Japan's war interests whom? [Archive]

Rising Sun*

03-08-2008, 06:30 PM

nevertheless they were fighting enough succesfull in first period of war.
I puzzled ,how they had conquered so great territory.
How they have captured Singapoor so soon?

Here's some reasons, in random order, off the top of my head. They all add up to the Japanese being better than their enemy in all the areas that mattered, in the beginning.

1. Air power. Numerically superior. Better trained fighter pilots in general. Better fighter planes in general.

2. Excellent planning.

3. Ability to do more with less, such as cramming a lot more troops into a transport ship than Westerners would and carrying little in the way of rations as they were expected to live off the land after the first few days.

4. Greater determination by the troops, backed up by most being battle hardened in China. Nonetheless, the Imperial Guards hadn't heard a shot fired in anger for more than a generation and weren't regarded as desirable troops for the Malayan invasion, but they fought about as well as any other Japanese troops.

5. Shorter lines of communication. In Singapore it was just from Vietnam. Contrast that with the distance from Britain and America, the Netherlands being irrelevant by that stage as it was occupied by Germany.

6. Unified leadership, weaponry, ordnance, and troops. Contrast that with the short lived American British Dutch Australian (ABDA) command, which also had three sets of weaponry and ordnance (British and Australian were the same). Also difficulties in Malaya with the commitment to the British cause of some Indian troops (e.g. Mohan Singh and what became the First Indian National Army) and in the NEI with some Javanese troops not as keen as the Dutch, or even actively opposed to them.

7. Clear aims and excellent execution of the plans. Contrast that with the shambles in Malaya when Percival had clear plans but was prevented from responding properly by invading Thailand because of political considerations. Or MacArthur's disastrous loss of half his bomber force on the ground on the first day in the Philippines which resulted in failure to carry out the clear plan to bomb Formosa, although that by itself probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war. He also lost half his food supply, and gave the Japanese a huge windfall in rations, because he stupidly stored it in an exposed postion he couldn't hold.

8. Psychological advantage when the Japanese were advancing hard and fast and seemingly invincible.

9. Although there was some informal planning between senior military officers, in general there was an absence of pre-war co-ordination and preparation between ABDA nations, so that initially they were all fighting their own little wars on their own turf and by the time they came together several weeks after the war started it was too late. If the Dutch had been able to move forward into Malaya to resist the Malayan invasion, that might have turned the tables and stopped the Japanese advance. But the Dutch, like the British and Americans, were concerned with protecting their own colonial turf. So, for example, 25,000 KNIL troops sat in Java from 7 December 1941 until the Japanese invaded on 1 March 1942. Whether they would have been a help or a hindrance in Malaya is debatable as many of the Indonesian troops weren't well trained and their presence wouldn't overcome the lack of air power in Malaya, but it illustrates the problem of having separate nations protecting separate interests against a common enemy. If the NEI had been a British colony, or Malaya a Dutch one, there is obvious scope for utilising other forces in the critical battle for Malaya to stop the Japanes acquiring it as one of the jumping off points for Japanese advances south east. Conversely, it might have made more sense strategically to abandon Malaya and let the Japanese have the rubber and tin but move the forces to the NEI to deny Japan oil, which it desperately needed and couldn't fight the rest of the war without.

10. Ruthlessness, towards their own men and the enemy, which enabled the Japanese to achieve things that Westerners couldn't.

11. Sea power. They had the best navy in the Western Pacific, and plenty of it, with sound tactics for large scale battles and night battles, plus an excellent torpedo, while the Americans had an unreliable torpedo.

12. Luck. If Churchill had provided Malaya with proper air resources as recognised by all the British military leaders, the Japanese mightn't have taken it. They were lucky to find the US fleet neatly berthed and moored at Pearl Harbor instead of being at sea or at dispersed anchorages. They were lucky that MacArthur was paralysed by inaction for the first day of the war. They were lucky that Admiral Tom Phillips didn't think planes could sink battleships and that the Repulse and Prince of Wales didn't have air cover, and that those two ships didn't get in among the troop transports for the Japanese landings. They were lucky that Churchill wanted, needed, America to join the war and didn't want to alienate American public opinion by being seen as the aggressor, so he wouldn't allow Percival to initiate action by invading Thailand to deny bases to the Japanese which ensured that the Japanese landed unopposed in Thailand and secured air bases which were critical to their advances. And so on.

13. Western arrogance. Too many military people thought the Japanese would be a pushover, although many recognised their real ability.

Chevan

03-11-2008, 03:20 AM

Well tnak you for such detailed tell.
So i could conclude that the allies make almost the same mistakes ( without the few exceptions) in strategis planning, management of troops and supplieng of wearponry as the Soviet do befor the ww2.
They also have made a lot of simular serious mistakes about the GErmans intentions and plans.
BTW do you seriously think that Japanes famouse Ruthlessness to its own troops was a thing that made the their soldiers stronger:)?

Rising Sun*

03-11-2008, 04:16 AM

BTW do you seriously think that Japanes famouse Ruthlessness to its own troops was a thing that made the their soldiers stronger:)?

Initially, yes.

They pressed on where Westerners often wouldn't.

But in the end the idiotic idea that spirit could overcome everything, like no rations and resultant malnutrition, brought them down because they were so obsessed with their own set of beliefs in their superiority that they thought they could overcome the basic laws of human nutrition and survival.

It's more complex than just that aspect, because it's bound up in Japanese group think and reverence for the Emperor and a suicidal culture, at some leveles, and so on, but it still made them very formidable foes.

Not unlike current Islamic zealots who aren't afraid to die makes them difficult for us to handle.

Chevan

03-11-2008, 05:15 AM

Initially, yes.

They pressed on where Westerners often wouldn't.

But in the end the idiotic idea that spirit could overcome everything, like no rations and resultant malnutrition, brought them down because they were so obsessed with their own set of beliefs in their superiority that they thought they could overcome the basic laws of human nutrition and survival

But in the end of war they had nothing except the spirit:)
No food , no ammo, no fuel and no enough wearpon.
So may be they were right?

Not unlike current Islamic zealots who aren't afraid to die makes them difficult for us to handle.
Just try to use so much drugs as the Islamic zealots befor the action...and you will wonder how easy you will be ready to die:)

Rising Sun*

03-11-2008, 06:56 AM

But in the end of war they had nothing except the spirit:)
No food , no ammo, no fuel and no enough wearpon.
So may be they were right?

They were as wrong about that as they were about just about everything else that mattered for the long war they started but which they planned and fought as a short war to gain territory, in the absurd belief that if they held it long enough the other nations would let them keep it.

Japan was just about unbeatable in the early phases, and their spirit certainly contributed to this, but they didn't have what was needed for the war they provoked, starting with the ability to see how ill-conceived it was.

Then again, in the second half of 1941 when it looked like Germany was going to defeat the USSR and Britain was on the defensive, the prospects looked pretty good from Tokyo, as long as the Soviets didn't beat the seemingly invincible Germans and the British didn't come back.

Why on earth anyone would want to drag America as an enemy into such a promising picture is beyond me, but some of that goes back to Japan long seeing America as its rival for control of the Pacific and thinking it was a good idea to try to impose a decisive defeat on America. There was as much arrogance on the Japanese side in its belief about its superiority as there was on the Western side. Both sides were wrong about the other.

Nickdfresh

03-11-2008, 09:58 AM

Here's some reasons, in random order, off the top of my head. They all add up to the Japanese being better than their enemy in all the areas that mattered, in the beginning.

1. Air power. Numerically superior. Better trained fighter pilots in general. Better fighter planes in general.

2. Excellent planning.

3. Ability to do more with less, such as cramming a lot more troops into a transport ship than Westerners would and carrying little in the way of rations as they were expected to live off the land after the first few days.

4. Greater determination by the troops, backed up by most being battle hardened in China. Nonetheless, the Imperial Guards hadn't heard a shot fired in anger for more than a generation and weren't regarded as desirable troops for the Malayan invasion, but they fought about as well as any other Japanese troops.

5. Shorter lines of communication. In Singapore it was just from Vietnam. Contrast that with the distance from Britain and America, the Netherlands being irrelevant by that stage as it was occupied by Germany.

6. Unified leadership, weaponry, ordnance, and troops. Contrast that with the short lived American British Dutch Australian (ABDA) command, which also had three sets of weaponry and ordnance (British and Australian were the same). Also difficulties in Malaya with the commitment to the British cause of some Indian troops (e.g. Mohan Singh and what became the First Indian National Army) and in the NEI with some Javanese troops not as keen as the Dutch, or even actively opposed to them.

7. Clear aims and excellent execution of the plans. Contrast that with the shambles in Malaya when Percival had clear plans but was prevented from responding properly by invading Thailand because of political considerations. Or MacArthur's disastrous loss of half his bomber force on the ground on the first day in the Philippines which resulted in failure to carry out the clear plan to bomb Formosa, although that by itself probably wouldn't have altered the course of the war. He also lost half his food supply, and gave the Japanese a huge windfall in rations, because he stupidly stored it in an exposed postion he couldn't hold.

8. Psychological advantage when the Japanese were advancing hard and fast and seemingly invincible.

9. Although there was some informal planning between senior military officers, in general there was an absence of pre-war co-ordination and preparation between ABDA nations, so that initially they were all fighting their own little wars on their own turf and by the time they came together several weeks after the war started it was too late. If the Dutch had been able to move forward into Malaya to resist the Malayan invasion, that might have turned the tables and stopped the Japanese advance. But the Dutch, like the British and Americans, were concerned with protecting their own colonial turf. So, for example, 25,000 KNIL troops sat in Java from 7 December 1941 until the Japanese invaded on 1 March 1942. Whether they would have been a help or a hindrance in Malaya is debatable as many of the Indonesian troops weren't well trained and their presence wouldn't overcome the lack of air power in Malaya, but it illustrates the problem of having separate nations protecting separate interests against a common enemy. If the NEI had been a British colony, or Malaya a Dutch one, there is obvious scope for utilising other forces in the critical battle for Malaya to stop the Japanes acquiring it as one of the jumping off points for Japanese advances south east. Conversely, it might have made more sense strategically to abandon Malaya and let the Japanese have the rubber and tin but move the forces to the NEI to deny Japan oil, which it desperately needed and couldn't fight the rest of the war without.

10. Ruthlessness, towards their own men and the enemy, which enabled the Japanese to achieve things that Westerners couldn't.

11. Sea power. They had the best navy in the Western Pacific, and plenty of it, with sound tactics for large scale battles and night battles, plus an excellent torpedo, while the Americans had an unreliable torpedo.

12. Luck. If Churchill had provided Malaya with proper air resources as recognised by all the British military leaders, the Japanese mightn't have taken it. They were lucky to find the US fleet neatly berthed and moored at Pearl Harbor instead of being at sea or at dispersed anchorages. They were lucky that MacArthur was paralysed by inaction for the first day of the war. They were lucky that Admiral Tom Phillips didn't think planes could sink battleships and that the Repulse and Prince of Wales didn't have air cover, and that those two ships didn't get in among the troop transports for the Japanese landings. They were lucky that Churchill wanted, needed, America to join the war and didn't want to alienate American public opinion by being seen as the aggressor, so he wouldn't allow Percival to initiate action by invading Thailand to deny bases to the Japanese which ensured that the Japanese landed unopposed in Thailand and secured air bases which were critical to their advances. And so on.

13. Western arrogance. Too many military people thought the Japanese would be a pushover, although many recognised their real ability.

Excellent post. The only thing I can add is that the early combat heavily favored the Japanese ethos of "Third Force" warfare. The first two forces were thought of as man and machine, the third was "spirit" something the Japanese arrogantly often thought that their Western opposition lacked. But the truth is that the early Japanese offensives faced opposition with little serious armor or artillery support, the possible exception to this being the US forces on the Philippines, but most of their armor was no better than the Japanese tanks and their most of their guns were fixed at Corregidor and Bataan. But cut off, and without any sort of air support, these forces fell victim to the aggressive onslaught by the Japanese, who did have artillery and armor support, by way of naval gunfire and and complete air superiority. They also did have some armor assets, of mostly outmoded tanks. But these were enough to press the Americans in the Philippines.

The Japanese Third Force ethos was developed in the late 1920s because of the heavy casualties that the Japanese forces suffered in the Russo-Japanese War in the face of a better armed adversary. Relying heavy on an complete bastardization of the Code of Bushido, this made the Imperial Japanese Army quite formidable when fighting in terrain that did not favor mechanized warfare and limited the numbers of their adversaries. In specific circumstances, the IJA could quickly advance on their enemy and attempt to roll up the flanks and surround and annihilate their foe. The IJA was great in the Jungle and in mountainous island terrain, evolving into a force adept at fortress warfare from underground lairs, forcing the island hopping Marines to fight a sort of what they termed "prairie dog warfare." Terrain where the Japanese could maximize the effect of their inferior firepower while marginalizing naval gun fire, tank support, air power, etc. However, when caught in the open in Burma, Manchuria, and even on the ill-fated Wake Island, the Japanese were vulnerable to firepower against fortified positions and massed, maneuvering armor alike.

On Wake Island for instance, which at the time was erroneously considered the "second Alamo" by the American press, and Japanese force landed to face a force of Marines assisted by their civilian contractor engineers and laborers, that were cut off and had little hope of relief. The Marines were able to completely wipe out the first wave of Japanese Landing Force (marines/naval infantry) members while suffering few casualties. The only reason they ultimately surrendered was that their commander emerged from his CP to see Japanese ensigns flying all over the island, after the communications to his forward positions had been cut. He believed that the Japanese controlled much of the island and decided to surrender. Unfortunately, he failed to realize that the only Japanese on the island were either dead under the ensigns, or captured...

gumalangi

03-11-2008, 07:13 PM

This isn't a thread that gets a lot of traffic.

Which members are interested in Japan's war, apart from me?

What aspects are you interested in?

ow man,. check on my avatar,.. His death was consider a great contribution to Allied,... i do love Pacific theatre from the heart,. as the stories inhereted to me by my late father,.. he was an IJN auxillary at the age of 15,.

I like the carriers, battleships and heavy cruisers (the fat looking ship and always look as they sit back)

Infact now,. am doing my own reading issues obout the IJN subs doctrines,.
very interested,.. but sad,.. a great weapon but not proper use..

Rising Sun*

03-12-2008, 07:23 AM

The only thing I can add is that the early combat heavily favored the Japanese ethos of "Third Force" warfare. The first two forces were thought of as man and machine, the third was "spirit" something the Japanese arrogantly often thought that their Western opposition lacked.

I don't know about arrogantly. They were correct.

Their Western opposition did lack the same spirit, and never found it, or wanted it, or suffered for the lack of it.

One of the biggest differences between the Western forces and the Japanese was that the West based its cultures on post-Enlightenment individualism with super-imposed notions of loyalty to the nation or monarch, where the Japanese were much more a family oriented group mentality extending from the immediate family to the squad family to the platoon to the company etc to the national family with the Emperor at its head, with no concept of individualism akin to Western notions and all that flowed from it. It made them bloody fearsome in any military group, but not very original outside one. When their well trained swarm tactics broke down, there tended to be a lack of individual initiative to redress the situation. Westerners tended to be more original as individuals. Not that there weren’t plenty of contradictory examples on both sides.

One curious aspect of WWII Japanese group mentality focused on the Emperor was that the Emperor had been a powerless and at times fearful figurehead under the shogunate which was destroyed after Japan was forced to engage with the West in the mid 19th century, but social and political necessity saw him elevated to a new significance in the later part of the 19th century to provide a unifying force for a nation fragmented by the destruction of the old shogunate and the removal of the samurai and all that went with them as Japan moved to a new industrial and more modern capitalist rather than feudal culture. This produced the zaibatsu, the handful of major corporations which were seen by the 1920s by many in the growing non-samurai officer and other classes of rural and urban background as being closely aligned with the social, economic and political ‘establishment’, and corrupt and due for overthrow and replacement by what they thought would be a better form of rule by the Emperor. Although there were many different and conflicting forms of such beliefs, along with many views completely opposed to them.

One consequence was, however, that the Emperor became much more significant in the thinking of many Japanese officers who were pretenders to the samurai heritage which had actually treated the Emperor with contempt for much of the shogunate’s reign.

As the old samurai class were deposed they became the core of the Japanese officer corps in the 19th century, but by the 1920s they were largely displaced by others of wider backgrounds who, even more curiously, often found inspiration in their understanding of the samurai code. It’s reminiscent of the Nazi search for a warrior code in old Nordic myths which produced SS vigils and so on. All bullshit, but highly inspirational bullshit for believers and, in one form or another, followed by all armies in lesser forms, at least in elite units or units with proud histories which expect the new troops to uphold the unit’s honour.

I have to say that I’ve read a little on these issues and I have a vague general understanding of the evolution of the Japanese military and society to WWII, but my brain hurts whenever I try to understand the detail of the many and varied and vigorous debates and actions of the various groups in the Japanese military, society, commerce and government. I don’t know of anything remotely like it outside Japan, even Germany in the 1920’s which was a hotbed of intellectual debate and political action. The Japanese were deep and serious and very well informed thinkers about a whole range of issues inside and outside Japan and shouldn’t be lumped into any sort of stereotypical groups, although it’s easy to do this after the militarists gained control in the 1930s and suppressed debate and dissent.

In WWII, I think the ultimate problem for and failure of the Japanese military leadership was that they lacked concern for the individual soldier in ways that Western commanders didn’t (not that the Westerners were exactly a bunch of wet nurses). This gave them great advantages in attack, but reduced them to often pointlessly wasteful defences of their scattered island conquests which allowed them to waste their troops where they didn’t matter and waste the remainder where they did matter. A lot of that was due to a failure or, more probably a refusal from pride, to recognise by 1944 that they were going to lose because the USN was going to throttle them regardless of what happened on land.

That was also largely a consequence of the failure of Japanese naval strategy and the triumph of primarily American naval strategy which strangled Japan and its soldiers marooned in island outposts, but that was just another aspect of Japanese inability to plan and fight a large scale and protracted modern war where industrial might and resolution balanced empty spirit.

I forget the exact figures, but Japan had barely enough shipping tonnage to meet its advances to Papua New Guinea and other requirements, and Guadalcanal started to stretch it. By the end of the war it had about half that tonnage, even allowing for new production and captured tonnage, which was supposed to supply its troops around the Pacific as well as ship back the riches from its conquests.

If there had been less arrogance and less pride of conquest, Japan could probably have withdrawn from many of its conquests and kept a few places such as Indo China, because the fighting Allies would have given France's conquered territories to a rabid dog (which was a bit like colonial France on a bad garlic day but much better than the Belgians on any day :D) if that's all it took for peace.

But Japan could never withdraw from the oil in the NEI, which was its biggest prize in the war and almost the whole purpose of it, while the Allies could never let it keep those possessions, so things probably had to play out more or less as they did, with lots of silly Japanese boys from the sticks and cities living out some suicidal samurai fantasy while lots of silly American and British and Australian boys from the sticks and the cities lived out their own version of duty and honour derived from the same sort of schooling that imbued the Japanese boys with their desire to fight for their nation.

And all of that so that America and Australia could start importing Toyotas and Japanese transistor radios about fifteen years after the war ended and increasingly afterwards, which shows just how much commerce triumphs over war every time, and how little the spirit of all the men on all sides counted for in the end.

I left Britain out of importing Toyotas etc, because Britain buggered itself fighting the Germans when nobody else was and had a bit of trouble with the Japanese, so it couldn’t afford to participate in Japan’s post-war prosperity as it was still busy cleaning up the mess from German bombing raids while trying to pay off its Lend Lease debt without income from India and a few other useful places it had before the war.

Australia ended the war with a Lend Lease credit and nice profits from sending primary produce to Britain, while America was a few hundred miles above us on that scale, while Britain still had rationing years after the war. And no Toyotas or transistor radios.

To the victor the spoils.

Yeah!

Right!

(I sort of drifted a bit there, but as usual I'm on the piss, so what do you expect? :D)

Rising Sun*

03-12-2008, 07:41 AM

In specific circumstances, the IJA could quickly advance on their enemy and attempt to roll up the flanks and surround and annihilate their foe. The IJA was great in the Jungle and in mountainous island terrain …

I’d just add that in the jungle in attack in 1941-42 the Japanese flank attacks were supported by very effective infiltration from all angles to sow alarm among the defenders, assisted by simple tactics like blowing bugles and setting off firecrackers to cause confusion, and cause the defenders to retreat or rout.

At section / squad and platoon level they were unbeatable in many cases, not least because they faced inferior enemy through lack of training by the Allies. If you win most of the time at those basic levels, you win every way up the levels of military units and formations.

The Japanese were also very adept at bringing up and getting mountain guns and heavy MGs into action, often in the thick of infantry action.

It's instructive that at the end of the Kokoda retreat (which most Australians nowadays who rely on television and the moron press for information seem to think was a series of victories which Australia continually reinforced by surrendering more ground to the Japanese so the Australians could emphasize their military skill and heroism by allowing the Japanese to beat them again :confused:) it was a sterling effort by Australian gunners, contrary to higher command's expectations and initial refusals to allow the attempt, getting their howitzers up supposedly impossible ground and bringing them into action which pounded the Japanese backwards in about the worst artillery country imaginable, both for getting the guns up and firing in heavily forested country against unplotted targets.

Probably the most effective and damaging response to Japan's swarming and infiltration tactics on a large scale was Slim’s at Kohima etc when the British held and the Japanese blunted themselves against the boxes, and lacked tactics to overcome the failure of their long successful tactics.

An earlier example was the Australians at Milne Bay in 1942, luckily aided by virtually impassable country on one flank and the sea on the other, which greatly reduced the use of standard Japanese infiltration and flanking tactics.

The USMC did something similar at the Tenaru River (strictly it wasn’t the Tenaru, but that’s what it’s always called) around the same time as Milne Bay.

What all these instances all showed is that well trained, resolute, well led, and reasonably well supplied Allied troops could respond to Japanese tactics, without the suicidal spirit of the Japanese. If anything, the suicidal spirit of the Japanese just came to the fore in such attacks and got them mauled to no purpose, the Tenaru River being the best example when the Japanese were in the ascendant and still advancing, and the USMC destroyed their attackers.

Rising Sun*

03-14-2008, 05:12 AM

For some excellent but, unlike much academic writing, readable essays on the strengths and weaknesses of the IJA and its Pacific adventures, Edward Drea's In the Service of the Emperor is hard to beat.

Here's the essay titles.
http://www.questia.com/library/book/in-the-service-of-the-emperor-essays-on-the-imperial-japanese-army-by-edward-j-drea.jsp

gumalangi

03-14-2008, 05:57 AM

Rising Sun*

03-14-2008, 07:04 AM

I've been to Bukit Tinggi, Sumatera, for couple of time. Over there, there is a gigantic labirynth built by IJA, It is so complicated, that it is now marked for directions. People could lost there w/out proper direction.

And there is another one near Manado, north Sulawesi. S ome folks say, originally, the tunnel was connecting 2 cities, Menado and Bitung. Due to bombardments, natural causes etc, several sections are down and made it into smaller sections.

These really shows the enginuity of IJA, in such a short period of times able to create those subterranian fortresses.

IJA defensive engineering and defensive tactics at the end of the war when they didn't matter so much were very good, as at Okinawa, if you don't mind being a commander who loses his whole force to no purpose in a futile defence in human and strategic terms which should never have got to that stage because what was lacking was a comprehensive strategy which dictated why they should not even build them, or be in many of the places they were from Sumatra eastwards.

New Guinea destroyed the IJA by years of attrition http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT00002FAA
after Guadalcanal stopped its advance.

If you read Drea and others who've studied the subject well, what comes out is that the IJN got carried away expanding into the vast Pacific and dragged the IJA with it, leaving the IJA to defend largely indefensible outposts which couldn't survive without the IJN and the Japanese merchant navy, which weren't up to the task for various reasons.

The essential problem was that the IJA and IJN operated as separate forces with separate objectives. This oversimplifies it, but it's fair enough to say that before Pearl Harbor the IJA expanded into China which wasn't available to the IJN, and after that the somewhat jealous IJN expanded into the Pacific which wasn't available to the IJA.

A unified Japanese army and navy command with clear strategic objectives would have avoided this, as it did with the Americans in their Pacific actions, although there was certainly friction between the US army and navy but not to the extent that it destroyed the achievement of clear national strategy.

The American forces lacked the constitutional presence of the IJA and IJN at government level in formulating and deciding policy, so they had to conform with political direction which, whatever the many and great failings of politicians, was directed to America's national strategic aims rather than being fragmented by turf wars between the IJA and IJN in advising the Emperor at Imperial Conference on national strategy.

Japan's essential problem, independent of the IJA and IJN issues, was that it had a clear national strategy for expansion but no clear and unified army and navy strategies to achieve and hold what was achieved, or even clear strategic reasons for taking and holding anything after Rabaul to protect Truk which led to invading Papua to take and hold Port Moreseby to protect Rabaul from bomber attacks from Townsville in Australia which could reach Rabaul by refuelling at Moresby on the return leg, when Japan didn't have an equivalent capacity to strike at Townsville, so the first thrust at Moresby led to the Battle of the Coral Sea which had adverse implications for the Japanese at Midway a bit later and a long way away. If the Japanese process of taking and holding something to protect something further back continued to its ultimate, they would have been in Buenos Aires and Antarctica by the end of 1943.

The IJA's other big failing was that its soldiers and officers were brilliantly schooled in and very proficient in small to medium unit infantry tactics, up to battalion and perhaps brigade level, but those tactics relied on spirit and infiltration and envelopment and remorseless assaults against the enemy, which were devastating against a retreating enemy but suicidal against a tenaciously defending or successfully advancing one, such as Slim at his best in Burma or the Australians and Americans in New Guinea 1943-44.

The IJA's senior commanders lacked the training and skills of the American and British in dealing with formations (and even the Australians with less than formations), and associated strategic manouevres. So they dug some brilliant holes in rocks and popped up from spider holes and were excellent at interlocking arcs of machine gun fire and mutually supported entrenchments, but they never bothered to ask themselves at a national strategic level whether it was worth doing all that in far flung outposts, notably New Guinea, which had modest strategic value and almost no economic value and which should never have been invaded for no benefit, while they were being slaughtered and starved and isolated when they should have been concentrated closer to Japan's major conquests and LOC to defend them effectively.

In the defensive phase of the SWPA land war, Japanese commanders had a spectacular capacity to reinforce failure, and an even more spectacular inability to recognise that they were doing it to the detriment of Japan's larger strategic benefit.

gumalangi

03-14-2008, 10:04 AM

You got things that you said sir!,.. after all this while, when i read about certain events in Pacific. It just the event per se that absorb my attention. Perhaps I am kinda ignorant type guy. Somehow now i realize how true it was, that both IJN and IJA seems having their own war. In China, Burma, parts of indonesia were mainly performed by IJA, and far flung oceans,. dominated by IJN, IJA also has to came up their own mode of transport for their fighting troops and how to re-supply them.

As for IJN, they even have their own Parachute Unit,..

KMDjr

03-14-2008, 10:12 AM

Hello Gumalangi,

I'd like to learn more about the work by the Japanese in Menado, Sulawesi. I am interested in the Japanese in Celebes during WWII & haven't heard of this before now.

TIA

gumalangi

03-14-2008, 11:05 AM

Hello Gumalangi,

I'd like to learn more about the work by the Japanese in Menado, Sulawesi. I am interested in the Japanese in Celebes during WWII & haven't heard of this before now.

TIA

Hello TIA

Regret that i cannot do much with your request, As those things i knew about the Japanese activities in Menado, are most of them came from word of mouth from so called 'Pai Tua' or old persons. For the accuracy of the story, it is certainly hard to be prooven. The other story of one small Dutch Gun-boat play hide and seek with IJN Armada,I obtained during an afternoon-tea story from my late father.

It is only the help of Mr George Eller, the story can be guaranteed. However, I can't always ask others to do my homework . For me, History reading is only one of my part time activities.

However, I knew, few years back, one surviving Kaigun-ho, who was still alived and well. He was very close friend to my father. I am yet to check on his well being. I Lost contact with him when i Moved to Singapore.

Cheers

KMDjr

03-14-2008, 02:51 PM

Hello Gumalangi,

Thank you for the reply. I wonder if there are many "Pai Tua" still living who remember the Japanese occupation of Celebes (Sulawesi)? I know some Dutch who were imprisoned as youngsters in the internment camps on Java and Sulawesi. Their memories are still quite vivid.

Nickdfresh

03-15-2008, 07:47 AM

....but they never bothered to ask themselves at a national strategic level whether it was worth doing all that in far flung outposts, notably New Guinea, which had modest strategic value and almost no economic value and which should never have been invaded for no benefit, while they were being slaughtered and starved and isolated when they should have been concentrated closer to Japan's major conquests and LOC to defend them effectively....

RS*,

Wasn't the Japanese plan in New Guinea largely a ruse to draw both Australian and US forces away from other parts of the Pacific by conducting what were thought to be preparations for what turned out to be a pseudo-invasion of Australia?

Rising Sun*

03-15-2008, 10:12 AM

RS*,

Wasn't the Japanese plan in New Guinea largely a ruse to draw both Australian and US forces away from other parts of the Pacific by conducting what were thought to be preparations for what turned out to be a pseudo-invasion of Australia?

Mate, I hate to contradict you so bluntly, but: No.

(If you have a source for that opinion, I'd like to know it. Could be interesting to follow up.)

Just the opposite.

Japan as a nation never had any plan (as distinct from a long term ambition) to invade Australia, or even to pretend to invade it, although the IJN was keen to try an invasion with its marines. That doesn't mean that Japan wasn't posturing and threatening to do so in 1942, as Tojo did several times in radio and parliamentary comments.

Invading New Guinea and invading Australia were a Japanese cluster fuck from beginning to end. (I don’t actually know precisely what a cluster fuck means in American usage, but I love the expression and if New Guinea wasn’t one then I don’t know what would be. :D )

There wasn’t anywhere for a Japanese ruse to draw land forces away from by the second half on 1942 when the Papua New Guinea, and Guadalcanal, campaigns were launched by the Japanese. They held just about everything to the north and north west. The Aleutian aspect was too far away to be relevant.

New Guinea was never more than a provisional target in Japan's original war aims.

It was, like most Japanese advances after the initial aims were secured, opportunistically rather than strategically inspired.

To understand in a relatively few words how Japan ended up there, and how in many respects they lost the war there, you won’t do much better than the link I gave earlier to Henry Frei’s paper http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT00002FAA

To expand on a few points in Frei’s paper.

(Without wanting to teach you how to suck eggs :D) Anyone who doesn't have a clear picture of the geography and distances, read what follows with a map beside you.

Rabaul was, strategically for the IJN, a sensible target to support Truk, but that in itself caused problems. The IJA regarded holding Rabaul as protecting Truk as a centre of IJN operations threatening the US in the central Pacific, but the IJN saw Rabaul as a centre of operations itself.

I’m oversimplifying it (I like saying that. It makes me sound like I know more than I do ;)) and I’ll expand on some earlier comments, but the IJN perception of Rabaul as a centre of operations led to the IJN seeing a need to protect Rabaul from Allied attacks, where the IJA was just defending Rabaul (after massacring a lot of Australians and others and doing other things you’d expect of that mongrel bunch at the time in and around Rabaul).

The problem for the IJN with Rabaul as a centre of operations was that the Allies could fly bombers from Townsville in north Queensland in Australia to bomb Rabaul and then land at Port Moresby in Papua on the way back to refuel on a round trip they couldn’t have made otherwise. The Japanese lacked a corresponding, and any, route to hit Townsville and its base which threatened Rabaul. So, if they took Moresby out of the equation, Rabaul was safe from Allied air attack.

Just to grasp the significance of Townsville, fairly early in the war Townsville was the biggest American air base outside the continental US.

Another advantage for Japan in taking Moresby was that it’s one of the few deep water natural harbours in the region, which of course backed up Rabaul and presented itself as a fresh centre of operations which might strangle Australian and Allied shipping through the relatively narrow Torres Strait between PNG and Australia.

This was important as just about everything that mattered in Australia, from productive capacity to things and people landed from the US, was on the east coast from Brisbane southwards to Melbourne and had to move by sea through the Torres Strait to Darwin or the north west to build a real threat to Japan’s southern flank in the NEI. Rail links lacked the capacity, while there were barely roads for some links.

Alternatively, any attempt to avoid the Torres Strait problem meant either an invasion fleet steaming through the Torres Strait where it was vulnerable to attacks from whatever was based at Moresby on sea or in the air, or a huge and probably insupportable expenditure in oil and tonnage in moving everything to assemble at Perth / Fremantle on the south west coast of the Australian continent and then steaming up from there, whether to Darwin as a fresh reassembly point or direct to somewhere in the NEI etc.

The IJN got carried away with victories and by early 1942 some elements were putting forward ideas like a one to two division raid down the middle of Australia from Darwin to Adelaide, which they thought might rattle us into surrender. Whether or not it would have worked, those plans show something that was consistently fatal in Japan’s understanding and planning and strategy. The people running the show had no idea what they were dealing with.

Read Henry Frei’s excellent Japan's Southward Advance and Australia and you’ll see how ignorant the Japanese were of what was down here and how ambivalent they were about it, and how little they understood of it.

In a different way, it’s the same problem many of their leaders had with America. They didn’t understand it and they didn’t realise what was going to happen when they attacked it, because they were too bound up in their own narrow conceptions of Japanese excellence nurtured in a closed society lacking a real understanding of the outer world.

The same criticisms could be made of the Allies, and the Americans in particular, but America had everything Japan didn’t that mattered for war.

Too many leaders in Japan were too unsophisticated to realise that, and to realise that pissing off the remarkably diverse Americans unanimously as a nation is a very hard thing to do. But when anyone does it, then look out. About the only other time it’s been achieved before or after Pearl Harbor was 9/11, another sneak attack.

So, I’ll bring all this back to New Guinea, but first a digression.

In 1942 there was Papua, which was Australian soil thanks to a bit of aggressive colonial annexation by the Australian colony of Queensland in the late 19th century before Australia federated into a nation in 1901. New Guinea was a former German colony mandated to Australia after WWI. Ignoring Dutch New Guinea on the western half of the island, which was a colonial Dutch possession.

All the fighting in 1942, which was Japan’s initial assault in Papua New Guinea, took place on Australian soil in Papua, on the Kokoda Track, Milne Bay, Buna, Gona, and Sanananda. New Guinea came later.

All of that fighting was, from the Japanese side, aimed at little more than the short term tactical reinforcement and protection of Rabaul and support of Operation FS. There wasn’t any grand plan about invading Australia, let alone creating the impression that Australia was about to be invaded.

At best, Japan’s Papuan campaign was part of the Operation FS compromise between the IJA and IJN to allow the IJN to move eastwards to Fiji and the Solomons after the IJA had comprehensively rejected any attempt to invade Australia.

Operation FS and the IJN’s ambitious expansion pushed Japan into Guadalcanal, which was the campaign which finished Japan’s Pacific expansion and its attempts to implement Operation FS to isolate Australia from America, while Japan’s failure in Papua under Australian and American defence and then attack started the roll up of Japan back to its homeland.

Japan’s whole problem in the SWPA land area was that it never had a strategy, at grand strategy or military strategy levels, to explain why it went past the oil fields in the NEI which were the most important aim of its war, and why it failed to consolidate its forces to protect those gains instead of drifting further east and eventually bogging itself in a casualty and logistical killing field in Papua New Guinea from the point of its greatest early triumphs to its defeat, which is the only place it did that.

Japan’s land war southwards and eastwards after conquering the NEI was largely the consequence of IJN ambition and hubris rather than any coherent national or military strategy.

It demonstrates the wisdom of those pain in the arse MBA syndicate papers about a business usually ending up in deep shit if it doesn’t’ know exactly where it’s going, and plan properly to get there.

Or just the old saying: Don’t throw good money after bad.

Rising Sun*

03-15-2008, 09:23 PM

Nick, maybe you were thinking of the IJN trying to draw the USN into the 'decisive battle' at Midway?

This was linked to the Battle of the Coral Sea and Operation MO (invasion of Port Moresby in Papua) through the Doolittle Raid. The relationship between these geographically distant and seemingly unconnected events is explained here. http://www.users.bigpond.com/pacificwar/CoralSea/CoralOverview.html

Ashes

03-27-2008, 12:17 AM

The IJN got carried away with victories and by early 1942 some elements were putting forward ideas like a one to two division raid down the middle of Australia from Darwin to Adelaide, which they thought might rattle us into surrender

By all accounts, in February 1942, Yamamoto, proposed an immediate invasion of Australia. He had just implemented his bombing raids on Darwin in the Northern Territory. He pleaded with the Japanese General Staff, to land two Japanese Army Divisions on the northern coastline of Australia which was very poorly defended. They were to follow the north-south railway line to Adelaide, thus dividing Australia into two fronts. Once Adelaide had been taken, a second force would land on the south east coast of Australia and drive northwards to Sydney and southwards to Melbourne.

General Yamashita agreed with Yamamoto's Invasion Plan and even volunteered to lead the invasion. However, the plan was opposed by Japanese Prime Minister, General Tojo, as he believed that there were no contingency plans considered for Yamamoto's Invasion Plan.

Emperor Hirohito decided to postpone the Invasion Plan until Japanese forces had taken Burma and joined forces with the rebel Indian Nationalists. The outcomes of the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway ensured the Invasion Plan for Australia was never revisited.

Perhaps Yamamoto was on the right track to invade, although the Japanese might have been stretched, Australia at the time had their best divisions overseas and the Navy and Air force were pretty threadbare, the Japanese were on a roll against very limited opposition.

The best chance of an Japanese invasion of Australia would not have been through a Perth or Darwin axis. These points could be essentially neutralized by minor attacks.

The focus of invasion would have been the south-eastern boomerang. What would have happened if Japan had won the battles for Papua and the Solomon islands? In the event of a delayed response from the United States the Japanese would probably have attempted to invade Australia. This would have been only possible if they were able to withdraw troops from China and find sufficient shipping to land the troops on the east coast. A successful lodgment would have extended their supply lines further and only in the event of a rapid rout of Australian forces could the invasion have been sustained.

Or at least concentrated on taking Port Moresby, Fiji, the New Hebrides, Samoa and the Solomons to isolate Australia instead of moving Westward into Burma and the Indian ocean.

Rising Sun*

03-27-2008, 07:48 AM

By all accounts, in February 1942, Yamamoto, proposed an immediate invasion of Australia. He had just implemented his bombing raids on Darwin in the Northern Territory. He pleaded with the Japanese General Staff, to land two Japanese Army Divisions on the northern coastline of Australia which was very poorly defended. They were to follow the north-south railway line to Adelaide, thus dividing Australia into two fronts. Once Adelaide had been taken, a second force would land on the south east coast of Australia and drive northwards to Sydney and southwards to Melbourne.

My understanding is different.

I don't recall Yamamoto being an advocate for invading Australia. My recollection is that at the most senior levels it came from the Chief of Navy General Staff, Admiral Nagano while Yamamoto was pursuing other aims. Ultimately Yamamoto was still pursuing the decisive battle aim leading to Midway but also taking Ceylon from the British to keep pressure on the main Allies. He had discounted Australia as a target of strategic significance.

As I understand Yamamoto’s thinking at the time, his main interest in Australia would have been in using any thrust at it to lure the USN into the decisive battle for control of the Pacific. Although Nagano was nominally responsible for national naval strategy at imperial high command level, Yamamoto as Commander in Chief Combined Fleet had become perhaps more influential after Pearl Harbor and carried more sway in some respects. So the question about invading or raiding Australia reflected disputes and power struggles both between the IJA and the IJN and within the IJN.

I don’t know why General Yamashita would be significant in the discussions, or why his volunteering to lead the raid would matter. He was in Singapore and fully occupied consolidating his victory and occupation there after the surrender on 15 February 1942 and until Imperial General Headquarters rejected the IJN’s Australian invasion proposal on 4 March 1942. Yamahsita was not in great favour with some higher authorities, notably Tojo, as shown by the subsequent treatment accorded the ‘Tiger of Malaya’ by being posted to the boondocks in Manchuria in mid 1942. I can’t see him being consulted as part of the high strategy conferences occurring in Tokyo, some of the most important of which actually occurred between officers of lower rank, as often happened with Japanese planning.

The Australian invasion / raid was an ill considered notion fuelled by Japan's victories and the belief that it was virtually invincible. Nothing unusual about that. The same hubris got Hitler into the USSR.

The Darwin raids weren't an attack on Australia per se but a strike to miniminse responses from Australia to Japan's coming invasions of Java and Timor.

There were various proposals for landing in mainland Oz, the main ones being a three division occupation of northern Australia, along the usual Japanese lines of taking something and then having to take something further away to protect it until they overstretched themselves, and the raid down central Australia. I haven't heard before of a force landing between Melbourne and Sydney to support the Adelaide conquest and moving towards both capitals at once. The Japanese didn't have the shipping or the troops to do it, and if they tried it they'd just end up with Milne Bay on a major scale. Although, with a bit of luck, they might have got geographically confused and obliterated Canberra before we got rid of them, and done the nation a lasting favour. ;)

A one or two division raid would have been a long way short of what was needed for an invasion, which has been discussed here http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4574

The hare brained Adelaide raid idea was essentially to land in Darwin and plunge down to Adelaide, sweeping almost nothing before the forces advancing through the middle of nowhere, and hope it rattled Australia into surrender while the primary south east corner and the naval base at Fremantle were well out of range and risk. If only the Japanese knew how little the rest of Australia values Adelaide. ;) (This is probably the point at which you embarrass me by telling me that you live in the City of Churches. :( )

In addition to the points I made in the forum link, Japan also had the problem of transporting and supplying its troops along the 1,000 kilometres or so between the end of the railway from Darwin at Bidum and the start of the railway to Adelaide at Alice Springs. What a beautiful killing ground for air attacks. As would be troops crammed on trains on the only railways going down the middle of Australia. Assuming Australia was generous enough to leave any tracks or locomotives or rolling stock for the Japanese.

Building on the point I made in the link about Japanese rations, it was a problem even for Australians running up and down the track as mentioned here about the army supply farms. http://www.anzacday.org.au/history/ww2/bfa/dusty_track.html

The IJA showed rather more sense in military and strategic terms than the IJN in rejecting the invasion / raid ideas, but the event illustrates again that Japan had a serious problem the Allies didn't by having, effectively, two armed forces which operated independently of each other when it suited them and without a unifying high command. Perhaps the best illustration of how far apart they were is that the IJA wasn't informed immediately about what a disaster Midway was. Imagine a similar approach by the Americans to Pearl Harbor.

I don't have the book, but IIRC there's a description in John Toland's The Rising Sun (no relation :D) of the intense conflict in Tokyo in February - march 1942 between the IJA and IJN over invading Australia, which involved officers nearly coming to blows and threats of resignation.

Rising Sun*

03-27-2008, 07:50 AM

I'm a total idiot!

And your historical point is? :confused:

Ashes

03-28-2008, 12:55 AM

(This is probably the point at which you embarrass me by telling me that you live in the City of Churches. )

No worries there, lovely city, but not my domicile.;)

I don't have the book, but IIRC there's a description in John Toland's The Rising Sun (no relation :D) of the intense conflict in Tokyo in February - march 1942 between the IJA and IJN over invading Australia, which involved officers nearly coming to blows and threats of resignation.

Ive always thought, thank god the army won the barny and not the Navy, although I suppose Tojo would have the final say.

H. P. Frei's book ''Japan's southward advance and Australia from the Sixteenth Century to World War II'' gives an interesting analysis.

Frei examined Japanese government archives and found no evidence of a strategic plan or intention to invade or hold any part of Australia before Japan's spectacular military successes of 1941-42.

But goes on to say....

Australia was included in Japan's geopolitical considerations. There was a planned advance into Portuguese Timor in 1936 through the operations of the Nanko or NKKK, which co-operated closely with the Navy. The plan was to meet the wishes of the local governments and to guide the people to pro-Japanese attitudes through propaganda. Australia, therefore, had to be neutralised. There was concern that Broome offered safety to the Dutch, and Darwin to the US Pacific Fleet. Japan did not want Australia to become a strategic springboard for a counter-offensive by the United States. Thus early in 1942, Australia was seen as a menace to Japanese occupied territory in the "inner nan'y*" [or ''Southern Expansion,'' formally declared by Japan in 1935.] This led the Navy to push for total control of Australia, but the Army felt that ten divisions would be needed to hold the territory. Army-Navy conferences in February 1942 argued about invasion, but could only agree on the occupation of New Guinea and that the destruction of Darwin was important for Timor and Java.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Interpreting+%22Japanese+activities%22+in+Australi a,+1888-1945-a0120109445

Rising Sun*

03-28-2008, 02:11 AM

H. P. Frei's book ''Japan's southward advance and Australia from the Sixteenth Century to World War II'' gives an interesting analysis.

Frei examined Japanese government archives and found no evidence of a strategic plan or intention to invade or hold any part of Australia before Japan's spectacular military successes of 1941-42.

Agreed.

There is no evidence of any approved operational plan to invade Australia at any time.

However, Japan's long term strategic aim was to include Australia in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, while the acquisition of the GEACPS was the overall strategic purpose of the war.

Japanese Imperial Policy
Policy Adopted at Imperial Conference, 2 July 1941
An Outline of the Policy of the Imperial Government in View of Present Developments
(Decision reached at the Conference held in the Imperial Presence on July 2)
I. Policy

The Imperial Government is determined to follow a policy which will result in the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and world peace, no matter what international developments take place. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Dip/IR-410702.html

There's some discussion of the GEACPS here at #34 and# 36
http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4617&page=3

As with Japan's attitude to Australia as discussed by Frei, the extent of the outer limits of the GEACPS shifted, but by about March 1942 Japan's Total War Institute was talking about Australia as a definite part of it. My recollection is that the Imperial Conference decision that approved Operation FS mentioned something to the effect that the question of Australia and India would be left to a later date. I can't lay my hands on the sources for either of those statements, but the first comes from a paper prepared by the TWI around that time and the second from the text of Imperial Conference - or maybe the Liaison conference which effectively resolved the issues to be put before the Emperor.

It's also instructive that Tojo was calling for Australia's surrender during 1942 and threatening dire consequences if we didn't surrender.

So, while no immediate military threat of invasion ever existed, Japan still wanted to conquer us, which inevitably meant an invasion or occupation after surrender.

Twitch1

03-28-2008, 02:49 PM

Interesting and knowledgable thread fellows. I enjoy your points of view. Thankfully it will continue to not attract arguementative nationists who can't stand to give credit to any place but their native lands.

Rising Sun*

03-29-2008, 08:52 AM

Ive always thought, thank god the army won the barny and not the Navy, although I suppose Tojo would have the final say.

He largely did in the early stages of the war.

It should be remembered that the IJA in China and elsewhere wasn't purely a salaried officer corps just doing good works for the Emperor.

More like some South American or Asian governments (and especially China, but that's heresy for a communist nation, especially since it went semi-capitalist and being in a senior army position didn't advance one's position and finances in the past ten or fifteen years) since WWII where army progression could equal social and financial progression.

Ashes

03-30-2008, 12:14 AM

What gets me is that the Japanese rampage through the Pacific was done with only eleven of their 54 or so divisions [although with strong air and naval forces]

Must have been scary times in Aus, with Singapore falling in Feb, and Darwin being bombed shortly after, [the first of over 60 raids on Darwin and almost 100 in total on Australian soil] Japanese midget submarines entering Sydney Harbour, and talk of a so called ''Brisbane line''

Have you [or anyone] read the papers of Dr Peter Stanley [principal historian at the Australian War Memorial for 20 years] called "He's (not) coming South - the invasion that wasn't".

He seems to have opened a can of worms, with his opponents taking him to task on.......

http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforaustralia/battaust/AustInvasion/References/Stanley's_claims.html

His book'' Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942'' is due to be published by Penguin in July 2008. Might be worth a read.

Rising Sun*

03-30-2008, 06:51 AM

Have you [or anyone] read the papers of Dr Peter Stanley [principal historian at the Australian War Memorial for 20 years] called "He's (not) coming South - the invasion that wasn't".

He seems to have opened a can of worms, with his opponents taking him to task on.......

http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforaustralia/battaust/AustInvasion/References/Stanley's_claims.html

Not only have I read them, I've dissected them in detail. It'd take far too long to go into here, because just about every paragraph can be pulled apart.

Stanley's papers are superficial and illogical, and don't inspire confidence in the standard of historical analysis about Australia in the Pacific War coming from the AWM if those papers are representative of it, which I don't think they are as the Australia Japan Research Project shows.

Cutting through all the crap, and allowing that it's a long time since I've read either paper, Stanley's very weak premise is that because Curtin had a Magic intercept (?May 1942?) and MacArthur's assurance on arrival in Australia in March 1942 that Japan wasn't going to invade Australia (cf. MacArthur's private fear at the same time that Japan would invade Australia: William Manchester, American Caesar, Hutchison, Melbourne, 1978, p. 251) while everything else it was doing demonstrated that it was going to invade while demanding our surrender, then Curtin shouldn't have misled the Australian people during 1942 into thinking that Japan intended to invade; that victory on Kokoda didn't save Australia from anything; and that the war in the Pacific was won on the steppes of Europe, which must be a consolation for all those relatives of Allied service people who died fighting in the Pacific. This is all somehow linked, in Stanley's confused mind anyway, to his post-war debunking of irrelvant myths about alleged and extremely trivial Japanese landings in Australia which show that Curtin (along with all the other Australian people who had worked out without any help from Curtin that Japan's actions showed it intended to invade) was wrong during the war in thinking there was any risk of invasion.

Basing just about everything on the Magic decrypt, as Stanley does, shows that the possibility of false Japanese signals for strategic or tactical purposes is beyond Dr Stanley's limited grasp of the subject and relevant considerations. It also shows that he wasn't aware, or chose to ignore, the fact that the Allies hadn't broken all Japanese codes and didn't have knowledge of what might be passing under other codes. For all Curtin knew, the Magic intercept was one of countless false messages to deceive the enemy. Curtin didn't have Stanley's luxury sixty five odd years of knowledge and hindsight. Curtin just had the Japanese advancing remorselessly towards Australia while Tojo was demanding our surrender. Which, according to Stanley, should have forced Curtin on the basis of the Magic decrypt (and Stanley's subsequently disproved myths of Japanese landings in Australia which had no bearing on Curtin's thinking at the time) to the obvious logical conclusion that Japan had no intention of invading Australia. FFS!

Stanley's total misconception and large ignorance of the GEACPS and Japan's war aims affecting Australia are masked by a plethora of irrelevant trivia about minor events and myths which don't bear on the larger, and real, picture.

If you want to see how deficient Stanley's knowledge is and how he distorts the historical record, (I'm taking the references in this post from my dissection notes) just look at his statement on p. 8 of He's Not Coming South that Curtin confirmed in an off the record briefing in March 1944 that there wouldn't be any more risk to the eastern side of Australia but he was still raising the possibility of Japanese attacks on Darwin. Stanley presents this as evidence of some sort of deception or delusion by Curtin about the Japanese threat. His source for this comment is Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall, Backroom Briefings: John Curtin’s War, Canberra, 1997. Stanley ignores the following outline in that source of the developing situation which indicated that the Japanese might attack the major naval base at Fremantle. The threat was taken sufficiently seriously by the Chiefs of Staff, who made their own assessment and communicated it to Curtin rather than vice versa, to make major dispositions of naval and air craft to meet the threat. See the Official History, Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 3 – Air., Volume II, Air War Against Japan, 1943-1945 (1968 reprint) pp 134 -9. http://www.awm.gov.au/cms_images/histories/27/chapters/08.pdf

I encountered the site in your link a couple of years ago but haven't followed it since. I don't think the author is wrong in challenging Stanley's silly papers and castigating the AWM for its sponsorship of sloppy scholarship.

So far as Stanley himself is concerned, a postgraduate military history student told me last year that he is extraordinarily approachable and helpful.

My impression of his papers is that he put something together for the first paper without having the detailed grasp of his subject that it required, as a busy public historian with wide knowledge but a lack of deep knowledge might do, and then, wounded by adverse responses, tried to justify his position but merely reinforced failure with the second paper.

His book'' Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942'' is due to be published by Penguin in July 2008. Might be worth a read.

Not if it's as silly as his two vacuous papers.

Rising Sun*

03-30-2008, 06:58 AM

As with Japan's attitude to Australia as discussed by Frei, the extent of the outer limits of the GEACPS shifted, but by about March 1942 Japan's Total War Institute was talking about Australia as a definite part of it.

Here it is, but it was a January rather than March 1942 paper.

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore De Bary, Donald Keene, Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press), Volume II, 1958, pp. 294-298.

***************************

THE WAR GOAL

Japan's war planners envisioned a long struggle, in several stages, to achieve their new Asia. The new Asia was to be known as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Southern region would supply raw materials and surplus food, while Manchuria and North China provided the materials and basis for a heavy industry complex. The rest of Asia would become a vast market, defended and integrated by Japanese planning, tools, skills, and arms.

DRAFT OF BASIC PLAN FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE

[From Draft of Basic Plan, IMTFE, International Prosecution Section, Document 2402B, Exhibit 1336]

Part I. Outline of Construction

This document, produced as a secret planning paper by the Total War Research Institute, a body responsible to army and cabinet, in January of 1942, reveals the nature of long-range planning during the early war years before defeats began to take their toll of optimism and confidence.

The Plan. The Japanese empire is a manifestation of morality and its special characteristic is the propagation of the Imperial Way. It strives but for the achievement of Hakko Ichiu, the spirit of its founding.... It is necessary to foster the increased power of the empire, to cause East Asia to return to its original form of independence and co-prosperity by shaking off the yoke of Europe and America, and to let its countries and peoples develop their respective abilities in peaceful cooperation and secure livelihood.

The Form of East Asiatic Independence and Co-Prosperity. The states, their citizens, and resources, comprised in those areas pertaining to the Pacific, Central Asia, and the Indian Oceans formed into one general union are to be established as an autonomous zone of peaceful living and common prosperity on behalf of the peoples of the nations of East Asia. The area including Japan, Manchuria, North China, lower Yangtze River, and the Russian Maritime Province, forms the nucleus of the East Asiatic Union. The Japanese empire possesses a duty as the leader of the East Asiatic Union.

The above purpose presupposes the inevitable emancipation or independence of Eastern Siberia, China, Indo-China, the South Seas, Australia, and India.

Regional Division in the East Asiatic Union and the National Defense Sphere for the Japanese Empire. In the Union of East Asia, the Japanese empire is at once the stabilizing power and the leading influence. To enable the empire actually to become the central influence in East Asia, the first necessity is the consolidation of the inner belt of East Asia; and the East Asiatic Sphere shall be divided as follows for this purpose:

The Inner Sphere- the vital sphere for the empire-includes Japan, Manchuria, North China, the lower Yangtze Area and the Russian Maritime area.

The Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere- the smaller self-supplying sphere of East Asia-includes the inner sphere plus Eastern Siberia, China, Indo-China, and the South Sea.

The Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere- the larger self-supplying sphere of East Asia-includes the smaller co-prosperity sphere, plus Australia, India, and island groups in the Pacific....

For the present, the smaller co-prosperity sphere shall be the zone in which the construction of East Asia and the stabilization of national defense are to be aimed at. After their completion there shall be a gradual expansion toward the construction of the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Outline of East Asiatic Administration. It is intended that the unification of Japan, Manchoukuo, and China in neighborly friendship be realized by the settlement of the Sino-Japanese problems through the crushing of hostile influences in the Chinese interior, and through the construction of a new China in tune with the rapid construction of the Inner Sphere. Aggressive American and British influences in East Asia shall be driven out of the area of Indo-China and the South Seas, and this area shall be brought into our defense sphere. The war with Britain and America shall be prosecuted for that purpose.

The Russian aggressive influence in East Asia will be driven out. Eastern Siberia shall be cut off from the Soviet regime and included in our defense sphere. For this purpose, a war with the Soviets is expected. It is considered possible that this Northern problem may break out before the general settlement of the present Sino-Japanese and the Southern problems if the situation renders this unavoidable. Next the independence of Australia, India, etc. shall gradually be brought about. For this purpose, a recurrence of war with Britain and her allies is expected. The construction of a Greater Mongolian State is expected during the above phase. The construction of the Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere is expected to require at least twenty years from the present time.

The Building of the National Strength. Since the Japanese empire is the center and pioneer of Oriental moral and cultural reconstruction, the officials and people of this country must return to the spirit of the Orient and acquire a thorough understanding of the spirit of the national moral character.

In the economic construction of the country, Japanese and Manchurian national power shall first be consolidated, then the unification of Japan, Manchoukuo and China, shall be effected.... Thus a central industry will be reconstructed in East Asia, and the necessary relations established with the Southern Seas.

The standard for the construction of the national power and its military force, so as to meet the various situations that might affect the stages of East Asiatic administration and the national defense sphere, shall be so set as to be capable of driving off any British, American, Soviet or Chinese counter-influences in the future....

CHAPTER 3. POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION

Basic Plan. The realization of the great ideal of constructing Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity requires not only the complete prosecution of the current Greater East Asia War but also presupposes another great war in the future. Therefore, the following two points must be made the primary starting points for the political construction of East Asia during the course of the next twenty years: 1) Preparation for war with the other spheres of the world; and 2) Unification and construction of the East Asia Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The following are the basic principles for the political construction of East Asia, when the above two points are taken into consideration:

a. The politically dominant influence of European and American countries in the Smaller Co-Prosperity Sphere shall be gradually driven out and the area shall enjoy its liberation from the shackles hitherto forced upon it.

b. The desires of the peoples in the sphere for their independence shall be respected and endeavors shall be made for their fulfillment, but proper and suitable forms of government shall be decided for them in consideration of military and economic requirements and of the historical, political and cultural elements peculiar to each area.

It must also be noted that the independence of various peoples of East Asia should be based upon the idea of constructing East Asia as "independent countries existing within the New Order of East Asia" and that this conception differs from an independence based on the idea of liberalism and national self-determination.

c. During the course of construction, military unification is deemed particularly important, and the military zones and key points necessary for defense shall be directly or indirectly under the control of our country.

d. The peoples of the sphere shall obtain their proper positions, the unity of the people's minds shall be effected and the unification of the sphere shall be realized with the empire as its center....

Continued

Rising Sun*

03-30-2008, 06:59 AM

CHAPTER 4. THOUGHT AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION

General Aim in Thought. The ultimate aim in thought construction in East Asia is to make East Asiatic people revere the imperial influence by propagating the Imperial Way based on the spirit of construction, and to establish the belief that uniting solely under this influence is the one and only way to eternal growth and development in East Asia.

And during the next twenty years (the period during which the above ideal is to be reached) it is necessary to make the nations and peoples of East Asia realize the historical significance of the establishment of the New Order in East Asia, and in the common consciousness of East Asiatic unity, to liberate East Asia from the shackles of Europe and America and to establish the common conviction of constructing a New Order based on East Asiatic morality.

Occidental individualism and materialism shall be rejected and a moral world view, the basic principle of whose morality shall be the Imperial Way, shall be established. The ultimate object to be achieved is not exploitation but co-prosperity and mutual help, not competitive conflict but mutual assistance and mild peace, not a formal view of equality but a view of order based on righteous classification, not an idea of rights but an idea of service, and not several world views but one unified world view.

General Aim in Culture. The essence of the traditional culture of the Orient shall be developed and manifested. And, casting off the negative and conservative cultural characteristics of the continents (India and China) on the one hand, and taking in the good points of Western culture on the other, an Oriental culture and morality, on a grand scale and subtly refined, shall be created.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/eas/restricted/geacps.htm

It's obvious what Japan had planned for Australia in those thoughts when we reconcile them with its actions elsewhere.

Rising Sun*

03-30-2008, 07:16 AM

My recollection is that the Imperial Conference decision that approved Operation FS mentioned something to the effect that the question of Australia and India would be left to a later date. I can't lay my hands on the sources for either of those statements, but the first comes from a paper prepared by the TWI around that time and the second from the text of Imperial Conference - or maybe the Liaison conference which effectively resolved the issues to be put before the Emperor.

Here it is.

GENERAL OUTLINE OF POLICY OF FUTURE WAR GUIDANCE,
ADOPTED BY LIAISON CONFERENCE 7 MARCH 1942 AND
REPORT OF PRIME MINISTER AND CHIEFS OF STAFF TO EMPEROR
13 MARCH 1942

In order to bring BRITAIN to submission and to demoralize the UNITED STATES, positive measures shall be taken by seizing opportunities to expand our acquired war gains, and by building a political and military structure capable of withstanding a protracted war.

By holding the occupied areas and major communication lines, and by expediting the development and utilization of key resources for national defense; efforts shall be made to establish a self-sufficient structure, and to increase the nation's war potential.

More positive and definite measures of war guidance shall be adopted by taking the following situations into consideration: Our national power, the progress of operations, the German-Soviet war situation, the relations between the UNITED STATES and the SOVIET UNION, and the trend in CHUNGKING.

Our policy toward the SOVIET UNION shall be based on the "Plan for Expediting the Termination of the War against the UNITED STATES, BRITAIN, the NETHERLANDS, and CHIANG Kai-shek," adopted on 5 Nov 4a; and the "Measures to be Immediately Effected in Line with the Development of the Situation," adopted on 10 Jan 42. However, under the present circumstances, no efforts shall be made to mediate a peace between GERMANY and the SOVIET UNION.

Our policy toward CHUNGKING shall be based on the "Matters Concerning Measures to be taken toward CHUNGKING, in Line with the Development of the Situation," adopted on 24 Dec 41.

Cooperation with GERMANY and ITALY shall be based on the "Plan for Expediting the Termination of the War against the UNITED STATES, BRITAIN, the NETHERLANDS and CHIANG Kai-shek," adopted on Nov 41.

Report to the Throne
We humbly report to Your Majesty on behalf of the Imperial General Headquarters and the Government.

At this point, when our initial operations are about to come to a favorable end by dint of the august virtue of Your Majesty, the Imperial General Headquarters and the Government have, after a careful appraisal, since the latter part of February, of our acquired war gains and their effect, the changes in the world situation, and the present war potentialities of our Empire, agreed on the "General Outline on Future War Guidance." We will now give our explanations.

--611--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding the general outline on war guidance to be effected hereafter in the war against the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN:
Various measures must be planned and executed in anticipation of a protracted war. It will not only be most difficult to defeat the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN in a short period, but, the war cannot be brought to an end through compromise.

It is essential to further expand the political and military advantages achieved through glorious victories since the opening of hostilities, by utilizing the present war situation to establish a political and strategic structure capable of withstanding a protracted war. We must take every possible step, within the limits of our national power, to force the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN to remain on the defensive. Any definite measure of vital significance to be effected in this connection will be given thorough study, and will be presented to Your Majesty for approval each time.

Regarding the need for building national power and fighting power for the successful prosecution of a protracted war.
We deem it highly essential to constantly maintain resilience in our national defense, and build up the nation's war potential so that we will be capable of taking the steps necessary to cope with the progress of situation.

If a nation should lose its resilience in national defense while prosecuting a war, and become unable to rally from an enemy blow; the result would be short of her desired goal, no matter what victory she might achieve in the process. This is amply proved in the precious lessons learned from the annals of war.

Consequently, in our Empire's war guidance policy, we have especially emphasized that, while taking steps to bring the enemy to submission, we must fully build up the nation's war potential to cope with a protracted war.

Regarding the adoption of a new and more positive measure of war guidance. We have made it clear that the question of whether to adopt new and more positive measures for war guidance for the attainment of the objective of the Greater East Asia War should be decided after careful study, not only of the war gains acquired so far, but other factors of extensive and profound significance; such as, the enemy's national power and our's, especially the increase in the fighting power on both sides; the progress of our operations, our relations with the SOVIET UNION and CHINA, the German-Soviet war, and various other factors.

By "more positive measures of war guidance" we mean such measures as the invasion of INDIA and AUSTRALIA.

Regarding the measures to be immediately taken toward the SOVIET UNION.
We have made it clear that the measures to be taken toward the SOVIET UNION will be based on the established policy which was adopted earlier at a liaison conference. The essentials of that policy are as follows:

Utmost efforts shall be made to prevent the expansion of hostilities.

JAPAN shall endeavor to the utmost to prevent war with the SOVIET UNION while operations are being conducted in the Southern Area.

--612--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While maintaining peace between JAPAN and the SOVIET UNION, efforts shall be made to prevent the UNITED STATES and BRITAIN from strengthening their cooperation with the SOVIET UNION, and to alienate the latter from the former, if possible. However, this does not imply that our military preparations against the SOVIET UNION will be neglected, and it is our belief that all possible operations preparations should be made to achieve a quick and decisive victory in case of war.
With regard to the peace between GERMANY and the SOVIET UNION, not only does a compromise seem utterly hopeless, under the present circumstances, but we fear that our mediatory efforts at this point would be detrimental to Japanese-German relations, and would also mean risking a complication in Japanese-Soviet relations. Consequently, we have made it clear that we have no intention of taking any positive steps toward mediation.

Regarding the measures to be immediately taken toward Chungking: We have made it clear that measures toward Chungking will be based on the policy which was adopted at the earlier conference that, "taking advantage of the restlessness in the Chungking Regime which was caused by our application of strong pressure on a vulnerable spot of theirs; our measures toward Chungking shall be shifted, at a proper time, from intelligence activities to activities to bring the regime to submission. The time and method therefore shall be decided at a liaison conference."
Meanwhile, the campaign in BURMA is progressing faster than originally expected, and RANGOON is already in our hands. We believe that our progress in BURMA is already having serious effects on the Chungking Regime, but since we greatly fear that any attempt to bring the Chungking Regime to submission, at too early a stage, would produce an adverse result, our intention is to postpone it to a date that will be decided later.

Regarding measures to be taken toward GERMANY and ITALY.
Since we keenly realized that strengthening cooperation with GERMANY and ITALY will become increasingly necessary to achieve our war aims, we have decided that we must adhere closely to the established policy regarding cooperation with GERMANY and ITALY.

We hereby respectfully report to Your Majesty.

13 Mar 42
Prime Minister TOJO Hideki
Chief of the Naval General Staff NAGANO Osami
Chief of the Army General Staff SUGIYAMA Gen ..... http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Strategy/Strategy-B.html

Ashes

03-31-2008, 11:01 PM

Good stuff RS.

A 'what if'......... and I know it's easy talking in hindsight.

''What if'' Japan, as part of the Axis, didn't attack Pearl Harbour, and instead just attacked the European colonial possessions while doing their best to placate the U.S. would America declare war?

The attack against Hawaii was probably the worst possible thing that Japan could have done.

But by making that undeclared attack on PH, it stirred up a hornets nest, and made sure the Americans would never stop until Japan was crushed, no matter what the cost.

Given the isolationist temperament of the U. S. Congress at the time, and the polls showing that 74% of Americans didn't want to be involved in the war in Europe [even when Britain was the last Democracy fighting the Nazi's and when American warships were being sunk and Americans killed] and 64% didn't want war with Japan, is it questionable, even doubtful, that that the United States would have responded directly to the seizure of those foreign Colonial possessions by declaring war?

Roosevelt would probably conjure an entry into the war against Japan somehow, [and someone said without going as far as the conspiracy theories of Theobald or Toland or the many others around today about Roosevelt's implication in the PH attack, there was more then one way to skin a cat] but it would take some pretty devious footwork.

Rising Sun*

03-31-2008, 11:50 PM

''What if'' Japan, as part of the Axis, didn't attack Pearl Harbour, and instead just attacked the European colonial possessions while doing their best to placate the U.S. would America declare war?

Depends on whether Japan attacked the Philippines and America's reaction to any attack there.

Up till about 1939-40, American war planning was based on letting the Philippines fall, if it came to that. That changed in the year or two before the war.

My inclination is that the American people wouldn't respond too well to American troops and ships being attacked in the Philippines, so that an attack there could have led to war anyway.

Which was Japan's problem. If America responded to an attack on the Philippines it was going to come from the fleet based at Hawaii, so Japan needed to neutralise that risk as part of its overall strategy.

If it didn't take the Philippines, there would, or at least could, be allied air and naval bases astride its LOC from Malaya and the NEI, thus threatening its military and commercial LOC and the exploitation of its conquests.

Once Japan was going to take Malaya and the NEI, it was virtually forced to take the Philippines, which then virtually forced it to attack Pearl.

I think some other issues would have affected American military and perhaps political thinking even if Japan didn't attack America anywhere. Notably, access to NEI oil, which overcame the Allied oil embargoes on Japan and gave it about a third of the world's oil supply, with the potential to fight on forever and exclude Westerners from all resources and trade in the GEACPS.

Ashes

04-01-2008, 12:12 AM

Depends on whether Japan attacked the Philippines and America's reaction to any attack there.

Yep, I meant the U.S. or U.S. bases.

Roosevelt would probably conjure an declaration of war against Japan somehow, but I don't think it would be easy, plus I wonder how much commitment would there be, if Americans thought they were fighting to preserve European colonialism.

Rising Sun*

04-01-2008, 06:03 AM

I wonder how much commitment would there be, if Americans thought they were fighting to preserve European colonialism.

Not much sympathy there, at popular or government levels, but governments are more pragmatic than the people and will always do deals with the devil if it suits them.

I always liked Admiral King's hostility to the Limeys and his opposition to helping them to regain their colonies. In a way, he was ahead of the effects of WWII which destroyed European colonialism.

But what about Americans attitudes to preserving American colonialism in the Philippines?

Or China, which is where much of WWII started with the Western and certainly American contest for access to it?

I don't know that it mattered that much to the average American at the time, but it mattered to the American government, as did access to China which was being strangled by Japan.

Ashes

04-01-2008, 11:31 PM

Not much sympathy there, at popular or government levels, but governments are more pragmatic than the people and will always do deals with the devil if it suits them.

No doubt the U.S. government had an agenda of coming to grips with Japan sooner or later, but It probably needed something cataclysmic like the sneak attack on PH to fully galvanise the congress and the population out of the mind set of no war unless attacked isolationist stance, to a determined America willing to fight to the end no matter what the cost.

Japan solved all that at PH.

Major von Mauser

04-01-2008, 11:57 PM

I'm interested in the Japanese, only if the information about them is unbiased, as it so often seems.

Cojimar 1945

04-08-2008, 03:37 AM

While attacking Pearl Harbor doubtless could be expected to anger America I don't think Americans were necessarily determined to win at any cost. After all, the North Koreans were not crushed.

Nickdfresh

04-08-2008, 06:56 AM

But the North Koreans never in any way directly attacked America nor undertook anything near Pearl Harbor (unless you're South Korean)...

Rising Sun*

04-08-2008, 07:14 AM

While attacking Pearl Harbor doubtless could be expected to anger America I don't think Americans were necessarily determined to win at any cost. After all, the North Koreans were not crushed.

What is now North and South Korea was a single Japanese colony of the Korean peninsula acquired in pieces by Japan late in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and entirely by 1910 as a result of the 1905 war.

Korea did not exist as a separate nation before WWII, or since.

What is now North Korea was, however, 'crushed' by being occupied by Soviet troops at the end of WWII, which is a consequence of the proximity of Soviet land forces to Korea on the mainland. Allied (American) troops occupied what is now South Korea. At the time of those occupations, and throughout the war, it was still Japanese territory.

As an aside, Koreans were often the worst bastards as guards of Allied POW's during WWII, but they were also among those treated worst on the Japanese side by the Japanese so it probably fed down the line a bit.

Egorka

04-09-2008, 04:37 AM

Rising Sun*

04-09-2008, 08:46 AM

Illingworth, Leslie Gilbert
[Japan's army arrives at New Guinea] - January 24, 1942

http://keep4u.ru/imgs/b/080409/38/38f2a8889e604821fb.jpg

http://community.livejournal.com/warhistory/1257298.html#cutid1

Cartoon is close, except that on 24 January 1942 the Japanese soldier should have been coming from the right of New Guinea where the Japanese invaded Rabaul in New Britain at that time, which wasn't regarded in Australian military circles or by the Japanese as part of a thrust at Australia but essentially as securing the back door to protect and support the IJN naval base at Truk, although the IJN subsequently made Rabaul a base of operations.

It might have been unintentional and unwitting by the cartoonist, who was probably making the point that we'd dropped sport for war, but the inclusion of the cricketing gear relates to something that you don't hear now in the popular war histories, which was people like the Australian commander General Blamey railing at the Australian public to wake up that it was time to give up sporting events and focus on fighting the Japanese. Even at that stage there were still people here who wanted life to go on as normal!

Cojimar 1945

04-10-2008, 03:51 AM

The North Koreans/Chinese killed a number of Americans in the Korean conflict. Shoulden't Americans have been upset about their soldiers being killed in Korea? In this instance, as with the Japanese, the enemy was the aggressor.

royal744

04-16-2008, 11:43 PM

nevertheless they were fighting enough succesfull in first period of war.
I puzzled ,how they had conquered so great territory.
How they have captured Singapoor so soon?
I know they recieved a combat experience in pre-ww2 war with China.However they had so great advantage over European armies in the 1941.
This is still mystery for me.

I wouldn't be too surprised, Chevan. How was it the Germans achieved such stunn ing success in the beginning? No surprise there either because people just didn't want to believe it would happen. At Singapore, the English really should not have surrendered so quickly - they weren't even outnumbered. Had they persevered, they could have done much damage to the Japs though probably would have lost if they lost access to fresh water supplies.

In Hong Kong, well, it was fairly indefensible to begin with and there weren't that ,mny troops there.

In Java, in spite of a bunch of trumped up hoopla, the Dutch KNIL was very weak and did not have the support of the Indonesians who were only too glad to betray them at every opportunity. The Dutch navy, brave though it was, was heavily outgunned by the Japanese, and the British, Australian and American presence on the sea foiught bravely but suffered from being primarily a pre-war naval force and served only as a minor speed bump along the road. The air forces were weak as well, and the Brewster Buffaloes they flew were terrible in a dogfight with the Zero.

In the Phillipines, the US Army did a good job in holding out as long as it did, but the majority of troops were actually Phillipine Scouts, under-officered and under armed. But they never defected to the Japanese and did not betray the numerous American guerrilla groups that survived the war. America's primary naval weapon was sunk in the Sunda Strait in a desperate and forlorn attempt to stop Japanese landings in Indonesia.

The American Air Force (Army Air Force) in the Philippines might have given a good account of itself had it not been for a singular act of stupidity and craven indecision on the part of General MacArthur, who ordered the planes to stay on the ground as the Japanese air force winged its way to Manila from Taiwanese bases. He should have been court martialed for that, but instead expended his monumental ego in trying to stop General Wainwright, the chump he handed the hot potato to, from being decorated instead.

We were naked before the Japanese for a while, but not for long.

So, Chevan, surprise is the biggest reason; an inability to believe that the little yellow men could be so smart and ingenious; a continued belief in the superiority of the white man over the asiatics; and a lack of modern, up-to-date equipment and large numbers of troops available.

But, as the Japanese learned to their bitter consternation, it's not the first victories that count; it is the last victory that matters. Just like the Germans who couldn't believe that after rounding up literally millions of Russians on the battlefield, they still lost the war against the Russians. In the end they were both crushed. Of the Italians we shall not speak.

royal744

04-16-2008, 11:50 PM

His book'' Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942'' is due to be published by Penguin in July 2008. Might be worth a read.

Just like the Germans being incapable of actually occupying the endless steppe of Russia, Japan could never have occupied Australia. In spite of Japanese bellicosity to the contrary, such an invasion was wholly impractical and infeasible. Although, to those who saw themselves in the crosshairs they could not have known that at the time.

Rising Sun*

04-17-2008, 08:33 AM

At Singapore, the English really should not have surrendered so quickly - they weren't even outnumbered. Had they persevered, they could have done much damage to the Japs though probably would have lost if they lost access to fresh water supplies.

The destruction of the water system was, in conjunction with Japanese penetration of the defences on the island, primarily what finally impelled Percival to surrender. It's covered in his book The War in Malaya but here's an internet version to the same effect.

TUESDAY, 12 February .... The administrative situation now began to cause great anxiety. The military food reserves under our control were sufficient for only about seven days’ consumption, though in addition to this units held reserves of varying quantity and there were also the civil food reserves. We only had one small dump of petrol on the island in addition to what was in vehicle tanks. But the water situation caused most concern. In the Singapore Town area breaks in the mains from bombing and shelling began to gain steadily over repairs with the result that from 11th February pressure failed seriously. Royal Engineer personnel and military transport were called in by the Director-General of Civil Defence to assist the civil staff, and special water-carrying parties were organized. But the high-level reservoir at Pearl’s Hill near the General Hospital was already empty and the Fort Canning reservoir was losing water rapidly.

.....

It was early on 14 February that the water situation really became serious when the municipal water engineer reported to the Director-General of Civil Defence that he considered a complete failure of the water supply was imminent. At about 10 a.m. I held a conference at the municipal offices at which the chairman of the municipality was present in addition to the above two officials. I was informed that, owing to breaks in the water mains and pipes caused by bombing and shelling, a heavy loss of water was going on, though the two pumping stations at Woodleigh and Mackenzie Road were still working. The municipal water engineer estimated that the water supply would last for forty-eight hours at the outside and that it might only last for twenty-four hours. I promised additional Royal Engineer assistance, but that could not be provided till the afternoon as all available Royal Engineer personnel were at that time fighting as combatant troops.

.....

Along the Braddell Road the enemy gained some ground, but on the Serangoon Road front a strong attack was stopped by the 11th Indian Division when within a few hundred yards of the vital Woodleigh pumping station. The staff of this station stuck to its work manfully under close range small arms fire and continued pumping to the end.

.....

Sunday, 15 February—Black Sunday ..... That was the situation which I had to report when the conference assembled. The D.G.C.D. was asked to report on the water situation in more detail. He confirmed what he had said before and added that, if total failure took place, it would be some days before piped water could be obtained again. Ways and means of overcoming our various difficulties were discussed. None of them were really vital except the water problem. Heath stressed the danger of the water shortage as it affected the Indian troops, while the danger to the civil population was also taken into account. I felt that there was no use in remaining passively on the defensive as we were. There seemed to be only two possible alternatives, i.e. either to counter-attack to regain control of the reservoirs and of the military food depots and to drive back the enemy’s artillery with a view to reducing the damage to the water supply system, or to capitulate. I put these alternatives to the commanders. They were unanimously Qf the opinion that in the existing circumstances a counter-attack was impracticable. Some of them also doubted our ability to resist another determined attack and pointed out the consequences that might result to the crowded population in the town. It was in these circumstances that I decided to capitulate.

.....

After the cessation of hostilities it was five and a half days, with engineers and water parties working at full pressure, before water again reached the lower levels of Singapore Town which had been deprived of it. It was ten days before water again reached the General Hospital and many other buildings on the higher levels. My bold
http://www.fepow-community.org.uk/arthur_lane/html/fall_of_singapore.htm

Nickdfresh

04-17-2008, 10:39 AM

Rising Sun*

04-17-2008, 10:38 PM

Wasn't there something too about the lack of effective artillery and no armor available to the Singapore garrison? I've read that the coastal guns either could not be transversed to fire into the jungle, or that their shells were mostly AP shot for use against ships and were largely ineffective against infantry...

My recollection is that there were few or no Commonwealth tanks but some armoured scout cars available in Malaya / Singapore, while the Japanese landed maybe a couple of hundred tanks and used them to considerable effect in the campaign. (Their bicycles helped too. The tubes burst so the soldiers tore off the tyres and rode on the steel rims. The clattering of hundreds of tyreless bicycles on the road convinced many Indian troops tanks were coming and they fled.)

It might have helped if Percival could have deployed some tanks at the Singapore (and Malayan) beachheads to repel the landings. Although the Japanese artillery would probably have wiped them out at Singapore. No doubt tanks would have helped against infantry once they got further inland, but the game was already in the bag for the Japanese by that stage.

My impression is that it wasn't so much lack of Commonwealth artillery that prejudiced the defence of Singapore as two other artillery factors.

First, Commonwealth artillery was under-used against the invaders on the critical first night of the landings in the Australian sector on the north west of the island. Perceval comments on this in The War in Malaya and is mystified by it, even allowing for problems in wire communications destroyed by artillery.

Second, the Japanese surprised the defenders by bringing up guns and landing craft very quickly, so they were able to land after a serious artillery bombardment and with artillery cover after landing. They also brought up special armoured landing craft which weren't vulnerable to small arms fire and helped the landing immensely in the first waves.

The immobile coastal guns is an enduring myth. See the text in the link below for a detailed description.

You're right about the AP problem, but it has to be remembered that the whole Singapore defence concept had been based for decades on Singapore holding out against an enemy fleet until the British fleet arrived. The guns were intended for naval targets during that period awaiting relief. IIRC Perecival recognised the problem before the war started and (maybe?) requested HE shells but they didn't materialise.

I don't know anything about munitions, but I wonder if a solution would have been to arm the shells with contact or air burst fuses? Or weren't any made to suit those AP shells?

As an aside, AP can be very effective against dug in troops. Australian tanks used it in Vietnam against enemy bunkers. Went in under them and blew them out.

Even if they couldn't traverse, they weren't the only guns on the island. And even if they had HE, 15 inch is a bit of overkill against scattered enemy infantry squads and platoons on Singapore but it would have been very handy against massed artillery and infantry on the mainland, except the enemy they wanted to hit were on the mainland facing the north west of the island while the guns were out of range on the north east of the island, where they'd been sited to protect the channel to the naval base. The causeway blocked the western approach.

Even if they could all have traversed 360 degrees, their arcs of fire (see p 120 http://books.google.com.au/books?id=V8jctMNMbN4C&pg=PT124&lpg=PT124&dq=coastal+guns+singapore+range&source=web&ots=lzEsTtLIzk&sig=xYYwLk1pb0Ph7iyMPTSOAztipQc&hl=en#PPT148,M1 ) didn't permit them to support the defenders on the north west of the island or, better still, pulverise the massed Japanese artillery, invasion force and landing craft on the mainland. I don't know if this influenced the Japanese in picking their assault point, but they had a very good knowledge from pre-war spying about the fortifications and weapons on the island and it's a remarkable coincidence when you look at the arc of fire map.

Rising Sun*

04-18-2008, 07:05 AM

Just to add to my last post, the trajectory and elevation of the big coastal defence guns lacked the (relatively) close support abilities of infantry support weapons like the standard WWII Commonwealth 25 pounder.

A 25 pounder in the centre of Singapore island would have gone close to covering the same arc of fire to the west as the coastal guns. A battery of them properly positioned would have been more use to infantry than a single coastal gun at Changi etc.

Far too much has been made of the coastal guns, as if they were some super weapon which could have decided the battle for Singapore. They couldn't, even if they could spin all day through 360 degrees.

Nickdfresh

04-19-2008, 07:48 AM

...You're right about the AP problem, but it has to be remembered that the whole Singapore defence concept had been based for decades on Singapore holding out against an enemy fleet until the British fleet arrived. The guns were intended for naval targets during that period awaiting relief. IIRC Perecival recognised the problem before the war started and (maybe?) requested HE shells but they didn't materialise.

I don't know anything about munitions, but I wonder if a solution would have been to arm the shells with contact or air burst fuses? Or weren't any made to suit those AP shells?

As an aside, AP can be very effective against dug in troops. Australian tanks used it in Vietnam against enemy bunkers. Went in under them and blew them out.

Armor piercing is effective when used against hardened (concrete and steel rebar) binckers and blockhouses I believe. Part of the reason why US tank destroyers were able to find a mission in the Pacific is their 76mm guns were effective as indirect fire artillery (using HE) and could also be used to destroy bunkers reinforced with lumber, rocks, and other construction materials...

So, the coastal guns would have been useless I guess unless shells were able to hit landing craft.

Even if they couldn't traverse, they weren't the only guns on the island. And even if they had HE, 15 inch is a bit of overkill against scattered enemy infantry squads and platoons on Singapore but it would have been very handy against massed artillery and infantry on the mainland, except the enemy they wanted to hit were on the mainland facing the north west of the island while the guns were out of range on the north east of the island, where they'd been sited to protect the channel to the naval base. The causeway blocked the western approach.

Even if they could all have traversed 360 degrees, their arcs of fire (see p 120 http://books.google.com.au/books?id=V8jctMNMbN4C&pg=PT124&lpg=PT124&dq=coastal+guns+singapore+range&source=web&ots=lzEsTtLIzk&sig=xYYwLk1pb0Ph7iyMPTSOAztipQc&hl=en#PPT148,M1 ) didn't permit them to support the defenders on the north west of the island or, better still, pulverise the massed Japanese artillery, invasion force and landing craft on the mainland. I don't know if this influenced the Japanese in picking their assault point, but they had a very good knowledge from pre-war spying about the fortifications and weapons on the island and it's a remarkable coincidence when you look at the arc of fire map.

Interesting. How did the air forces stack up? Didn't the RAF have Hurricane fighters available?

Rising Sun*

04-19-2008, 08:49 AM

Interesting. How did the air forces stack up? Didn't the RAF have Hurricane fighters available?

Yes, but far too late. See #49 http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4781&page=4 for a very well informed ;) comment and #50 for total British air strength.

There is a remarkably erudite ;) post in the archives which indicates how Malaya was lost because of the absence of air power on the British side.

Kota Bahru serves as an example of how, in my view, Malaya was lost in London long before Japan attacked.

I think the faults on the British side come down to two things: London (in large part synonymous with Churchill’s ill-conceived opinions and interference in matters military for reasons political) and lack of air power. The second is really just a consequence of the first.

The first requirement was to implement the preparatory plans, devised in Malaya and agreed in London.

This failed because Malaya command was never given the resources to do so. That was London’s fault.

Malaya command was left to prepare for defence on the basis of the agreed plans, while London never bothered to tell it that it had no intention of giving it the necessary resources and that it had better come up with some different ideas, quick smart.

In the agreed plans Malaya command recognised the need for air power, in particular in northern Malaya to cover the likely, and accurately identified, Japanese landing points and subsequent advances.

Malaya command therefore embarked on building airfields at strategic points. As a result of London’s failure to provide resources, these potentially decisive strategic airfields became millstones around Malaya command’s neck.. Of the 9 airfields in the north-west at the time the Japanese landed, only 3 had planes; only 2 of the 3 in the north-east had planes; and only 3 of the 7 in the south had planes. Not only were these airfields unable to fulfil their function in the plans, and thus totally useless, but they also needed to be defended to deny them to the enemy, thus dictating tactical dispositions which hampered Malaya command’s ability to respond with an otherwise free hand to the Japanese attack.

The Chiefs of Staff considered Malaya command needed 336 planes to defend Malaya, while Malaya command said 582 at its latest pre-invasion estimate. London gave it 13 squadrons totalling 158 aircraft, less than half of what London thought it needed. The aircraft it had, and certainly the fighters, were woefully inferior to the Japanese planes. What aeroplanes were in Malaya were doomed before they took off, but take off and fight gallantly they did.

The consequences of these failings were that Malaya command lacked the capacity to repulse the Japanese landings with air power. If we contrast the great effect of the fighters at Milne Bay which flew air support for ground troops and damaged troop landing and supply barges with the mpact of the bombers at Kota Bah