T2k Japan thoughts.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

From the post-TDM armor production discussion:

Briefly, I think Japan would get pasted, plus they'd have problems really early on with the Russians and Chinese exchanging NBC on a theater level in Manchuria. Imagine you live on the east coast of the US and then suddenly Wisconsin and Canada start exchanging nukes!

So during the November/December 1997 exchanges firstly I see Japan buying an EMP blanketing - this would take out any high-tech producing they were doing for the Chinese, Koreans and US. Then, US military sites would be hit. Take a look at this list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Japan#List_of_current_facilit ies) - that's a target-rich environment, one the Soviets could not just "let sit". That's a virtual dagger poised at the back of the Soviet Union and would likely go on TDM itself, not just sites in the US. If they left Japan untouched it would mean whole divisions crashing in through Kamchatka, tens of thousands if not a hundred thousand or more very pissed off US Marines and Army with USN Aviation and USAF as the opening acts.

Japan is like the England of the far east: densely populated and covered with strategic targets. They. Are. Hosed.

Worse, Japan has to rely on outside sources for virtually ALL of its fuel. Oil from the sea of Japan? Gone. EMP finishes off the grid so even assuming nuke plants aren't directly hit, what can they power? Indeed you'd see there (and in the US and Soviet Union and everywhere there is nuclear power that got hit during the war) the same thing we have going on in Japan now: loss of power to drive cooling pumps to cool the reactors (although I could see engineers doing "own generation" to keep the pumps active, assuming the equipment wasn't damaged by EMP).

The JSDF would be hard pressed to do anything beyond disaster assistance and as I mentioned elsewhere they'd probably have to keep the Japanese citizenry from lynching every American they laid eyes on up to and including storming whatever USFJ bases didn't get pasted in the nuclear exchanges.

I'd think the JCS would probably tell the Japanese "Yeah well remember those bases are ours, we'll come back for 'em some day!" then order the USJF to take everything that wasn't bolted to the floor (and pry up some of what was) and run convoys to S.Korea or Australia, maybe Guam or the Philippines or maybe even back to the 'States as quickly as humanly possible.

Any operational heavy lift birds they could find enough AvGas for would be hauling dependents out to Korea, Taiwan, anywhere but Japan.

[HorseSoldier]

Japan is very tangentially mentioned in v.1 as being sufficiently intact that Japanese merchants and traders penetrating into Soviet territory are the main source of information about conditions inside the USSR (from the .sov vehicle guide). In the 2300AD extension of the Twilight War timeline they're also one of the nations that contribute a garrison to replace the US forces in the Middle East when they get pulled out in the mid 2000s.

The thinking at GDW seems to have been that they made it through the war pretty intact, though probably with the same basic resource denial hits France took.

Can't remember what the v.2 timeline says for that but I just ignore that timeline completely for other reasons.

As noted in the other thread the fate of Taiwan is interesting, too, and unclear in the Twilight War scenario.

Edit to add: Japan's survival may have hinged on "pulling a France" and declaring neutrality and either closing US bases or stating they could only be used for regional missions like securing the territorial integrity of South Korea.

[WallShadow]

What is the bare minimum of equipment/materials/replacement components required to re-establish production of microcircuits after an EMP has fried the production machinery?
Has anyone ever done a study on this? Obviously unshielded microcircuits are going to be trashed, but how much of the remaining mechanism (casing, hardwiring, mechanical parts) would be unaffected and able to be reused?
I guess my question is, if you knew what needed to be replaced ahead of time, what's keeping a physically-undamaged (out of blast effect area) factory from stashing multiple multiple sets of spares and calibration tools in several dispersed seriously Faraday-caged environments, to be opened and plugged in when the EMPs stop? (The spare spares are in case the EMPs hadn't quite stopped.)
I get the image of some little independent forward-thinking microchip manufacturing company in Bear Whiz, West Virginia, becoming VERY important and of great interest to many in the post-whoops world.

[HorseSoldier]

That's a good point in general -- even before the general Twilight War kicks off when it's just the Soviets and Chinese slugging it out, I'd think some people in various countries (both government and private side) would start thinking about contingencies relating to two nuclear powers being at war and potential badness thereof. We mostly tend to look at stuff like how different nations would have been doing the "prudent military build up" stuff but I would think people would have been doing the "prudent economic back stopping" stuff to, and at least some companies would be looking at setting aside a bit more than just-in-time market economics demanded.

[Rainbow Six]

There have been a couple of discussions about Japan before which have covered a number of points and sparked some good discussion.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=1428&highlight=Japan

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=1503&highlight=Japan

Cheers

[Fusilier]

For me Japan is "relatively intact", at least as much as the books say.

I used a war game scenario done by the Naval War College in the 1980s in which Japan is pressured/intimidated to remain neutral (or at least conducting any direct action). Only some destruction occurred in during the final exchanges.

[Legbreaker]

Japan: The war with the Soviets over Sakhalin Island and the Kuriles brough Japan under nuclear attack in late 1997. Japanese industry was heavily damaged, and Tokyo all but destroyed. Martial law was never formally proclaimed, but most areas are governed by military officers who hold both civil and military positions. Each community counts as insular or independant, although they are all nominally under central control. The large cities are devastated, mostly from the civil unrest which followed the breakdown of the world economy and cessation of foreign imports.
Seems to me that it's fairly clear what happens to Japan.
On the whole, they're toast.

There may well be a few isolated and independent traders plying the seas in (probably) wind powered vessels, but little organised activity.

[Abbott Shaull]

Seems to me that it's fairly clear what happens to Japan.
On the whole, they're toast.

There may well be a few isolated and independent traders plying the seas in (probably) wind powered vessels, but little organised activity.

Even if they pulled out the exchange relatively intact, or where they had been hit hard enough where the situation was like in the US in the 1998-1999 where many military leaders found themselves running the military affairs and local civil affairs.

Japan would need to get raw materials.

Japan in one of the more active places for earth quakes. The recent quake and other in the past 10 or so years. Think if they had happen when Japan resources were limited. It would be very much more devastating to the moral of the people.

Think of something like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita hitting the Gulf Coast in post-TDM.

It would be enough for what little civil order was left to be tipped beyond the tipping point and would take many years to restore anything that would resemble any type of civil order. Ugh, sudden thoughts of Mayor of New Orleans (if it wasn't already destroyed, don't have the target list here in front of me) and the LA Governor having their pissing match in post-TDM LA. Who would they blame then.

[HorseSoldier]

As mentioned in the other thread BYB doesn't sync with other/earlier stuff. To each their own etc.

[Legbreaker]

In my opinion in this particular case it does. There's next to no information provided anywhere in 1.0. 2.x simply expands on this lack of info.
It's also worth noting that 99.99% of the information in the 2.x vehicle books was copied word for word from 1.0.

[Targan]

Unfortunately to some extent the information in v.2 on what happens to Japan during the Twilight War is at odds with what Traveller:2300 says, although I guess it is possible that Japan was able to bounce back faster than other countries from the atomic destruction visited upon it. They do have more experience in that area than any other nation after all.

There is a Challenge Mag mini-module set in Japan but it was actually fan-generated material that was published in Challenge after its author won a competition. But I guess the fact that it was published in Challenge makes it can. Semi-canon? I dunno.

[Legbreaker]

I tend to view the published T2K material as more relevant than the 2300 stuff. The 2300 material is definitely a good guide, but it's nowhere near conclusive.

The Challenge mag only dealt with one small part of the country, not the nation as a whole (or even anywhere outside the immediate adventure area from memory).

I see Japan as more able to bounce back for the reasons already presented - experience. It won't by any means be easy though given the serious lack of natural resources and outside assistance. Trade is likely to exist only by wind power initially (probably take a couple of decades to move back to powered shipping). In the meantime they'll struggle along with bamboo and mud bricks.

[HorseSoldier]

Well, by the 2.3K timeline, the UK is also able to help generate the Saudi garrison -- so I'd say worst case scenario, Japan is more in line with SGUK than, say, Y2K Germany and Poland or a return to the Shogunate. The fact they manage to show up for the Saudi garrison job to get their share of the oil sort of points not only to a given level of functionality, but where at least some of the resources driving their subsequent recovery were coming from.

[rcaf_777]

Isn't there Japan adventure in a Challenge Art?

[Legbreaker]

Yes, but it only deals with a very localised area and goes into next to no detail about the rest of the country. For the purpose of this thread it's nearly useless.

[Targan]

Isn't there Japan adventure in a Challenge Art?

Yes, I mentioned that three posts above yours. You missed that one huh?

[Rainbow Six]

Someone has posted what I think is the full text of the Challenge article in one of the older threads (click on the second of the two links I posted in reply #5).