-on war is a losing move for those countries. Also, these shoals and such are not occupied; you can’t have a guerrilla war if you’ve got nobody to be guerrillas, and there’s nowhere for someone to live or hide. Neither of those conditions would really apply to an occupation of overseas US territories. So I don’t think that this would be analogous argument for a country to go for an occupation of foreign US territories.
But, okay, let’s say that we imagine that a country isn’t deterred. With some foreign territories, the issue isn’t a lack of an ability to invade, but just that the ensuing likely consequences would deter an invasion. Lets say that China or someone does invade Guam and gets control of the territory. Okay. Then, will we see guerrilla warfare?
Guerrilla warfare is something that one is forced to, not something that one normally chooses as an alternative to conventional warfare. In a scenario where there are conventional forces coming, there is reason not to commit more forces to guerrilla warfare unless you have to; if there’s a conventional military coming, one would would rather fight the war on conventional terms; this is more-advantageous. In World War II, one idea was airdropping limited weapons – which would not be terribly useful to Germany even if captured, but were adequate for an occupied French population to make an occupation dangerous and difficult for the occupiers – to the French population. This did not sell well with the military forces involved, who preferred to just wait and conduct a conventional conflict on more-favorable terms, given that they were massing a superior force that would be coming.
That being said, there are forms of partisan activity that have been aimed at disrupting occupations even in such a “superior relief forces are coming” – providing information on the occupying force, disrupting enemy logistics, and disrupting that force’s movement behind the lines at the time that the relief force is coming.
The French Resistance mentioned above did provide information and did disrupt logistics during the opening of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe:
The US had Cold War plans to deal with a Soviet invasion of Alaska that involved asking some civilians to act as stay-behind forces, embedded in the population. These were not intended to conduct large-scale guerrilla operations, but were to provide intelligence to the forces coming to their relief; they were provided with pre-placed weapons caches.
Similar stay-behind forces were formed by NATO to counter a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe; in the event of an invasion, those small forces would not be able to outright contest the Soviet armies, but would be able to provide intelligence and disruption behind the lines to aid conventional relief forces coming.
Ukraine is a contemporary example; Ukraine has partisan activity behind enemy lines in occupied territory, with hit-and-run attacks, sabotage, and intelligence-gathering. But it isn’t the principal effort of Ukraine; rather, it’s structured so as to aid conventional efforts.
During World War II, the British and Commonwealth had coastwatchers in Oceania. These were outside the area controlled by conventional Allied forces, but did provide a great deal of valuable information.
Guerrilla warfare working really entails being able to hide, either in rugged terrain or in a civilian population, so that the guerrilla force can’t be forced to outright battle. Very small islets won’t permit for that, so a certain scale or population is required.
With Attu and Kiska, in the Alaska occupation, the US had (short) advance warning, and evacuated everyone who was willing to leave. There were about 30 people remaining, all of whom the Japanese removed and imprisoned in Japan. So there wasn’t much of an opportunity for guerrilla warfare.
In the Phillippines, there was guerrilla warfare. The Fillippinos had a tradition of guerrilla warfare; first against the Spanish Empire. Then when the US showed up and didn’t show any signs of going, there was a three-year unsuccessful war against the US. Several years before the Japanese invaded, the US granted independence, with a ten-year transition period. Japan invaded, and in addition to the conventional fighting, both of American forces defending against the invasion and then, several years later, liberation, there was also a substantial guerrilla campaign, with official US support.
[continued in child]
[continued from parent]
Hawaii was never actually invaded by Japan in World War II, but I understand that there were potentially plans to do so, had Japan won the Battle of Midway, rather than it being a catastrophic loss. What I’ve seen of post-war analysis suggests that Japan probably would not have been able to successfully do so. We can’t know for sure what such an occupation might have looked like. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was initially a great deal of confusion, but one immediate response on the island was concern about an impending Japanese invasion. Many civilians did go and get firearms, and while their actions were haphazard, uncoordinated, and in some cases disruptive to official defense efforts – this included doing things like setting up roadblocks and questioning anyone who looked Japanese and randomly shooting at low-flying aircraft – they did act rather than just remaining passive; which to me rather supports the probability of an active resistance had an invasion occurred. Some of this was in ad hoc conjunction with official efforts:
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/wapa/extcontent/usmc/pcn-190-003116-00/sec4a.htm
In a number of historical defensive battles, American civilians did show up at the door of whatever conventional military forces were around, sometimes with firearms, sometimes not, and participated in them. The Battle of Wake Island, when Japan invaded that place:
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Wake.html
That was not a guerrilla war; Wake Island’s terrain didn’t really permit for much of a guerrilla war, but a conventional action.
The American Revolutionary War in general had a fair bit of guerrilla activity.
In the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans is really conventional warfare, not guerrilla, but would perhaps be an example of mostly-militia and volunteer forces successful directly successfully-opposing conventional military forces. The War of 1812 had technically ended by that point, but word had not yet reached either British or American forces, and until then, fighting continued. The British sought to capture New Orleans and blockade the Mississippi River, then an even more-critical transport path than it was today; there were few roads back then, and the Mississippi provided access to the interior from the ocean; a British capture would not change the outcome of the war, but would provide the British with a stronger hand at the post-war negotiating table. The ~8,000-strong British attacking force consisted of regular members of the military, albeit a significant number of members of the Royal Navy being present who were not normally used as infantry forces. The great bulk of the American forces were militia or civilian volunteers who showed up; they won a pretty one-sided victory.
The American Civil War had a variety of forms of guerrilla activity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwhacker
Looking that over, I think I can reasonably say that there’s pretty substantial historical precedent for there being civilian willingness and ability to conduct guerrilla warfare, as long as the population and terrain is sufficient to permit for it (i.e. we’re talking about something more like Guam than Howland Island). However, the government has historically also generally favored using volunteers willing to do so to provide information or otherwise assist conventional forces if that’s practical, maybe doing sabotage, rather than encouraging the public to independently conduct higher-intensity warfare directly against conventional forces, assuming that there’s a conventional relief force that can be sent. So my guess is that yeah, you could see something like Red Dawn, as long as you could come up with a scenario where an occupation could occur in a political and military sense, and there is some political and military precedent for countries trying to occupy part of countries. The American government – which would still be around, unlike in Red Dawn – has usually aimed for using such volunteers in either a conventional, non-guerrilla form, or at a lower level of intensity if a relief force coming; I doubt that the American government would likely actively seek to create a large-scale guerrilla warfare effort in such a scenario.