ww2 jap infantry- did they suck or what?

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alfredosaka Japanese infantry 7/4/2009 3:39:51 AM

Hi there, I live in Japan and have translated several books on WW2 japanese forces for publishers here.

Japanese soldiers in WW2 certainly did not suck. Thing is they were indoctrinated from an early age that they were the emperors' children and that death in battle was the "In" thing for them. There were a few deserters but their desertions were mostly politically motivated ( Communists who joined the Chinese communists ).

There are many movies here in Japan about WW2. Mant were made before and during the war ( the 5 scouts, marines in Shanghai, Torpedo planes depart at dawn, barley and soldiers etc) If anyone out there is interested in a list I can provide one. There was a movie from the 80's dubbed into English called " Great Japanese Empire - Dai Nippon Teikoku" in Japanese) that was shown in the States in the late 80's.

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LB IJA 7/5/2009 12:08:34 AM

The average Japanese soldier in WWII was magnificent and endured as much or more than any of nations soldiers. They lived on almost nothing, fought with mostly terrible equipment, were supported by a military structure that was logistically retarded, and fought far past the limits of endurance. At the start of the war in the Pacific the IJA was seen as unstoppable as they won everywhere and did so quickly. The campaign for Malaya would be instructive as to whether they "sucked".

There was not a thing wrong with Japanese troops under any flag. The most heavily decorated US infantry regiment in WWII was the 442nd Japanese American

The average US soldier in the PTO was getting 100 to 200+ times more supplies per day than the average Japanese (all supplies including fuel). Japan had no chance whatsoever to military defeat the US and went to war over some delusion that the US would negotiate with them at some point after a series of Japanese victories.

At the Battle of Iwo Jima the Japanese inflicted more total casualties upon the US than the US did upon them (of course almost all Japanese casualites are killed) and did against an enemy with total air and naval superiority with a firepower advantage orders of magnitude greater. Not only did these soldiers not suck it's impossible to imagine who else could have fought as bravely.

Certainly some units of the IJA fought poorly or even stupidly at times but the troops were as good or better than anyone else. Indeed it's difficult to think of soldiers that suck. Armies that fare poorly, such as Italy in WWII, rarely have troops that suck- rather they have poor leadership. The Italian Army in WWII, frex, had an awful relationship in most units between it's officers and men together with a poor NCO pool- units like the Alpini aside.

In any case Japanese higher leadership and strategy did suck. War on the US was an act of national suicide. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor simply enrageed the most powerful nation on earth to repay the deed with murder in our hearts. We had to order a few targets not be burned to the ground so we could have something to nuke. For all the talk of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the fire boming of Tokyo was far more horrific. People not willing to surrender then and require more cities firebombed, then nuked, then see Manchuria overrun in a week by the Red Army only to then attempt a coup to stop the Emperor from broadcasting surrender actually do really profoundly suck at the level where they would rather see themselves and their nation die than admit they were stupid beyond words to enter the course they set themselves upon by attacking the US.

There are no bad troops only bad officers.

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BasinBictory 7/5/2009 5:58:14 AM

I wonder...are there any Japanese movies or books that depict it? Any Japanese "Alls Quiet on the Western Front"? I was pleased with the depiction for Japanese soldiers in The Thin Red Line, a movie that I otherwise totally hated. A few images in particular conveyed at least a sense of misery and shock. I'd love to see a reverse "Saving Private Ryan." Say, Iwo Jima from a Japanese perspective. I kind of imagine a few soldiers being all "we must die for the emperor" gung-ho. A few just scared out of their wits. And one quiet guy thinking, "screw the Emperor, I want to get the hell out of here."

Not sure when the movie came out relative to this post, but of course we have the movie "Letters From Iwo Jima" which is exactly what you described - Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective, with almost exactly the kind of character mix you just described - a few of the Japanese truly and wholeheartedly gung-ho all for dying in the name of the Emperor (actually, I think the percentage IRL was quite high), many of the young soldiers totally alienated and wanting nothing more than for the war to end so they can get on with their lives, and the one guy who recognizes the folly of continuing the war at all. That man would have been General Kuribayashi, who recognized that their only futile hope would be to concentrate all their defensive strength within the caves and tunnels of Iwo Jima, instead of attempting to stand up to the naval and air superiority which the Americans had. Many of his own subordinate officers openly defied him, and took their commands on suicidal assaults against the Marine positions. They considered Kuribayashi's defensive strategy cowardly and treasonous - that is how utterly brainwashed the Japanese military was at that point. No concession to sound military strategy - mostly stupid chest-thumping about bravery and willingness to die for the Emperor.

The average Japanese infantryman, IMO, was probably one of the finest light infantrymen in the world. They most certainly did not "suck." If you want to talk about "sucking" - I would submit that many American units in France toward the end of the war were of substandard quality in terms of infantry fighting skills. The typical tactic of American units in much of the ETO was, when contact was made with the enemy, they would pull back and call for artillery and air support. If the Germans were led by an experienced officer who recognized the threat and vigorously counterattacked the Americans, frequently the Americans were routed and pushed further back.

I think the Japanese infantryman did more with less than any other combatant nation's soldiery. There is no questioning their fanatical loyalty to the Emperor, their incredible bravery under fire, their tenacity in the attack (see Singapore and Malaya) and their individual ferocity, where sheer brutality was not frowned upon, as it was in Western armies, but encouraged and considered a virtue. What sucked for them was their antiquated equipment, nearly total lack of supporting arms such as effective armor and modern artillery, and a nearly non-existent logistical support structure.

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ambush 7/13/2009 5:29:21 PM

?The poorer the Infantry the more artillery it needs and the American Infantry needs all the artillery it can get ? reportedly said during WWI

I think if we are to be honest the United States Infantry was not that great in WWII, particularly in the ETO. This of course is going to cause lot of screeching and yelling by many but if we are honest we have to accept that US infantry was plagued by many short comings. Using books like On Infantry (by English and Gudmundsson for reference here are few

First was the talent drain. The best and brightest were siphoned off for the technical services are the Air Corps. This happen at all levels.. As the American Army began to expand many experienced soldiers took the offers of easier service and promotion to transfer out combat arms into technical occupations. One commander went so far as to complain that ?everybody higher than a moron? had been pulled out of his unit. General Patton complained felt that the problem was bad with both officers and enlisted that he felt the solution was to abandon any hope of any unit smaller than a battalion to attempt to maneuver and came up the concept of marching fire; hardly and imaginative or very good tactic but easy to learn and control.

Second would be the constant shortage of Infantry compared to the other branches due to the high casualty rate brought about in part by the quality drain (with apologies to those who served in the infantry during that time).

Third would be McNair?s individual replacement policy, done in part to try and address the shortage, But by failing to acknowledge that a military unit , particularly and infantry one, is a social organization and not a machine in which you interchange personal like parts. The individual replacement system disrupted unit cohesion and also contributed to the shortage of infantry because of the high casualty rate among the green troops-a vicious cycle.

In the ETO it was the excellence of US artillery-particularly its ability to mass fires though superb communications that got us through. In the Pacific firepower as demonstrated on the many Island landings could only do so much and with limited space to maneuver tactics sometimes devolved into simple linear tactics although the fire team concept was really refined.

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ambush 7/13/2009 5:37:13 PM

Everything I have read about the Japanese Army is that the leadership felt that their racial superiorty and cult of the Bushido would overcome in shortcomings in equipment and tactics. Fortuantely for the Japanese and to so fortunate for us is that this same attidude was not so powerful inthe Japanese Navy.

However the Japanese Infantry were not that bad if you look at their performance in taking Singapore and the Philipines compared to the allies in 1941/42.

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Heorot It was poor logistics. 7/13/2009 6:55:51 PM

IIRC, from Bill Slims memoirs of the Burma campaign, each Japanese divisional unit was expected to fight for 2 weeks before pausing and another unit took over the fighting. They were supplied with 2 weeks ration per man before being deployed. No real thought was given to the logistics train and there were vastly fewer troops assigned to that role than was the norm in the allied armies. Consequently, as the Japanese advanced further into Burma, the supplies for the frontline troops dwindled and what was shipped forward was focussed mainly on ammunition.

Slims tactics were to retreat to defensive positions on the India/Burma border and to fight them to a standstill: until they were out of ammunition and food. At Imphal, he based that defensive line on an airfield so that he could fly in all the supplies he needed and at the same time it offered the enemy a tempting target to aid their own resupply.

His whole tactics at this stage of the campaign was to use this logistics advantage to defeat an army high on success and to show his own troops that the previously invincible Japanese Army was beatable.

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BasinBictory 8/21/2009 3:27:05 AM

The logistical support structure in the IJA was very nearly non-existent, and mainly focused on bullets, but not beans. IJA units were frequently ordred to "use local supply" when the question came to feeding the troops under their command. In China, this wasn't as bad a situation since the Chinese countryside was heavily populated and heavily cultivated, thus even an invading army usually could find enough (even if just barely) to eat.

However, in virtually every other theater that th IJA fought, the "local supply" was essentially non existent. Islands such as Guadalcanal or Attu, or the jungles of Burma and forests of the Philippines were sparsely populated and so whatever was plundered from the local population was never enough to feed the vast armies sent there. Japanese troops often resorted to cannibalism (I guess that WOULD constitute "local supply") to maintain themselves.

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Nocturne 8/22/2009 7:16:08 PM

One more fact: cooperation between axis sucked. With german observes/advisers + a few blueprints in japan in right places with some support from IJA ..lets just say japs would have caused much more trouble. While i admire jepanese fighting spirit i can only say that pearl harbor was the biggest axis mistake japanese were in no position to fight ww2 in terms of weapons/technologies/industrial capacity/unsafe frontiers/tactics and dragged down germans with them. I can't say jepanese had good infantry. Outgunned on all levels with no supplies no tactical imagination and lack of initiative poor marksmanship..it was a poor force just as kamikadzes were poor pilots but still both of these took some allied lives in agony and desperation.

And about moralizing that mass massacres in Nagasaki/Hiroshima was a right choice. Yeap it saved some lives but it was just a civilian massacre like in Dresden or many other places. And trials after the war could be considered just a victors justice nothing more. (yeah i know my opinion is unpopular but i am just tired of hearing how allies(USA?) are good guys and all the others were bad guys. I dont think japs were the good guys but neither the USA. There is no white&black)

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Nocturne 8/22/2009 8:22:24 PM

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ambush 8/23/2009 6:22:43 PM

I disagree on both points.

Japan German cooperation went as well as could be expected given their geographical separation, particularly after Germany invaded Russia. But there was technological exchange. Japan got form Germany and even components for radar, aircraft engines and even the ME-262 and ME-163. They had prototypes of both flying by the end of the war. Some aircraft like the Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien had German designed engines. Japan in return tried to get as much raw materials as it could to Germany through what were allied controlled oceans. Not an easy feat when consider how much trouble Japan had keeping itself supplied.

Many in Japanese leadership felt that fighting spirit would overcome any material short comings and you cannot fault their tactics given their successes in Indochina, Singapore and the Philippines early in the war.

Granted Germany and Japan may have been able to cooperate more concerning operations in the Indian ocean early the war but looking at it they simply did not have the resources to pull it off given other priorities each faced.

It was a black and white situation. There is nothing ambiguous about the rape of Nanking, biological warfare, medical experiments on humans (to include vivisection), sex slaves etc. The nuking of Hiroshima or Nagasaki killed fewer Japanese than the conventional bombing of Tokyo. The fact that Japan had decentralized their manufacturing into cottage industries made such bombing inevitable. By 1945 Japan had militarized its entire population with children as young has 8 being trained how to ?defend the homeland? from invasion. I would argue that nuking those cities saved some GI from having to kill children coming at him in a Banzai charge. A gun is not particularly concerned about the age of its user and the bullets kill you just as dead be the shooter 10 years old or 100. Hard to point to a "innocent civilian" in those situations.

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BasinBictory 8/30/2009 1:36:00 AM

After having read Downfall and Flyboys, I agree that it's not exactly black & white. The Japanese openly used genocidal tactics on all their enemies in the field, and made no distinctions between civilian and military targets, as evidenced by the rape of Nanking (as well as China at large). However, Admiral Halsey himself routinely used genocidal language when referring to the enemy Japanese ("When I'm through, Japanese will be spoken only in Hell"). The firebombing campaign against Japan (of which the Tokyo raid was the most famous and destuctive) was far more damaging in terms of destruction of cities as well as lives than the two atomic bombs were. Even after the atomic bombings, the Japanese leadership was convinced that their 'superior fighting spirit' would somehow allow them to emerge victorious against the might of the US military. Also, in the Pacific Theater, civilians were generally disregarded as totally expendable by US, as well as Japanese forces. During the Battle of Manila, US forces routinely shelled any suspected Japanese position, regardless of whether civilians were still in the area or not. It is likely that American artillery killed as many Filipino civilians in that battle as Japanese bayonets. It seems unlikely that this scenario would play out in France or Holland or Belgium. Only perhaps the Eastern Front displayed more raw savagery between the combatant forces than the Pacific War between the US and Japan.

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Herald12345 Clarifications. 8/30/2009 3:11:30 AM

1. Japanese weapon technology was not technically inferior-manufacturing quality was. The Japanese produced varuants of the French Hotchkiss heavy machine gun and the Czech ZV-23 (BREN ancestor) that were superior to the standard American offerings at the time (Browning 30 caliber and the BAR) The Japanese weapons featured interchangeable barrels and were STEADY mounted and air cooled. The lack of a submachine gun is no worse than the bungling American Army's same in 1941.

2. The Nambu rifle used a light bullet and was lightly constructed. It still got the job done as 200,000 dead Allied infantry (including Russians) can attest.

3. Japanese snipers were dangerous, accurate, and well-trained. CREF 2.

4. The Japanese could teach the Germans a hell of a lot about prepared field fortifications.

5. Iwo Jima showed that the Japanese gave away nothing to anyone when it came to preregistered artillery fire or to prepared defense.

6. The Japanese mounted surprise offensives in China in 1944 and one in Burma as well. Ichi_Go was far more successful than the Ardennes debacle for the Germans. It was lucky that Slim was in Burma. The previous gang of incompetents would not have been able to handle the over-confident Mutaguchi, who just might have pulled off Imphal/oihima in spite of the terrain and logistics obstacles if Slim hadn't foreseen exactly what the Japanese planned.

More later.

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Nocturne 8/30/2009 4:49:30 AM

Japanese brought bayonets and swords to a machine gun fight..

1) Infantry fought with bayonets fixed. Type 30 bayonet - overall length of 514 mm (20.25 inches). How does this effect accuracy?

2) Japanese even used the bayonets on their light machine guns (erm??)

3) IJA gave little priority to marksmanship. The main emphasis was going aggressively for the kill in close combat. This was generally not that bad against chinese but not really good against ppl with sub-machine/machine guns [ British forces even in defeat described the Japanese as natoriously bad in marksmanship. Yes, i cant really prove this by facts but this was the general opinion].

4) Jepanese snipers were suicidal. They were trained to stay and fight to the death. Even when discovered they used to stay and fight to the death in same position(that made job for the allies so match easier). While all other axis and allied snipers were frequeantly changing positions to avoid detection.

5) 6.5* 50mm is described as too weak round

6) Jepanese in many cases abandoned their field fortifications to make those famous and useless banzai charges leaving those fortifications unmanned .

7) Iwo was quite exceptional fight

8) Imphal logistical difficulties? There was no logistic at all. It was just another suicide which destroyed the possibility of successful defense.

" The Japanese, reduced in many cases to a rabble, fell back to the chindwin river, abandoning their artillery, transport, and soldiers too sick to walk. The defeat at Kohima and Imphal was the largest defeat to that date in Japanese history" nothing fancy just wiki and i would call that far mores successful ending

And i actually like Japanese just i cant see anything that made them competant enough to fight the WW2 except the will to die.

Little remark about black&white&atom thing. If some jepanese/german general would have had a possibility to use atom weapon on allied town he would have had been 100% hanged for war crimes/crimes against humanity after the war. So i am just sticking to my 'victors justics' opinion

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Nocturne Ambush 8/30/2009 5:25:20 AM

Eugene Sledge, private, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, also relates a few instances of fellow Marines extracting gold teeth from the Japanese dead. In one case, Sledge witnessed an extraction while the Japanese soldier was still alive.

Life magazine published a famous photograph by Ralph Morse which showed the charred, open-mouthed, decapitated head of a Japanese soldier killed by U.S Marines during the Guadalcanal campaign, and propped up below the gun turret of a tank by Marines.

In the U.S. there was a widely held view that the Japanese were less than human.

In the first 10 days of the occupation, over one thousand rapes were committed in Kanagawa prefecture alone.^[27] John W. Dower reports that, according to one calculation, the number of rapes and assaults on Japanese women amounted to around 40 a day until the spring of 1946, when the figures rose to over 300 rapes a day due to the criminalization of prostitution.^[28]

On April 4, 50 GIs broke into a hospital in Aomori prefecture and raped 77 women, including a woman who had just given birth. It is also reported that the woman's baby was killed during the assault.^{[citation needed]} On April 11, forty US soldiers cut phone lines to a housing block in Nagoya city, and simultaneously raped "many girls and women between the ages of 10 and 55 years."^{[citation needed]}

According to Toshiyuki Tanaka, 76 cases of rape or rape-murder were reported on Okinawa during the first five years of occupation. However, this is probably not the true figure, as most cases went unreported.^[30]

[Just wiki...]

Yeah plz tell me what is the difference between bayoneting/shooting the kid and burning/nuking him? Efficiency?

Yeah i know about all those evil Japanese Units, Nanking, but this is not Good vs Evil still

Sincerely,

White&Black

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Herald12345 Japanese myths and facts.> 8/30/2009 6:08:17 AM

data source 1.

data source 2

Except for Taki and Hyperwar, toy don't find many quick references to Japanese Army WW II tech and doctrine collated in one quick ready to use place.

Briefly though:

1.Japanese pistols were terrible.

2. Japanese had their army rifles and their machine guns, like the Italians, caught in a major caliber change when they went to war. This made their ammunition logistics (already a travesty by German standards where the 7.92 Mauser was the infantry battle cartridge standard) horrendous. There is at least one incident I remember where Arisaka 6.5 mm ammunition was shipped to a Japanese route army that was equipped with 7.7 mm rifles and machine guns in China.

3. The Japanese imported Solothurn and Bergman sub-machine guns (about 10,000 in 1938).

4. They bought huge stocks of Italian rifle ammunition which they used to make up their own production shortfalls in 1938 as they already foresaw a very long Chnese War and were not planning to retire their 6.5 mm infantry arms for a while, as that was what they had, and why throw it away until it was worn out?

5. Japanese Army modern artillery was few and far between. This army still used am artillery park that was half left over from the Russo-Japanese War. Depending on which source you reference, the IJA introduced between 1800-2500 modern artillery pieces between 1933 and 1945-excluding AAA guns and mortars.

6. As has been commented, the IJA received fewer machine guns of all types for its infantry, than the US produced in March 1943-yet the Japanese had 4x the infantry the US had in the Pacific..

7. In 1941, the Japanese had more assault shipping than Britain and the US together had in 1943. The Japanese produced daihaitsu (landing barges) the way the US produced Sherman tanks and in about the same numbers!

8. In 1937 the Japanese introduced the Chi-Ha. By no means was it a great tank, nor was it in anywhere but in rare quantities.

From Taki:

Type 97 Medium Tank "Chi-Ha"

Introduced Year : 1937
Weight : 14.3 ton
Dimensions: 5.52 x 2.33 x 2.23(h) m
Armor (max) : 25 mm
Speed (max) : 38 km/hr
Engine : Diesel Engine 170 PS/2000 rpm
Armaments : Type 97 57 mm x 1, Type 97 7.7 mm x 2
Crew : 4
Production Qty : 2,208 (Including "Shinhoto Chi-Ha")

but this was what the US had:

M-2 Combat Car.

Specification s

Crew 4

Weight 18,800 pounds

Armor 1/4'-5/8'

Powerplant Continental 7 cylinder radial 260 HP

Armament 2 x .30 MG.

Performance 45 mph.

That was the US state of the armored art. We would get the M-3 Stuart in 1941, but come on!

10. The Japanese produced 6000 fully tracked prime movers of all types mostly in imitation oif the types they saw produced by Praga of Czechoslovackia. Most of these they deployed as cargo sled tractors or artillery tractors in China so the US or UK rarely saw them .

11. The Japanese also designed and built numerous (for them) machine-gun armed tankettes which they also used to haul ammunition and casualty evacuation trailers, as well as equip their route armies with motorized chemical warfare units (battlefield smoke usually, but on occasion poison gas). Once again this (rare by western standards) motorized stuff was usually seen in China. Neither the US nor the Australians saw much of it, though the British ran into some of it in Burma and Malaysia in 1944 AND 1945.

12. The reason the US Army didn't see a heavily mechanized IJA was threefold:

a. Japanese industry was geared to the naval/air war needs.

b. Japanese sea-lift could handle light infantry, LOTS of light infantry. There wasn't much lift for heavy equipment.

c. What Japanese automotive industry there was, was if anything, smaller than Italy's production base. Same goes for their gun foundries. There was not that much in the way of gun mills outside the foundries that supported the Japanese Navy. Note that this holds for all calibers of IJA arms. The Japanese Army still fought off largely WW I stocks of weapons and ammunition. even though they eventually introduced whole new classes of weapons mid-war. Just not in any quantities that mattered.

13. Plus if the local economy could not supply logistics (fuel), well, the Japanese were not going to ship in tanks. What would be the purpose of paperweights, from their PoV?

The Japanese used what they had. They were frighteningly effective with it.

In the meantime in the US:

Source is Hyperwar for the quotes:

therein is the devastating and criminal story of Army Ordnance with regard to the HS/404. The chief thing you should take away from it, is how stupid COLT was, how frustrated International Harvester was, how infuriated the British technical mission appears to have been, and how incompetent the managers of Aberdeen appear to be. When Winchester, and Remington come and tell you, that their weapon proofs show the firing chamber is 1/16th too short BEFORE the British arrive to tell you the same thing????????
tab

Then there is the miserable story of the Madsen, as well as this:

Quote:

Chapter 22
Japanese Automatic Aircraft Cannon

The status of Japanese large-caliber automatic-weapon development all during World War II is best described as chaos compounded by confusion, with a slight bit of bewilderment thrown in for good measure. No originality was shown and only a desperate attempt to meet critical conditions by combining a few good features of other weapons was attempted. A scaled-up version of a well-known rifle-caliber machine gun was generally the finished product.

The best way to approach a Japanese aircraft cannon is first to identify it and then compare it with its counterpart among weapons that had been made for years in other countries, such as Hotchkiss, Hispano-Suiza, Oerlikon, Browning, or Vickers. The similarity in operating principles will usually be very apparent.

The most outstanding example of such borrowing is the 20-mm automatic gun given the designation HO-5B. It was simply the successful caliber .50 Browning machine gun made in 20-mm bore by copying an American weapon captured in the early stages of the war. According to official documents found after the Jap surrender, this condition was the result of Japanese confidence in their 7.7-mm rifle caliber machine guns and 20-mm Oerlikon-type cannon. It later became apparent that a quick victory was not possible and that there was a pressing need for larger bore automatic weapons and for higher rates of fire and greater velocity. Consequently, they copied and put into production whatever was most readily available.

After their successful conquest of the Philippines, the Japs captured thousands of our Browning machine guns and upon this reliable mechanism they based practically all wartime cannon development. It was first made in 13 millimeters and then raised progressively to whatever bore was demanded. These were all designated HO with the Type and bore diameter following, such as HO-103-13-mm, HO-5-20-mm, HO-155 Type 1, 30-mm, and HO-204-37-mm. Of these the HO-5 was the most successful. During the latter days of the war it was the air force's first-line 20-mm aircraft cannon.

While the Japanese simply copied our Browning gun in detail and showed no originality.

From: Hyperwar:

20-mm Automatic Aircraft Cannon, Model HO5.

--614--

they did deserve great credit for furnishing an answer to one question that was asked all through World War II. If the Browning caliber .50 machine gun was the best of its kind in the world, then why did not American engineers scale it up to the 20-mm arm we needed so desperately at the time? While we advanced theories as to why it could not be done, the Japs not only did it but succeeded remarkably well. It had a rate of fire of 960 rounds a minute and weighed only 84 pounds. Even with the use of inferior metals the components had a life expectancy of 3,000 rounds.

1. They chose the right size bullet and propellant charge.
tab

2. They understood "if its stupid, and it was scaled up and it STILL works, then it isn't stupid." In other words, they understood that the Browning 30 caliber and the Browning 50 caliber were almost the same exact thing, just with proportional size changes to make the action work in a larger weapon. The Japanese weapon massed as much as a Browning 50 caliber, which makes it all the more embarrassing for COLT.

and for the US.

Now those who read me, know that I am not rabid on subjects (well maybe the PRC bandits and fools). I try to be objective and truthful. The Japanese soldier was reasonably well led and trained to use what he had. If you want to blame the incompetent strategists and tacticians for mi9susing the tools they had, from me you get no argument, but as long as you had rough tough customers like Yamashita and Ushujima rinning around alive and idiots like MacArthur and Buckner trying to put them down, I just say its lucky that the Japanese had so little time and such a small industrial base to get ready for the US.

Oh yeah, thank whoever for the bomb. Coronet would have been AWFUL. Imagine Halsey in charge of that mess, during another typhoon season when we attempted landings!

Herald

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