Japans Defense Strategy

[lufttiger]

After reading a few books on the Pacific war, i was wondering this:

When the tide was turning against Japan in 42, how come they didn't
consolidate their troops to better defend themselves?

What i mean is they had troops on very small islands, with no airfields.
Why put troops on all these smaller islands and make it harder to supply all of them? I was surrprised that they would put even a couple hundred guys on
a puny speck of dirt in the middle of no where.

The more i think of this, the more they really look inept to me. Help me out
here to understand their logic.

[Panzermacher]

Well what can I say?, LT...The Japanese had alot of sea to cover. Every soldier they dumped on small specks in the middle of nowhere, were eyes they could use to spot any ship or plane movements and report them to bigger bases.
Not real sure what they were thinking in alot of the Defensive strategies. Some Islands they "Knew" we would come after, and others they fortified just in case. Some they even had ancient territorial claims on, and fortified them because of that. Much of their defense strategies were very outdated. (Banzai Charges, Kamikazes, Throw the entire weight of the Island garrisons at the invasion beaches...etc) This too, has been a question that has puzzled me and many others. And if I ever find a book of what they were doing, I will sure read it and pass it on to ya!
I know one thing...the islands we invaded and took from them...we sure paid for!

[lufttiger]

How about the Aleutians? i relise this was just a faint for Midway, but
then they evac only some of them and leave the rest there to die.
Why not evac all?, especially when you can't supply them anymore?

[Panzermacher]

Then we go back to the outdated Bushido code. "Fight to the death, and take as many of the enemy with you as you can before death" Troops were expendable to Japanese higher ups. They believed if they could tie down US forces with a few hundred "sacrificial lambs" and inflict heavy losses, they had accomplished their objective. Some Japanese believed up until late in the war, the Americans and Westerners in general were weak in body, and weak in will. They always believed that if they could deal our forces another terrific blow like Pearl Harbor, we would meekly go off into the night and not fight anymore. Those Japanese Officers who had lived in the US knew better, Kuribayashi (Commander Iwo Jima) Knew this and set up his defenses on Iwo, very contrary to typical Japanese defense Doctrine. HE saved his army for a long drawn out fight, rather than charge the beaches, or defend them.
A lot of factors play into what Each Japanese Commander did. Some went straight at the Invaders at the beaches , while others bided their time and drew the Enemy into drawn out bloodbaths. Seems to me , in many instances, the Bushido code and "Tenno-hake Banzai!" (basically, dieing for the Emperor) were more important than actually getting down to the business of winning the PTO!
THE Allies could change and adapt to each new phase of warfare....it always seemed to me that the IJA and the IJN didn't. They seemed stuck in a 1933-1941 mindset, bordering on Feudal Japanese rules.

[lufttiger]

How all so true. I wonder if they had comanders that thought like the
USA comanders, how bad that would have been, ouch.

[Panzermacher]

They had some who trained in the US and other countries. Those like Kuribayashi and Yamamoto knew the Americans and knew what they were up against. And Both of the examples I used, dealt heavy blows to US forces.

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by lufttiger

How all so true. I wonder if they had comanders that thought like the
USA comanders, how bad that would have been, ouch.

That's an interesting "what if" scenario. Would they have evacuated some of the smaller islands that were of little value in order to preserve forces to defend the Philippines and Malaysia? Those were strategic necessities for Japan. What's clear is that they sacrificed lots of young men and boys to defend these islands "to the last man" and in the end it changed nothing, or very little. Sad.

[Panzermacher]

Originally Posted by Jim O

That's an interesting "what if" scenario. Would they have evacuated some of the smaller islands that were of little value in order to preserve forces to defend the Philippines and Malaysia? Those were strategic necessities for Japan. What's clear is that they sacrificed lots of young men and boys to defend these islands "to the last man" and in the end it changed nothing, or very little. Sad.

Even if they had defended each little island wisely with no wasted Banzai charges or senseless beach defenses, we may have been in a heap of trouble! If they would have tossed the Bushido code awa and fought liek we or the Germans did.....I shudder to think.

[MAGNA]

It is a strange mix. Modern equipment and training with the indoctrination of the samurai as well. To die in battle for the Emperor (Banzai - Long live the Emperor) was an honour. Some religious terrorists still use this doctrine today (one group in particular). It seems strange to us but it wasn't to the Japanese soldier as it was part of what they had grown up with.

The capability of modern weapons to literally mow down charges and the like made the whole thing pointless from a Western perspective. It was even more pronounced once the allies started to win on land and had got over the initial shock value of the Banzai charge.

[jdbeatty]

Originally Posted by lufttiger

After reading a few books on the Pacific war, i was wondering this:

When the tide was turning against Japan in 42, how come they didn't
consolidate their troops to better defend themselves?

What i mean is they had troops on very small islands, with no airfields.
Why put troops on all these smaller islands and make it harder to supply all of them? I was surrprised that they would put even a couple hundred guys on
a puny speck of dirt in the middle of no where.

The more i think of this, the more they really look inept to me. Help me out
here to understand their logic.

Samurai strategic Plan 1 was to wait for the West simply stop fighting them. With only 6 million tons of shipping capacity available in 1941 they had no ability to supply their far-flung bases, insufficient industrial capacity to build more, and no realistic chance to actually win their ill-defined "goals," since no one really knew what the samurai goal was in 1941 other than to cut off all assistance to China and secure resources that, up until 1941, they had been buying.

Oh, yes, I've seen the arguments that say "Well, the Americans cut them off." Yes, they did, BECAUSE OF WHAT THEY WERE DOING IN MAINLAND ASIA. If the samurai hadn't been so obsessed with wiping out the Chinese, who were ironically one of the German arms industry's biggest customers until 1939, none of those sanctions would ever have occurred.

Remove the samurai militarists from the equation and the entire history of 20th century Japan changes. Japan didn't need to take the "resources" that the samurai kept demanding; they could buy them with the third largest textile industry in the world in 1930. But the samurai needed a reason to exist--they needed desperately to fight. Since China traditionally was regarded as a subhuman colony in Japanese culture they were an easy target. After they were done twisting the Medieval Bushido philosophy into a cult of death (not mentioned in the Book of Five Rings or any other extant text) they took their coequal legal status under the Meiji Constitution and co-opted everything that the Japanese civil government did. They entered WWI by taking German territories in the Pacific without governmental sanction or knowledge. They annexed Korea and invaded Manchuria without so much as a by-your-leave to their government. They had direct legal access to the zaibatsu cartels that owned the industries and the banks, so didn't need budgetary authority to do anything. When the government protested they had the ringleaders killed or simply dissolved the cabinet by withdrawing their War and Navy ministers.

Why the apparently inept defense? Simple: the samurai lacked the resources or the foresight (having refused to learn anything about land warfare from WWI) to do anything else. For every pound of supplies of all types a Japanese soldier got in the field his British and American counterpart got 4,000 pounds: the West could win just by burying the samurai in packing crates. The samurai --with a few notable exceptions-- simply had no idea what they were going up against in 1941. Their small arms were a half generation behind the West, they couldn't mass produce anything; their shipyards failed to complete more than six major warships that were not laid down before 1941. For all the much-vaunted tenacity of their defense, Zero fighters, Long Lance torpedoes and 50mm grenade projectors the Americans could build more of everything and field it while fighting the Germans on the other side of the world.

A much better question to ask, given all the above, is: What in the h__l were they thinking in picking a fight with the West? That's, of course, the main question we're answering in our book "The Pacific War: What the Samurai May Have Been Thinking. A Fresh Look at Old Material" that will be out about this time next year. Look for it.