ww2 jap infantry- did they suck or what?

Military History \| How To Make War \| Wars Around the World	Rules of Use	How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Infantry Discussion Board
Return to Topic Page

Subject: ww2 jap infantry- did they suck or what?
AchtungLagg 8/24/2004 1:37:15 AM

im having a hard time understanding why the japanese infantry performed so badly (casualty wise) to us infantry during wwii. how were abilities (mis)matched in the PTO?

Quote Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title Newest to Oldest

Pages: PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT

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.

Quote Reply

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.

Quote Reply

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)

Quote Reply

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

Quote Reply

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.

Quote Reply

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.

Quote Reply

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.

Quote Reply

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

Quote Reply

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

Quote Reply

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:

http://www3.plala.or.jp/takihome/chiha.gif" width="339" height="185" />

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:

http://mailer.fsu.edu/%7Eakirk/tanks/UnitedStates/lighttanks/uslt-M1E2.jpg" width="359" height="199" />

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 mechan

Quote Reply

PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT