Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [38]
2. Warriors
JAPAN’S CAREER soldiers and sailors professed astonishment at the “amateurishness” of other armies and navies, but themselves displayed reckless insouciance towards the technological development of warfare. The Japanese army was principally composed of infantry, poorly supported by armour and artillery. Japan built only light tanks. Soldiers carried a 1905 model rifle. In 1941–42 the navy and air arms were adequately equipped, but thereafter Allied weapons decisively outclassed Japanese ones. By late 1944, for instance, the legendary Zero fighter was at the mercy of the American Hellcat. As a young student at the Naval Technical Institute before the war, Haruki Iki gained a personal insight into his nation’s resistance to innovation. Senior officers flaunted their contempt for the radar development programme. They said: “Why do we need this?65 Men’s eyes see perfectly well.” Japanese radar lagged far behind that of the Allies. “Before World War II, Japan’s experience66 of war had been gained entirely against the Chinese, who possessed scarcely any artillery or other heavy weapons,” observes Japanese historian Professor Akira Nakamura. “Japan had not participated in a land campaign during World War I. The Japanese army entered World War II quite unequipped to fight a modern enemy. From 1941 onwards, front-line soldiers urged the importance of developing more advanced weapons. Unfortunately, their voices were not heeded at the top.” Likewise staff officer Maj. Shigeru Funaki: “We were far too influenced67 by our experience in China. There, we had no need of modern equipment and tactics. Because we kept beating the Chinese, we became over-confident.”
Societies run by civilians proved vastly better able to organise themselves to fight the Second World War than those dominated by military men, of which Japan offered the most notable example. It is hard to overstate the extent to which Anglo-American wartime achievements were made possible by the talents of amateurs in uniform, fulfilling almost every responsible function save that of higher military command. Intelligence, for instance, was dominated by academics, many of startling brilliance. Montgomery’s intelligence chief in north-west Europe was an Oxford don masquerading in a brigadier’s uniform. In Japan, by contrast, authority and influence remained almost exclusively in the hands of career officers, who were reluctant to grant scope to outsiders even in such fields as scientific research. The Japanese army and navy never mobilised clever civilians in the fashion of the Western Allies. Intelligence was poor, because the Japanese mind-set mitigated against energetic inquiry, frank analysis and expression.
By 1944, said Shigeru Funaki, “people understood that we were poorly prepared68 and equipped for a long war. I saw how important fuel was going to be to us. Because I had always enjoyed American movies, I knew what an advanced society America was. Yet we told each other that Americans were too democratic to be able to organise themselves for war. Many military men supposed that victory could be gained by fighting spirit alone. Our intelligence was never good, because few officers acknowledged its importance. Commanders understood the need for battlefield information, but not for strategic intelligence about the big picture.”
Maj. Shoji Takahashi was a staff officer in the intelligence department of South Asia Army HQ. “Only in 1944 did the war situation69 really begin to alarm us,” he said. “The Japanese army did not take intelligence nearly seriously enough. At South Asia Army HQ, we had no proper system, no analytical section, no resources—that’s how bad it was. Perhaps our attitude reflected Japan’s historic isolation from the rest of the world. We had no tradition of being interested in other societies and what they were doing. It came as a shock to realise how powerful the Allies were becoming, and how much they knew about our actions and intentions.”
“Intelligence became a backwater70 for officers who were perceived as unfit for more responsible