If that problem wasn’t bad enough, there was a major disagreement between the Army and Navy over the project and its goals. While both sides now knew that a bomb was possible, they disagreed over both the ultimate use of the bomb, the politics involved (the Navy believed that the British would respond with overwhelming power and the Army believed that they would hold off) and of the other purposes of atomic power. In effect, what small chance the Japanese had to develop a bomb was sunk by the disagreement between the two services – which kept some of the best atomic scientists in Japan from working together.
The best that could be said of the Japanese war effort is that they went bravely to a defeat that only the most fanatical believed to be avoidable. Although the Japanese were used to limited logistics, and were striking against weak garrisons for the main part, they were not able to defeat the crack troops involved in Singapore, nor were they able to overrun the Dutch East Indies as fast as they had expected. The only major sea battle of 1940, the Battle of the Indian Ocean, was a near-complete defeat; ironically, the only thing that saved the remains of the fleet that had engaged the British ships was a mutual reluctance to press the battle to the limit. The Japanese inability to regard their own position dispassionately – and to recognise the real strength of their foe – made it impossible for the Japanese to adapt before all hell broke loose.