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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/10/2020 8:49:16 PM

asl3d

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The standard or Type B triangular Japanese division had, in addition to its three infantry regiments, a reconnaissance regiment with 16 light tanks or armored cars; an artillery regiment with 36 guns; and an engineer regiment. The artillery regiment was highly variable in composition, from 24 75mm guns and 12 105mm howitzers to 12 each of 75mm guns, 105mm howitzers, and 150mmhowitzers. The combat units were supported by a signals unit, a transportation regiment, an ordnance unit, a medical unit, three field hospitals, a water supply unit, and a veterinary hospital. The latter supported the division's 3466 horses, for there was typically only 310 trucks. Total weapons counts were 6867 rifles, 264 light mortars, 273 light machine guns, 78 heavy machine guns, 14 37mm antitank guns, 18 70mm howitzers, 12 75mm infantry guns, 36 artillery pieces of 75mm to 150mm, and 16 light tanks or armored cars. Total manpower was 15,220 officers and men.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/11/2020 8:03:06 PM

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The Type A divisions were reinforced to about 20,000 officers and men with improved equipment while retaining essentially the same organization as the "Type B" divisions.
Type C divisions were wartime divisions organized as two brigades of four battalions each, without a regimental echelon. These had a smaller manpower than a triangular division, about 12,000 officers and men, and they had almost no artillery and no reconnaissance regiment. They were intended primarily for garrison and antiguerrilla duty. They were distinct from "Special" wartime divisions having a triangular structure.
In October 1943 the Army published a new TO&E for an ocean division. This consisted of two static defense regiments and an amphibious regiment. Two divisions were immediately converted to the new organization, and another three a few months later. The divisions proved well suited for deployment by sea but had poor mobility once landed. Allied intelligence got wind of the reorganization, and concluded these divisions had an experimental "regimental combat team" organization, with artillery and other heavy weapons permanently distributed to the individual regiments.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/12/2020 7:41:13 PM

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Almost all the divisions raised in 1944 and 1945 lacked reconnaissance regiments, and many were badly understrength in artillery. Few of those raised in 1945 had more than a battalion of artillery.
In 1945, the Japanese began raising coastal and mobile divisions for the final defense of the home islands. Mobile divisions had three infantry regiments and an artillery regiment, but no reconnaissance regiment. They were given relatively young, fit officers and men and as many active duty soldiers as could be scraped together. Coastal divisions had a single battalion of artillery, three static regiments with virtually no mobility (so that they were expected to fight to the death where they were positioned), poor weaponry (with some men equipped with no more than bamboo spears), and a single mobile regiment for local counterattack. By May 1945, mobile divisions no longer were assigned any artillery and coastal divisions were reduced to three regiments.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/13/2020 7:44:09 PM

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The Japanese Army also raised a large number of independent mixed brigades, which typically had about five infantry battalions and a battalion of artillery along with supporting units. In some respects, the independent mixed brigades resembled small divisions with a very narrow division slice, and some were eventually redesignated as divisions.
Japanese infantry divisions were typically raised on a regional basis, like British battalions or U.S. National Guard divisions, but at all echelons. For example, the men in a particular company might all be from the same small town. This contributed greatly to unit cohesion, but it also meant that the destruction of a unit was devastating to the folks back home in the town from which the unit came. Japanese citizens from Gifu Prefecture still make visits to Mount Austen on Guadalcanal, where two regiments recruited from their fishing villages were annihilated in 1943, to search for remains.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/14/2020 6:35:26 PM

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The Japanese assigned one or more depot divisions to each divisional district. These were training formations whose function resembled that of British regiments in a number of respects. In peacetime, the depot divisions trained each years' class of conscripts. If war suddenly broke out, the bulk of the depot division was used as cadre and filled out with reservists to create a field division, usually bearing the same number as the depot division, which could quickly be committed to combat. The remainder of the depot division was then rebuilt with other reservists or conscripts. During a more prolonged war, when a new division needed to be raised, a small nucleus of cadre was drawn from a depot division and filled out with reservists and conscripts to create a new field division with its own number. This new division was billeted in its own wartime barracks while undergoing as much training as the situation permitted before being committed to combat. Depot divisions were also responsible for providing replacements to field divisions, usually those that were earlier raised from the same divisional district.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/15/2020 7:36:57 PM

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Late in the Pacific War, the Japanese Army began creating Field Replacement Units for its divisions. Each unit had two infantry battalions plus supporting elements, not necessarily drawn from the same divisional district, and after training together the unit was sent to a theater, where it might be broken up to provide replacements for several divisions. The Army also began using experienced troops drawn from divisions in quiet sectors to provide replacements for other divisions that had suffered heavy losses. Both methods of replacement were disliked by the Army because of their tendency to reduce unit cohesion, and so were regarded as measures of desperation.
The Japanese activated four armored divisions during the war. These were originally square divisions, with two brigades of two tank regiments and a single mobile infantry regiment, but by the end of the war the Japanese had settled on a triangular organization of three tank regiments and a mobile infantry regiment. The infantry were transported by 300 trucks and the tank regiments each were allocated 31 light and 50 medium tanks plus 76 trucks. There was also an artillery regiment of 12 75mm guns and 24 205mm howitzers, an antiaircraft unit, a reconnaissance unit with 32 light and 10 medium tanks, and other supporting elements.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/16/2020 7:17:20 PM

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Soldiers of the Sun

The understanding of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy is not helped by the dearth of English translations of Japanese accounts of World War 2, by the profound cultural and religious differences that still exist between Japan and the West, nor by the lingering effects of skillful wartime Allied propaganda. The Italian soldier is still unfairly portrayed as a genial, if boastful, coward (the butt of jokes among the ignorant); the German, likewise, as an obese and humourless moron; and the Japanese as a savage and unfeeling "inferior being". During the war, both sides resorted to crude but effective racist propaganda to belittle and dehumanize their foe; but the Allies' animal imagery was particularly malicious, pervasive and long-lasting. As early as January 1941, the British Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, described the Japanese he had observed in China as "various subhuman species". Many memoirs of Allied soldiers' war experiences are littered with similar comments, demonstrating that even front-line troops are not always more immune to "hate indoctrination" than civilians. Even the most flattering comments about Japanese courage and stoicism are interlaced with racist metaphors, the most printable of which include "robot fanatics", "the most formidable fighting insect in history", and "soldier-ants". While such language conveys something of the understandable emotions of fear and loathing that the Japanese instilled in their enemies, this does nothing to demolish prejudices or promote understanding (much less reconciliation) between former enemies. Although some personal accounts of wartime experiences describe the Waffen SS in similar terms, this dehumanization of the enemy soldier is still largely reserved for the Japanese.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/17/2020 6:56:15 PM

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Pearl Harbor

The causes of the war between Japan and the Allies need not be discussed here, but myths abound even with respect to the Pearl Harbor attack-which has long epitomized the Japanese at their most "typical" (i.e., engineering "ungentlemanly" and "unprovoked" assaults on a guiltless victim). In reality, the US government knew, well in advance, what was to befall the United States, but chose to ignore the wamings for political reasons; in the words of one author, America was "trying to lever Japan into the war". Roosevelt's major problem was, as he himself put it, "how we [the USA] should maneuver the Japanese into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves". In 1944, Britain's Minister of Production admitted that Japan "was provoked into attacking America" and that it was "a travesty of history" to allege that the USA was reluctantly forced into the war. This is not to question the morality of Roosevelt's stratagem which, by goading Japan, destroyed the prevailing mood of American isolationism and generated instant (and essential) public support for the President's already considerable material aid to the Allied camp. Nor does the foregoing attempt to condone or belittle Japan's appalling behavior in China, which provided the background to America's decision to go to war.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/18/2020 8:10:43 PM

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China and Manchuria

But, seen from Japan's viewpoint, the tightening Western trade embargo against her in response to her grisly adventures in China and Manchuria left Japanese leaders with a stark choice-either bow to Western pressure and quit those areas with an unacceptable loss of "face" internationally, or obtain the vital raw materials being withheld by the West by seizing the Dutch East Indies and neighboring territory. As the domestic consequences of backing down were perceived to pose a threat to Japan's militaristic regime, war was regarded as a viable foreign policy option in Japanese deliberations. Moreover, Japan felt (with some justification) that her economic exploitation of China and other areas was no worse than American or British behavior in China, in Japan itself, and elsewhere for decades previously under pretexts like the "Open Door", the "Monroe Doctrine", and the "Commonwealth" (although this did overlook the profound differences in the frequency and scale of brutality exercised by Japanese overlords compared to most others). Japan had, in any case, no intention of remaining economically subservient to the USA. To the militarists in power, war became the only "honorable" course; by 1940, more moderate Japanese politicians who still favored dialogue with the West were either behind bars or had been cowed into silence. Like Hitler, most Japanese strategists saw the Allies as morally degenerate and believed that they would quickly become warweary and sue for peace, all of which contained an element of wish-ful thinking since even the military had little confidence of winning any prolonged conflict. Nor was there any deliberate intention of starting hostilities without first declaring war; this actually occurred due to blunders by the Japanese diplomatic staff and decoding problems, and the London Times observed at the start of the Russo-Japanese War that such polite formalities "have been comparatively rare in modem history". If the events of this war were not warning enough for America, the US ambassador in Tokyo reported that the Pearl Harbor attack was freely rumored in the Japanese capital before December 1941. The wonder is not that Japan went to war with the West in 1941, but rather that her anti-war faction delayed it for so long.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/19/2020 7:32:52 PM

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The Pacific

There is also a pervasive myth that the Allies then faced Japan's full might in 1941-42--whereas in fact only 11 of her 51 divisions were employed in overruning the Pacific, and her losses (some 15000 men and 4 destroyers) were but a fraction of her enemies'. Throughout most of the war, the bulk of Japan's land forces (and, moreover, her best, qualitatively) were deployed in China and Manchuria to protect Japanese interests there since the high command saw war with the USSR as inevitable. Here much of Japan's armor and most of her infantry divisions remained until 1944: of the 51 divisions available in 1941, 35 were in China or Manchuria; in 1943, 42 (two of these armored) of the 70 mobilized were there, declining to 37 of the 97 (later 99) available between 1944 and early 1945. By mid-June 1945, 43 of the 164 (later 174) Japanese divisions mobilized were stationed there.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/20/2020 6:00:32 PM

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The Japanese leaders

The ASL counters of Japanese leaders depict an officer advancing with sword upraised and sidearm at the ready—brash, angry, brave but noisy—and obviously intent on winning the war all by himself. Of course, inexperienced junior officers in all armies often behave like firebrands, feeling obliged to "prove" themselves by leading from the front (or, worse, from well in front), but among the Japanese such attitudes and antics were commonplace. Not surprisingly, this high-profile and often highly irrational behavior, along with that unmistakable badge of officer or NCO rank (the sword), was very unhealthy. As early as 1940, German military advisors in China described to General Stilwell examples of this conspicuous postur-ing among Japanese officers, which the Allies soon witnessed for themselves. Indeed, after losing about half of his officers in the early part of the Bataan campaign, the CO of the 65th Brigade had to empha-size the perils to his officers of being literally the first man in the column, of issuing orders only from a standing position, of melodramatically eschewing cover, and of wearing distinctive clothing/insignia. All this in the hopes that the survivors would remain alive long enough to participate in the final push to capture the area.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/21/2020 5:57:55 PM

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Code of Bushido

The loss of "face" was unthinkable to most Japanese officers. They would fight until they dropped since bushido (literally "military" or "knightly ways"—the precepts of knighthood) or, more accurately, the modem edit-ed version thereof with which the Japanese had been indoctrinated since childhood, demanded death before dishonor—akin to the moral codes of ancient Rome or of medieval chivalry. Moreover, Japanese military law demanded death from any commander fleeing in the face of the enemy, failing to exhaust all possible means of continuing the fight or allowing himself to be captured. A good example of this obsession with "face" occurred in Burma when a senior Japanese officer on horseback, brandishing his trusty sword, attempted to board a British tank. Knocked off by hammer blows to his head, he fell under the tracks but, despite his agony, then drew his pistol and fired back at the tank to save "face". Japanese officers displayed what the British General Slim later described as a distinctly theatrical show of courage; they liked an audience and per-formed as if one always existed (even when totally alone). A wartime American publication noted that they were keen to demonstrate "toughness" and main-tain "face", being prone to indulge in "paper heroics", which could include displays of swordsmanship on defenseless victims in front of raw Japanese troops to "blood" them.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/22/2020 5:47:51 PM

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Commissars

Commissar attributes of Japanese officiers reflect the often unintelligent fanaticism and the fear that their subordinates had for them due to the power of life and death that they so casually exercised. It was commonplace for Japanese leaders to despatch wavering or wounded men, who were encouraged to indulge in hero-worship (modem "neobushido" again) and taught to obey orders unquestioningly, and so were willing tools for their leaders to wield. Moreover, the Japanese soldier probably had a greater (albeit often unjustified) faith in his officer than the usually more cynical and less impressionable Allied or other Axis troops, at least until the tide of war turned against Japan with a vengeance and some cases of insubordination and even "fragging" of selfish or over-aggressive Japanese officers were recorded. In addition, since most Japanese soldiers avoided or shirked any responsibility, even greater burdens were placed on officiers-further aggravating bad tactical leadership. The armed forces of Japan were far more polarized than most Western counterparts, with a comparatively small group of innovators who were a revered and privileged elite (the commissioned officers) on the one hand and a large and mostly uneducated group with few if any privileges (the rest) on the other. There was little common ground between these two extremes, and hence there was little fraternity to soften the differences in rank. Below staff rank, most Japanese officers in the field had few reservations about sharing the hardships of their men. But this egalitarianism was less common in barracks, and officers were taught to be (and their men encouraged to regard them as) "fathers", "mothers" and "older brothers" to their subordinates-although by Western standards (at least) the treatment meted out by superiors to those of lower rank was harsh and usually downright brutal. In this respect, Japan's armed forces did not mirror Japanese society, for once in uniform "whatever his lineage or social position the son of a nobleman might be slapped across the face by the son of a peasant" and some higher-ranking officers would violently bully or otherwise humiliate subordinates in full view of the latters' own men! Such means were also resorted to in "settling" disputes between more technically competent subordinates and their superiors in matters such as the tactical deployment of artillery or armor -which goes some way to explain the Commissar-like demand for obedience to the letter at the expense of tactical efficiency, and the performance of officers who often carried a chip on their shoulder when going into battle (not the best incentive for behaving rationally).

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/23/2020 8:08:11 PM

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Range

With a range factor of just "4" for even the elite Japanese squad and a "3" for the conscript MMC; they do badly in comparison to most other nationalities and most of their opponents enjoy at least parity—and often have a one- or two-hex range advantage over them. The poor range factor simulates various difficulties under which Japanese troops open ated. First, most Allied soldiers agreed that on the whole the Japanese soldier was a bad shot, probably because marksmanship was given a lower priority than achieving skill with the bayonet. Ideally, bayonet practice was conducted for hours on a daily basis when opportunity allowed (at the expense of target . practice) and even had recreational status. A British liaison officer serving with Chinese guerrillas in Malaya observed that only his own irregulars shot worse than the Japanese. Significandy, firing from the hip (i.e., less accurately) was advocated in some published hints/guides for the Japanese soldier.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/24/2020 6:18:02 PM

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Communications

Japanese tactical leadership left a lot to be desired, and most officers seemed all-too-willing to squander the lives of their men for very meager tactical returns (despite numer-ous exhortations to kill as many. "foreign devils" as possible) in banzai charges against Allied troops in good defensive positions and pOssessing heavy fire-power. While colonels and above usually (but not always) had fairly good tactical sense and were less hot-headed than their subordinates, they were no more able to exercise a tight control on their volatile underlings in the heat of battle. It was difficult for commanders to prevent such irrational behavior on the battlefield amid the noise, confusion, limited visibility, distractions and poor communications often prevalent. Moreover, "walkie-talkie"radios as an aid to tactical control were not widely available to the Japanese; the typical outfit for a whole Japanese division included just eight radios over and above those for air-to-ground liaison, and few were man-portable in the context of frequent, rapid moves. Although walkie-talkies did exist, they were not only scarce but of poor quality and generally poorly-protected against the damp climate; thus their performance was even worse than Allied equipment. Runners and messengers were a poor but necessary substitute, especially at night in jungle terrain, and the comparatively large 13- or 15-man Japanese squad (and similarly proportioned platoon and company TO&Es) further burdened officers in their attempts to control their comparatively unwieldy formation in close terrain.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/25/2020 8:10:11 PM

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Japanese tactical doctrine

Poor Japanese tactical doctrine played a role. Although they had experienced some of the hor-rors of 20th century warfare during the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese conflict and paid some lip-service to the tactical changes that developments in weapons technology deemed imperative, in practice Japan lagged behind most of its enemies. The Japanese mil-itary was not blind to the lessons the Great War, but its direct participation was not a particularly traumat-ic experience and the capture of Germany's former colonies in the Far East had a positive (i.e., uplifting) rather than a negative (and salutary) impact on the Japanese people. There was no Japanese equivalent of Verdun, the Somme or Gallipoli-until World War 2. In theory, Japanese tactical doctrine advocated infiltration, night attacks, speed and surprise at all times, the maximum use of deception, bold outflanking movements, attacks on the enemy's rear and the deployment of snipers behind enemy lines (most of which was a throw-back to Germany's excellent stosstruppen tactics of 1917-18). But alas, when these methods seemed to fail in producing the quick tactical results expected, Japanese officers invariably lost patience-and reason-and resorted to their favorite ploy, the all-out frontal attack using cold steel and hot air, regardless of losses, with often inadequate fire support. Even against the largely untrained and/or badly equipped Allied forces opposing them in the early PTO campaigns, such tactics caused the other-wise cunning and opportunistic Japanese heavy and unnecessary losses (as on Bataan, in Johore, on Luzon, in Burma, China, Hong Kong and on Wake island). Only later in the various PTO land campaigns did they begin to absorb the hard lessons of indulging in such blind and fanatical aggression; but judging by events in Burma, the Philippines and Okinawa even late in the war, for every veteran "convert" to rational modern military behavior, there were many more benighted die-hards. Ironically, in the later stages of the 1942 Bataan campaign, the Japanese did resort to careful fire-and-movement tactics after previous drubbings, but clearly this tactical wisdom was not widely exported to anywhere else.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/26/2020 6:22:40 PM

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Japanese tactical thinking

This fatal flaw in Japanese tactical thinking (or rather, non-thinking) was a legacy of 19th Century European (especially French) military practice which flew in the face of the bloody lessons of the American Civil War. Under marshals Foch and Joffre, France had embraced the former's Offensive a Outrance theory, which attributed an almost mystical value to the attack in battle and argued that the attacker possessed an "ascendancy", and so enjoyed a "moral superiority" over a defender far outweighing the advantages conferred by defensive deployment. Technological developments (which favored the defense and made frontal assaults foolhardy) were totally ignored. Foch's theory was not exposed as the mumbo-jumbo that it really was until the carnage began on the Western Front in 1914. The Japan Army was not alone in combining Foch's irrational tactics with more subtle, rational ploys; the Soviets -especially- often took unnecessarily heavy losses as a result but, unlike the Japanese, Russian manpower was almost inexhaustible, and being a land-locked power the Soviet Union could transport and supply her forces with rel-ative ease (therefore, making them more expendable). Japan had none of these advantages and could not afford to use such expensive and, in the long term, self-defeating tactics. Defensive tactics, despite becoming increasingly important and appropriate in the face of the mounting Allied counter-offensive, were held in contempt by the Japan Army (at best, the defensive posture was a temporary lull and springboard for further offensive action) and were thus neglected in training. This in turn led to unimaginative, dogged and "last man" resistance in gradually untenable or irrelevant positions. One of the few exceptions to this rule was the defense of Peleliu in its initial stages; even on Okinawa, the brilliant Japanese defense in depth and careful husbanding of men and materiel in the early stages of the fighting was squandered in a hopeless, old-style, counterattack that cost the Japanese their best formations. Although the defense of Okinawa bought Japan time to prepare for Allied invasion these changes in tactics came too late to avoid the defeat caused, in part, by less inspired methods elsewhere.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/27/2020 6:38:18 PM

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Loss of "face"

Japanese tactics and operational planning were inflexible, unimaginative and persistent in application (i.e., predictable). Accounts of the fighting in the PTO give numerous examples of the Japanese failing to change unsuccessful plans or tactics in a given situation .. . and paying the penalty. Examples include an obses-sion with occupying the high ground, which "was a magnet to Japanese planners", and a stubborn refusal to alter plans even after the secrecy of lines of ap-proach, assembly areas or the advantages of surprise had been hopelessly compromised—usually due to the appalling standards of Japanese security (accounts of valuable intelligence material being found on dead Japanese who should have destroyed it or left it be-hind before going into battle are legion). Changing a plan was regarded as an admission of error (hence a weakness) which meant loss of "face". As early as 1936, a former Japanese Premier complained that middle-ranking officers lacked objectivity, thus preventing them making rational assessments of events, with a disastrous effect on the battlefield in later years. As these men were, in practice, the teachers and mentors of junior officers (and, potentially, a restraining hand on their excessive zeal) this was dou-bly unfortunate for the Japon Army. In the early stages of the Pacific war this Japanese rigidity in tactics tended to reinforce success, despite often being costlier than necessary, and it did at least ensure against an unfa-vorable result in combat (since success in combat is no foregone conclusion); but in the later stages of the war against seasoned, well-trained and better-equipped foes, such inflexibility merely compounded failure and enabled the Allies to—quite literally—massacre their opponents and inflict wholly disproportionate losses on them. This was a complete reversal of the situation earlier in the war, and the "exchange rates" of 1944-45—running at anything between 10 and 100 (or even more) Japanese for every Allied soldier lost—cannot be explained away just by the Japanese reluctance to surrender. Appalling tactics, like those on Bataan in 1942 to provoke jams or misfires among Filipino MGs and thus capture them by the callous use of human "bait", does.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/28/2020 6:24:13 PM

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Fire discipline

Even when Japanese tactics were appropriate (or at least adequate), the advantages of careful reconnaissance and surprise were often thrown away by poor fire discipline or, far worse, by unnecessary noise. Resorting to noisy ruses to generate enemy "jitter" fire, and so reveal dispositions, denies an opponent sleep, generally demoralizes him or causes casualties from "friendly fire" and is a valuable technique and by no means unique to the Japan Army, but the Japanese tended to persist with such ploys long after their enemy was wise to them—with predictable results. Moreover, the Japanese were also indifferent to (and careless in) the need to remain stealthy when preparing to attack; they would blow bugles, shout, sing, chant, chatter, throw firecrackers or taunt their foes, especially at night. Such behavior was not always due to the need to boost their own morale, but was often caused by drunkenness or the influence of narcotics used to ward off the pangs of hunger. And it smacked of a profound contempt for their foes (which was, increasingly, unjustified) which the Japanese soldier—on an individual basis—only lost if he was lucky and survived long enough. Japanese troops were initially "disgusted" by the reluctance of Filipino or US soldiers to conduct banzai charges on Bataan, while elsewhere it was alleged that Amer-icans suffered from mental derangement, a morbid fear of the Japanese soldier, and thus were prone to nervous breakdowns or even suicide. "The Yankees are cry-babies," claimed the Japanese propagandists, while their own troops were accorded almost super-natural abilities. The British were regarded as lazy, effete and outdated. As early as the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China, the Japanese were contemptuous of the open-order tactics used by British colonial troops; the British military attache there reported that the Japanese equated a "good fight" with heavy losses among their own men, and during the Anglo-Japanese assault on Germany's Chinese colony of Tsingtao in November 1914, the Japanese complained of the "slow" (and cautious) advance by their allies (which, however, cost them only 74 casualties compared to Japan's loss of 1866 men). Such contempt extended to the highest levels, and the 1944 Ha-Go offensive in Burma was a classic example of how the Japan Army became "hypnotized" by the previously poor performance of Allied troops, whose allegedly poor fighting qualities became enshrined in a creed which preached that Japan would not be defeated for generations (by which time the Allies would sue for peace). Even in 1945 a former Japanese military attache who had served in the USA assured his men that American troops tended to launch "bold and reckless headlong rushes when the military situation develops badly for them" and urged "a violent surprise attack" in response, illustrating how little the Japanese had the measure of their enemies after nearly four years of war.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/29/2020 6:04:13 PM

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Japanese personal initiative

The lack of personal initiative in Japanese soldiers of all ranks was the product of a very rigid social order in which education (increasingly milita-rized over preceding decades) taught the individual to "obey without question" almost as a religious directive, while bushido's "obedience" ethic also fostered the concept of paternalistic government rendering the individual dependent on the state-and thus conve-niently subservient, readily obedient, apt to shirk responsibility and lacking in initiative. These traits were then reinforced by the brutality to which recruits and even veteran soldiers were subjected by their superiors (horses and weapons got better treatment) in order to keep everyone in their respective places within the military hierarchy. The "system" was far more paternalistic and oppressive than even Britain's regiment system, and at the very least was on a par with the Red Army's or China's. Furthermore, the military itself had a tradition of issuing rigid, over-detailed and binding orders that left little scope for interpretation or changes due to unforeseen developments. Troops were expected to bear hardships and face death stoically without complaint-not make decisions. Allied accounts contain numerous examples, like the human AT mines in Burma who re-mained in their foxholes passively, making no attempt to defend themselves or blow-up Allied infantrymen because they had been ordered to attack only tanks. When their leaders became casualties, Japanese troops invariably either blindly followed their last orders or noisily milled about in confusion.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/30/2020 5:45:51 PM

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Inadequate training

The inadequate training was also a Japanese feature. Pre-war conscripts normally served for two years (later three), but the deteriorating war situation shortened this training period, after 1942, to three months or less before men left for the front. Even in 1941-42, some formations were raw; the 65th Brigade on Bataan had received less than a month's training, and the Imperial Guards Division in Malaya, while expert at ceremonial drill, had last seen action in 1905. Some officers complained of tilt 65th's low standards and poor training, observing that their men bunched too close together, moved carelessly down roads, gave insufficient attention to tackling Allied defensive works or to constructing their own. In Malaya, similar complaints were made about poor map-reading, inadequate standards of patrolling and bad artillery-infantry cooperation, together with abysmal leadership and a lack of fighting spirit among both officers and men. Early in 1944, the CO of one division in Burma bemoaned his "passive, conservative and thick-headed NCOs and men . . . badly commanded and controlled". All this is a far cry from the stereotyped view of the Japanese soldier as a highly trained warrior.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 7/31/2020 7:54:13 PM

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Ineptitude of the Imperial Japanese Army's Personnel Bureau

Partly responsible for this inadequate training, was the ineptitude of the Imperial Japanese Army's Personnel Bureau of the Imperial General HQ in placing senior commanders into certain field commands; there was an unfortunate tendency to choose officers who, due to past personal animosities, were incapable of working together harmoniously or effectively-with unfortunate results for Japan. For example, due to such personality clashes, many divisional COs or leaders of lower rank preferred to ignore unpalatable orders. The Imperial Guard went into battle virtually untrained for war not bemuse of a lack of opportunity but because orders to train rigorously had been ignored, and its inferior performance was further matched by its failure to cooperate with other formations in Malaya. Initially this did not prejudice success but did greatly increase the "butcher's bill" for Japan unnecessarily. In Burma, personal rivalries between commanders compounded the already poor liaison between the participants of the 1944 offensive. The abortive attempts to mix elements of two Japanese divisions on Okinawa was a prime example of one formation viewing the other as "weaker", while attempts to launch coordinated attacks with the 44th IMB there also foundered on the rock of organizational arrogance. In Burma, the old Imperial Japanese Army/Japanese Imperial Navy rivalry, so bitter at higher levels, also manifested itself when the 13th Naval Guard Force chose to break out from Rangoon alone (and after the Imperial Japanese Army had gone) to demonstrate its independence, but by then all paths were blocked and only three of 1200 participants survived. Similar examples on a larger scale include the Japaneses commander's decision to turn Manila, declared an open city by the Imperial Japanese Army, into another Stalingrad at the cost of 21000 men (and Lord knows how many Filipino civilians). In some cases, Japanese units even refused the help of neighboring formations for the sake of "honor" (or "soldier's compassion"), particularly if they had suffered heavy losses in trying to secure some elusive military objective, as at Sangshak in Burma. But Japanese commanders alone were not to blame for this situation, for like the British army the HA was something of a tribal organization with regional recruiting further encouraging an excessive spirit of competition. Off the battlefield, too, departing Japanese units had a habit of spoiling or destroying any remaining supplies that had to be left behind rather than leave them for the relieving unit, a senseless policy given Japan's profound logistical weaknesses and the resultant mass-starvation and epidemic among troops. As morale disintegrated in 1945, this also manifested itself in undisciplined foraging that left nothing for following units, and formations would not hesitate to steal from one another when opportunity permitted.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/1/2020 8:41:45 PM

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The "Stealth" advantages of Japanese squads.

The Japanese negative traits were reinforced by the Imperial Japanese Army's enthusiasm for splintering formations and for maintaining a large number of independent units which were thrown together as ad hoc forces for one operation as short-lived kampfgruppen but possessing rather selfish, British-style, loyalties rather than a more professional, German, approach to the good of all. Coupled with often poor liaison, had coverage of unit boundaries and the Japanese habit of throwing reinforcements into battle piece-meal, these characteristics impaired the efficient usage of forces. Armor/artillery/infantry cooperation was not a Japanese strength either. For the foregoing reasons (and perhaps because many Japanese unit were overcome by excitement for the battle at the expense of reason and rationality), the Imperial Japanese Army's tactics were extremely wasteful of manpower, relying on the immense courage and individual skills of the Japanese soldier rather than on any innate intelligence. The "Stealth" advantages of Japanese squads is more a reflection of their ferocity in close combat than for their quiet efficiency on the battlefield; certainly the Japanese could remain silent when they deemed it necessary (e.g. when infiltrating, which they sometimes conducted on a very large scale indeed), and would then take great pains to suppress all noise. This feature reflects also their ability and willingness to move close to enemy positions, as well as their ruthlessness in sending men in ones and twos to deliberately draw enemy fire (in which role they were deemed expendable).

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/2/2020 6:21:04 PM

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Japaneses "7" morale factor

The "7" morale factor of Japanese Elite squads (Marine Paratroopers, Naval Landing, Assault Engineers), will doubtless surprise no one, although some friends may wonder why "7" is not more appropriate than "6" like for the First-Line and Second-Line squads. However, the wide gulf in training, competence, leadership, weapons, physical fitness and diet (combat troops naturally got priority in receiving rations and anti-malarial drugs) did have an effect on morale even among the Japanese. There is little need to dwell at length on the stoicism of their soldiers.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/3/2020 6:30:13 PM

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Fanatical resistance and resilience under fire

Briefly, the fanatical resistance and resilience under fire displayed by the Japanese stemmed from a number of factors. In the first place, the bushido spirit demanded that suffering and hardship be borne bravely without complaint, imposing a form of self-discipline. Secondly, many Japanese believed through persistent indoctrination that the greatest personal fulfillment attainable was to die a hero's death in battle and thus be assured a place in Heaven, linked to the old ethos that death was nothing to fear and preferable to dishonor. Thirdly, the brutal discipline of Japanese military life made retreat (let alone surrender) a crime under the Military Penal Code, and demanded suicide even from Japanese POWs who subsequently escaped and regained their own lines. Fourth, the fact that the Japanese would often kill their own comrades if they attempted surrender was a powerful disincentive to be rational and quit. And, fifth, Japanese education and propaganda (the two were almost synonymous) convinced most soldiers that their foes were racial inferiors-or at least barbarians-and should be resisted "tooth and nail". Lastly, regional recruiting fostered strong regimental loyalty and unit cohesion.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/4/2020 7:57:22 PM

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Japanese morale was not unbreakable

But, although a Japanese soldier on Bataan boasted "We are the peepul (sic] who are not afraid to die by boolets (sic]", this was not always, literally, true. The Japanese morale was not unbreakable and as early as 1937 morale in China was low (albeit somewhat localized and quarantined). On Bataan by February 1942-before reinforcements arrived--Japanese morale was so low that troops were reluctant to enter the jungle and face the Allies without air support. In Burma too, morale collapsed after the defeats at Kohima and Imphal in 1944 and many units were difficult to control in the retreat. By January 1945, morale everywhere in Burma began to crack, and was completely destroyed by June, when desertions increased significantly. In China and on Okinawa, the fighting indicated that there were limits to even the Japanese soldier's mental and physical resilience, while in the Philippines elements of the former Kwantung Army suffered a rapid collapse in morale when the futility of their tactics was brutally exposed by the Americans' more rational and professional approach to war. All these instances demonstrated that, given sufficient pounding, particularly by heavy bombing, flamethrowers or (ironically) by the use of bayonet charges, even the Japanese would break. Nonetheless, it should be remembered that this process took longer to work against the Japanese than most other troops, and their morale recovered rapidly (as on Bataan or-however briefly-in Burma in late 1944) given time and opportunity.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/5/2020 7:18:32 PM

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Desertions

The popular view of the Japanese soldier's apparently unbreakable morale has been colored by the durability of a comparatively small number of personnel who refused to surrender until well after Japan's own capitulation. The last man (so far) who has come home from the war gave up as recently as 1974. But this has drawn attention away from the other side of the proverbial coin. For all the military zeal of the Japanese, draft-dodging in wartime was not unknown, and there were also desertions, albeit on a smaller scale than those from Western armies. The statistics are incomplete and not directly comparable with those for other armies in that methods of compilation, criteria and dates do not always coincide, but as a rough guide they are interesting. In 1939, the 669 Japanese defections/desertions represented about 9.71% of British desertions; in 1943, 1043 Japanese desertions/defections equated to about 6.59% those for Britain and 1.55% of Germany's. In the first seven months of 1944 there were 2025 Japanese "losses" from this cause, or about 20.55% of Britain's and 1.71% of Germany's (both the latter percentages calculated pro rata from the year's figures). US Army figures are unavailable, but overall desertion rates tend to be at least as high as those for the British military.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/6/2020 7:51:52 PM

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Brutality within the Imperial Japanese Army

There is some evidence that, in the long term, the ladder of brutality within the Imperial Japanese Army, far from promoting unit cohesion or discipline, actually undermined both. Initially, at least most soldiers accepted this brutal regime and the wanton neglect that many (but not all) senior Japanese officers displayed towards their men, as the rightful prerogative of superior rank. Certainly many NCOs—the main protagonists in the brutalization of Japanese personnel—loved the military life because (in peacetime at least) it offered an escape from the grinding poverty of rural Japan and provided plenty of subordinates to pamper them or act as docile victims on whom they could vent their anger. The latter were conditioned, and expected, to vent theirs on the enemy. But Japan's declining fortunes, the often senseless brutality inflicted on them from above, the fact that when supplies ran low the officers got priority in food while their men starved, and the gradual exposure of Japanese propaganda as a tissue of lies, coupled with the slow realization that Allied military prowess and industrial power had been grossly underestimated, slowly ate away at Japanese morale, breaking down the power of officers and the awe with which their men regarded them. The tense, fragile officer-man relationship gradually changed (also partly due to the decline in officer quality) and fear was often, replaced by contempt and the more pressing concern of finding food. Perhaps the nadir of Japanese officer-man relationships was reached on New Guinea when vessels carrying the top brass to safety (well fed while their men starved) threw starving or wounded men overboard during the evacuation by sea. However atypical and localized, such actions scotch the myths about discipline in the Imperial Japanese Army.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/7/2020 6:03:49 PM

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Sharpshooters

It's known the historical Japanese enthusiasm for deploying snipers (or, more accurately, "sharpshooters" as improvised snipers, for the vast majority were neither trained nor equipped to be true snipers and were merely infantrymen who had infiltrated into or stayed behind in good firing positions to cause trouble). The common "sharpshooter" was often more a nuisance than a danger, as shown by one Japanese soldier at the siege of Kohima in Burma who missed a British battalion CO sitting on a tree-stump in broad daylight from 100 yards, only to be shot with threes round by a British soldier even though his target was hidden up a tree. The real Japanese sniper was better camouflaged, had a telescopic sight on his rifle (which clarified rather than magnified targets by clearing away haze and other distractions to make objects stand out better), concentrated rations and perhaps even binoculars. This far more formidable individual was much harder to deal with; on Okinawa one sniper killed or wounded 22 Americans before being eliminated, and another, in Burma, shot eight officers over a three-week period and eventually escaped despite vigorous countermeasures. The sniper or sharpshooter was a particularly economical and effective ploy for tying down and eroding the strength of enemy units, as demonstrated to perfection on Bataan in 1942, although the placement of snipers there was found to be "repetitious" and thus enabled the Allies to conduct successful sniper-hunts (even dynamite was used to fell the trees concealing them). Such Allied "victories" could be pyrrhic; on Timor in February 1942, all but 78 of 630 Japanese soldiers parachuted in to snipe at the retreating Australians were killed, but they had delayed their foes long enough for other Japanese units to cut off their retreat and force them to surrender. In Burma too, massed "snipers" were encountered, and in February 1945 over 100 were eliminated in one area between the Welaung and Meiktila roads alone.

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RE: Heroes and Leaders mod - 8/8/2020 8:24:24 PM

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Camouflage

The Japanese were excellent at camouflage techniques and became a hallmark of the Imperial Japan Army. Positions were nearly always so well concealed as to be completely undetectable even a few feet away. Once in their positions, the Japanese became "invisible" (as a veteran described them). Apparently they learned their concealment skills from the Chinese prior to 1941, who even tied foliage to the tails of cattle to hide them from air attack. The Japanese still used heavy vehicle camouflage despite enjoying almost total air superiority in 1941-42. This flair for camouflage was all the more dangerous given the formidable nature of Japanese pillboxes and other defensive works-the Japanese had the ability to construct almost invulnerable bunkers with interconnecting tunnels deep underground from whatever materials were locally available, and these taxed to the full the Allies' best efforts in trying to reduce them.

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