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 - 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.