Imperial Japanese Army during the Pacific War

At the beginning of the Pacific War in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army contained 51 divisions,[1] most of which (27 divisions) were stationed in China. A further 13 divisions defended the Manchurian-Soviet border, due to concerns about a possible attack by the Soviet Union.[1] From 1942, troops were sent to Hong Kong (23rd Army), the Philippines (14th Army), Thailand (15th Army), Burma (15th Army), Dutch East Indies (16th Army), and Malaya (25th Army).[2] By 1945, there were 5.5 million men in the Imperial Japanese Army.

From 1943, Japanese troops suffered from a shortage of supplies, especially food, medicine, munitions, and armaments, largely due to submarine interdiction of supplies, and losses to Japanese shipping, which was worsened by a longstanding rivalry with the Imperial Japanese Navy. As many as two-thirds of Japan's total military deaths [to result] from illness or starvation".[3]

Fanaticism and war crimes

Throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army had gained a reputation both for its fanaticism and for its brutality against prisoners of war and civilians alike – with the Nanking Massacre being the most well known example.[4] After Japan surrendered in the summer of 1945, many Imperial Japanese Army officers and enlisted men were tried and punished for committing numerous atrocities and war crimes. In 1949, the trials ceased, with a total of 5,700 cases having been heard.[5]

Major General Tomitarō Horii did issue a "Guide to Soldiers in the South Seas", in late 1941, which ordered troops not to loot or kill civilians. This order was intended to prevent a repeat of atrocities that the Army committed in China; however, the order only affected men under his command.[6]

Several reasons are given for the especially brutal and merciless behavior exhibited by many members of the IJA towards their adversaries or non-Japanese civilians. One is probably the brutal behavior that they themselves experienced. The IJA was known for its extremely harsh treatment of enlisted soldiers from the start of training,[7] including beatings, unnecessarily strenuous duty tasks, lack of adequate food, and other violent or harsh disciplinary tactics. This was contrary to the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882, which instructed officers to treat subordinates respectfully.[8] Not until 1943 did the senior command realize this brutality had an effect on morale and ordered an end to it, an order which was routinely circumvented or ignored in the field.[9]

During the Pacific War, the Imperial Army's reputation for refusing to surrender was established by the few Japanese survivors of numerous battles throughout the Pacific campaign: 921 captured out of a garrison strength of 31,000 in the Battle of Saipan, 17 out of 3000 in the Battle of Tarawa, 7,400–10,755 out of 117,000 in the Battle of Okinawa, with a high number of battlefield suicides sanctioned by the Imperial Army. The spirit of gyokusai ("glorious death") saw commanders order suicidal attacks with bayonets, when supplies of hand grenades and ammunition were still available.[10] In the South West Pacific Area (SWPA), just over 1,000 surrendered in each of 1942 and 1943, around 5,100 in 1944, and over 12,000 in 1945,[nb 1] and might have been greater except for disease.[12] Propaganda through leaflet drops by the Americans accounted for about 20% of surrenders,[11] equating to about one POW for every 6,000 leaflets dropped;[13] while the Japanese objected to the "unscrupulous" leaflets,[14] which contained some truth with regard to the willingness of American forces to accept surrenders from the Japanese.[15] This was in contrast to Imperial Japanese Army's practice of depicting American troops as cruel and merciless, referring to them as 鬼畜米英 (Kichiku Beiei, "Demonic Beast American and English") and informing their own troops that Americans would rape all captured women and torture the men, leading directly to brutal Japanese treatment of POWs in incidents such as the Bataan Death March and the mass suicide of Japanese soldiers and civilians during the battles of Saipan and Okinawa.

They committed various sex crimes against women in Korea and China.[16][17] The Japanese forcibly used women taken from Korea and China as sex toys.[18] In addition, Japanese army committed various crimes against civilians in Korea and China. As an example, Japanese soldiers forcibly abducted Korean girls and forced them to eat human flesh(Korean girls) soup[19] They also formed a Unit 731 (731部隊/ななさんいちぶたい) to conduct numerous biological tests on civilians and Prisoners of war(US army,UK army ...), which were no different from the Nazis.[20] They called the subject of the experiment a log(まるた/Maruta)[21]. They used all ordinary citizens, senior citizens, women, children and pregnant women as subjects of biometrics. Also, they did not give any anesthesia during the dissection of Peoples.[22] However, Japan's Prime Minister Abe[23] has been in controversy for denying various war crimes and ridiculing them by riding a fighter jet bearing the number 731.[24]

Imperial General Headquarters and the role of Emperor Hirohito

During the first part of the Shōwa era, according to the Meiji Constitution, the Emperor had the "supreme command of the Army and the Navy" (Article 11). Hirohito was thus legally supreme commander of the Imperial General Headquarters, founded in 1937 and wherein the military decisions were made.

Primary sources such as the "Sugiyama memo", and the diaries of Fumimaro Konoe and Kōichi Kido, describe in detail the many informal meetings the Emperor had with his chiefs of staff and ministers. These documents show the Emperor was kept informed of all military operations and frequently questioned his senior staff and asked for changes.

According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Hirohito authorized, by specific orders transmitted by the Chief of staff of the Army such as Prince Kan'in or Hajime Sugiyama, the use of chemical weapons against Chinese civilians and soldiers. For example, Hirohito authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions during the invasion of Wuhan in 1938.[25] Such weapons were also authorized during the invasion of Changde.

According to historians Akira Fujiwara and Akira Yamada, Hirohito even intervened in planning some military operations. For example, Hirohito pressed Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama, four times during January and February 1942, to increase troop strength and launch an attack on Bataan.[26] In August 1943, he scolded Sugiyama for being unable to stop the American advance on the Solomon Islands and asked the general to consider other places to attack.[27]

Only in rare moments of special importance were decisions made in Imperial council. The Imperial government used this special institution to sanction the invasion of China, the Greater East Asia War, and Japan's surrender. In 1945, executing a decision approved in Imperial council, Emperor Shōwa, as commander-in-chief, ordered, for the only time directly via recorded radio broadcast to all of Japan, the surrender to United States forces.

Notes

  1. ↑ This is quite substantially more than the 2,000 who surrendered in the Russo-Japanese War. [11]

References

  1. 1 2 Jowett 2002, p. 7.
  2. ↑ Jowett 2002, pp. 15–16, 21.
  3. ↑ Gilmore 1998, p. 150.
  4. ↑ Harries & Harries 1994, pp. 475–476.
  5. ↑ Harries & Harries 1994, p. 463.
  6. ↑ Chen, World War II Database Archived 2009-04-16 at the Wayback Machine.
  7. ↑ Gilmore 1998, p. 87.
  8. ↑ Gilmore 1998, p. 45.
  9. ↑ Gilmore 1998, p. 89.
  10. ↑ Gilmore, 1998 & pp.97–8.
  11. 1 2 Gilmore 1998, p. 155.
  12. ↑ Dower, John W., Prof. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986).
  13. ↑ Gilmore 1998, p. 154.
  14. ↑ Gilmore 1998, p. 163.
  15. ↑ Gilmore, 1998 & pp.63, 68. & 101.
  16. ↑ https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=547385&cid=46623&categoryId=46623
  17. ↑ http://h21.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/44570.html
  18. ↑ http://www.koreadaily.com/news/read.asp?art_id=2025452
  19. ↑ http://legacy.www.hani.co.kr/section-005000000/2005/04/005000000200504271149475.html
  20. ↑ http://www.mediatoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=28295
  21. ↑ https://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=65612&cid=43667&categoryId=43667
  22. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20061119053825/http://www.technologyartist.com/unit_731/
  23. ↑ https://g.co/kgs/aC6pwi
  24. ↑ http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=201305141940021&code=970100
  25. ↑ Yoshimi and Matsuno, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryo II, Kaisetsu, 1997, pp. 25–29.
  26. ↑ Fujiwara, Shōwa tenno no ju-go nen senso, 1991, pp. 135–138; Yamada, Daigensui Shōwa tennō, 1994, pp. 180, 181, and 185.
  27. ↑ Bix, Herbert. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2000), p. 466, citing the Sugiyama memo, p. 24.

Bibliography

  • Drea, Edward J. (2009). Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-8032-1708-0.
  • Drea, Edward J. (2003). "The Imperial Japanese Army (1868–1945): Origins, Evolution, Legacy". War in the Modern World Since 1815. Routledge. ISBN 0-41525-140-0.
  • Gilmore, Allison B. (1998). You Can't Fight Tanks with Bayonets: Psychological Warfare against the Japanese Army in the South West Pacific. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-803-22167-3.
  • Harries, Meirion; Harries, Susie (1994). Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-75303-6.
  • Humphreys, Leonard A. (1996). The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920s. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2375-3.
  • Jowett, Philip (2002). The Japanese Army 1931–45 (1). Botley, Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-353-5.
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