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Japan's alternative would be a tough one, too—to reduce the flanking bases, while her aircraft, operating from Yap, Palau and other bases in the mandated islands, went to work on Amboina and Surabaya. In 1914, Tsingtao, garrisoned by about 6,000 German troops and wide open to attack, held out against the Japanese and British for more than two months. Better munitioned and better located (on an island) than Tsingtao, Hong Kong is garrisoned by 12,000 crack British troops. Once having silenced Hong Kong, Surabaya and Amboina, the Japanese Fleet might swing around the east side of Borneo—trusting to distance and superior force to keep off the British from Singapore—and force a Borneo landing, would even then have only a fair start to conquest of the Indies. And if the U. S. took a hand the Japanese would also have to take the U. S. base at Cavite, reduce its island fortress at Corregidor, knock out 11,000 U. S. Regulars and 20,000 soldiers of General Douglas MacArthur's new native army.
Meanwhile, the U. S. Fleet, now based at Pearl Harbor, would have a chance to act. Convoying tankers, tenders, cargo and repair ships, it could head west to the Orient. Once out of Pearl Harbor the Navy would have to rely on its floating shops and tenders, until it got within range of Singapore. This would involve some risks, but they are risks that most Navy men consider worth while, for under such circumstances they count on winning any major engagement in the neighborhood of the Philippines.
The U. S. Navy apparently thinks largely in terms of meeting and beating the main Japanese Fleet at sea. If, when war was once started, the Japanese Fleet elected to play safe and stick close to home—as the Italian Fleet has done in the Mediterranean—no such action might take place.
In that event, light vessels of the British, Dutch and U. S. forces operating from the Indies, Singapore, Manila, Guam, etc., would doubtless begin a blockade of Japan. All her seaborne commerce could probably be destroyed except that with China, Manchukuo and Korea. Even that could be harried by submarines. Weakened as she is by her three-year-old war in China, and dependent on supplies and markets overseas, her eventual defeat would be likely. At worst she might hold out until it became necessary to withdraw the U. S. Fleet to the Atlantic. If she then took the Indies, the U. S. would probably be no worse off than if Japan were allowed to seize the Indies now.
All these things are only the probabilities in terms of which some naval men think. Only one thing is certain about any war-to-come: it almost never takes the course which men (including experts) expect.