Nicholas Welch
Last year, ChinaTalk covered Operation Causeway — the WWII-era US military plan to invade Japan-occupied Taiwan and use the island as a launching base for an assault against Japan. As US Army LTC Kevin McKittrick explained, Causeway was ultimately scrapped because, “the enemy always has a vote.”
Today, we’re exploring how Imperial Japan fended off Operation Causeway — in the form of its own large-scale Taiwan-Okinawa defensive plan, dubbed Operation Sho-2Go 捷2号作戦 (“Operation Victory No. 2”). Executed along side Operation Sho-1Go (Philippines), Operation Sho-3Go (Japan mainland), and Operation Sho-4Go (Hokkaido), Sho-2Go involved rapidly fortifying Taiwan with five divisions — approximately 165,600 troops — and employing a strategy of “vertical resilience” by constructing extensive underground tunnel networks and fortifications to leverage Taiwan’s mountainous terrain. Sho-2Go’s key innovation was to thoroughly disperse and conceal air and naval forces in protected positions, preserving them from initial US attacks, and then concentrate these forces in asymmetric kamikaze strikes against US landing fleets at the critical moment of invasion. Sho-2Go’s successful deterrence of a Taiwan invasion led American troops to target Okinawa instead.
This article is the product of fantastic archival research — using Japanese-language source materials — conducted by Japan Air Self-Defense Force Colonel Hirokazu Honda, who just finished a year-long stint at the Air War College (AWC) at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Colonel Honda earned his commission upon graduating from the National Defense Academy of Japan 防衛大学校 in 2004; he also has a master’s degree in aerospace engineering. He has served as A6, A5, and A1 staff for the Air Staff Office; Commander of the 36th Air Control and Warning Squadron; and defense strategy planner at the Joint Staff Office (J5). Colonel Honda was advised by AWC professor and US Air Force Colonel Jared D. Paslay.1
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