Why did Japan perform so poorly in WW2?

[Darmalus]

In a lot of the USA vs IJA island battles, the casualties are rather lopsided in favor of the US. Why is this? The IJA often had extensive fortifications and must have known every inch of the islands like the back of their hands. A few Google searches turned up comments along the lines of "The IJA was a WW1 army in WW2" without any explanation of what that phrase actually means. Were their tactics wildly inappropriate? Shoddy equipment?

[Sea Skimmer]

Japanese forces were inferior in firepower in nearly every respect, generally by huge margins, and compounded this inferiority by poor communications that prevented massing artillery fire above the battery level. For an unmechanized force, artillery is most of your firepower, and if you fail using it and sustaining it, you basically can’t help but loose badly.

They had meanwhile insufficient anti tank weapons leading to much artillery that did exist being deployed in an anti tank, lacked any effective belt fed machine guns, and generally had a great diversity of weapons down to two different calibers of rifle in service that prevented pooling ammunition. Even when a Japanese unit had its TO&E fully met with weapons, they simply had a lot fewer heavy weapons than a US force of comparable size. This varies heavily though, Japan had about the least standardized army in the war. Only the Chinese would be worse. Ammunition stocks tended to be low, on Okainawa they had about 1000 rounds a gun and most islands had less, this was partly from low production but largely from lack of shipping and US destruction of transports

While they were extensive builders of fortification, these works often had serious flaws and were not entirely advantageous. The infamous cave positions for example, while very difficult to destroy, also severalty restricted arcs of fire thus preventing massing of fire, and often made it impossible to move artillery pieces ensuring that once located, they would certainly be destroyed. Many cave positions exploited natural or mining caves meanwhile, and had mouths which were positioned in tactically unfavorable locations, turning them into tombs. As well the Japanese tended to fail at anti tank defenses because they lacked the manpower and materials to build effective obstacles and almost never had significant numbers of anti tank mines. The Japanese also tended to neglect adequate protected communications, such as on Okainwa they didn’t build communications trenches between positions above the battalion level. While the Japanese could build heavy shelters, they generally had only limited protection for actual firing apertures because they lacked serious amounts of concrete or steel to build them with.

Tactics were generally poor, with thousands of troops lost in completely pointless, hopeless counter attacks launched with inadequate support. They had other problems too, some caused by inadequate equipment and many idiot officers. Many prewar decisions on tactics had governed decisions on equipment production, this for example is why you see so many Japanese infantry guns.

Meanwhile US troops attacked with massive advantages in fire support and armor, infantry weapons superior in almost every way and generally an ability to bombard the Japanese from all directions simultaneously as you would not get in normal land fighting. US assaults didn't get called typhoons of steel for nothing. As I recall the US produced more amtracs in one year then Japan built tanks in the entire war.

The Japanese would have looked even worse had the US avoided landing at Tarawa and Peleliu, two completely pointless invasions which high ranking officers argued against at the time which struck some of the most heavily fortified points in the Japanese Empire. As well the US could have and should have introduced medium tanks with flamethrowers earlier, and heavier caliber land artillery the combination of which could have cracked Japanese fortifications with considerably greater ease.

[Mr Bean]

I long ago posted a explanation of this but let me give you the short details.

Lets take a typical fight, Japanese Company VS invading American Company

A Japanese Rifle Company would have
Four officers with 150 enlisted men. Typically 16 NCO's to back up the four officers sub divided into 15-16 squads of 7-11 men each. The officers would be armed with katana's and pistols as would most of the NCO's. The Enlisted men would carry rifles with each squad having two to four dedicated rifle grenadiers using either Arisaka 6.5mm or 7.7mm rifles which are single shot five round clip rifles of WWI vintage. Well made, great hand to hand weapons and accurate. But they are not exactly ideal for fighting in jungle conditions on Island strongholds. But it gets worse from there. The Arisaka is longer than it needs to be to make it a better weapon for bayonet fighting, something the Japanese were still heavily promoting because of how devastating a well execute bayonet charge has always been and having spent lots of time fighting enemies with few to no machine guns.

But a Platoon is not just Officers and NCO's armed with rifles, we had machine gun squads and mortar squads mixed in. The Mortar squads were nothing special, no worse or no better than any other nations. The only uniqueness there came in the 50mm Type 89 Grenade launcher, the infamous knee mortar (So called because it's just the perfect size to make it easy to fire accurately with it resting on your knee and troops posed that way. Never mind if you actually try that the recoil force will break the leg your resting it on, they were meant to be fired resting against the ground in a full crouch) The machine gun squads by contrast were saddled with some of the worst light machine guns in existence. The 6.5mm Taisho 3 was a weapon so heavy it required a tripod to fire despite having one of the slowest firing rates in existence and being tray feed so it spent more time reloading than firing, add in the fact it could jam easily and weighed three times what any machine gun has any business weighing and you get a slow firing defensive use only machine gun that takes forever to set up and site and did I mention the jamming? The entire gun plus tripod weighed in at over a hundred pounds. The other two light machine guns in use the Type 96 and Type 99 where much better as they were developments of the Czech Zb26 the worsts first well put together light machine gun. I'd mention the Type 11 which was notable in that it could fire the same rounds as the infantryman used clips and all except if you tried that for any length of time it jammed and was designed with a handy hopper so the gun could flood easily.

Those little descriptions aside what I'm building to is this.

The typical Japanese 160 man officers and all company had between them perhaps twenty pistols, one hundred and twenty rifles, fifteen light machine guns and no more than four or five sub machine guns. The rifles were single shot, the light machine guns had at most 30 round clips and the pistols were on a good day cheap knockoffs of better pistols, and at there worst with the Type 94 dangerous to their user.

By contrast an American Rifle Company was made up of 187 men with six officers, each company was divided up into first Platoons (Headquarters, The Rifle Platoons and a Weapons Platoon) then squads.

American squads were twelve man affairs with a staff Sergent and a Sergent to serve as his second (Japanese Squads lacked a formal second instead the NCO picked someone, likewise there was no second for the Captain commanding the company unlike the American Company which had two Lt's ready to take over) Each twelve man squad would be armed with two Thompson or Greasegun submachineguns for the NCO's with the remaining ten men split up depending on squad composition. The default was a seven man assault group armed with grenades and Garands, the support section armed with BAR's or a light machine gun team with the 1919A4 in either it's tripod or Bipod Stinger version. Of the seven man riflemen three to four would have the MK II launcher to act as rifle grenadiers if needed.

So all told the 196 man Platoon would have 31-34 sub machine guns 30 Light machine guns, just over 100 multi-shot Garand Rifles and about 60 sidearms since every officer, NCO and many enlisted carried there own pistol brought from home to war with them or begged battered or stolen from the battlefield. Add in superior more flexible leadership and last toss in the endless supplies. Keep in mind every island taking from the Japanese, the defenders only got what they had on day one of the battle. After that no island was ever resupplied in any meaningful way. Meaning every single island fight consisted of the getting ashore and the Americans slowly bottling up the defenders, even on Tarawa where the entire island was one giant deathtrap with a bunker under every bush and a fortress hiding under every tree the Americans could afford to be wasteful with weaponry. Fire off half your ammo allotment for today? No worries supplies are piling up a beach. Is that a head or a branch? I don't know lets throw a grenade at it. We got plenty (Small fact, the average Japanese squad unless designated as a grenadier squad were only officially allotted two grenades for the officer, in American squads every single man had at least one grenade at all times with two being the standard load out in assault work, assault grenadiers could expect to carry four).

In the short version, despite attacking well dug in defenders the Americans always had secure supply lines to the Japanese utter lack of one once the Americans hit the beach. Add in the vast material differences between the average Rifle Company of each side. Add in an inflexible command situation with soldiers trained to obey from boot not trained to lead and employing tactics that work great against poorly armed Chinese peasant armies but pretty damn poorly against American well armed units and you have a recipe for poor performance. Not to mention the impossibility of learning the lesson since once the Americans are ashore escaping the island is relatively unlikely. And if you did learn your lesson and tried to be to clever the Americans would take to many losses and fall back so they could reduce your section of the island to moon art before advancing again. Even on Tarawa where the entire island was basically a bunker complex of one kind or another this had an effect.

[Sea Skimmer]

Your description is a bit erroneous even if the message is clear. The Japanese did not use squads. A Japanese rifle company had three rifle platoons and in most cases an attached weapons platoon. Each rifle platoon had three machine gun sections with one light machine gun each, and one grenade discharger section with one such weapon. The weapons platoon was an attachment from the battalion machine gun company and had two tripod mounted machine guns, and sometimes also two 2cm anti tank rifles

In strengthened units every machine gun section also had a grenade discharger but with less ammunition then that of the grenade discharger section as only two men per section were attached to carry and use it.

A normal rifle company had about 180 men when you include its organic headquarters unit that included a small company train. When you add the weapons platoon it has 46 more men, and this platoon might bring half the 22 man ammo platoon from the machine gun company with it. In some instances Japanese companies had over 260 men without considering militia units that could be even bigger but were also pure cannon fodder.

So in a Japanese company you have 9 machine guns and 3 grenade dischargers minimal, or as many as 13 machine guns (2cm could shoot automatically so I count it as one) and 12 grenade dischargers but with some 250 men. Battalion infantry guns also could be attached, but not as commonly as the weapons platoon.

A Japanese battalion had three or four rifle companies, increasingly three as the war went on. Its machine gun company had three weapons platoons with four machine guns each, but shortages of weapons sometimes meant it had only two thirds this many. The only other fire support would be the battalion gun platoon with two 70mm infantry guns that could also serve as mortars and might be attached to the companies, leaving no indirect fire support for the battalion at all. When the 2cm rifles were present, only four would be in the entire battalion so only two of the companies get that attachment too. So basically if a Japanese company got into trouble, it had nobody to call upon for fire support readily, even if it had effective communications which it seldom would in jungle fighting. Island communications varied but in general all Japanese artillery fire was preplanned on the defensive and offensive.

Your description of an American company is forgetting the armament of the weapons platoon, which normally had two .30cal Browning machine guns and three 60mm mortars. It also had one .50cal machine gun after the 1943 adjustments, which was normally mounted on a vehicle for anti aircraft work. The 1943 tables also allowed had three Bazookas, and Bazooka’s tended to appear beyond the number allowed in the TO&E. I think you are overestimating the number of LMGs under just about any TO&E we had in the war. Only one BAR was allowed per rifle squad in 1943, though certainly more did sneak into the field in reality. Units rarely stayed at the paper TO&E in the field if they were ever even formed the 'proper' way, but it is a useful guide and was vital for planning stuff like shipping space and ammunition requirement. Still even two per squad is six per platoon, and eighteen per company, plus the two .30cal Brownings is about 20 machine guns, not 30. Submachine guns were basically handed out on a 'as we have them' basis prior to June 1944 when the TO&E began to formally allow eight per company to be handed out as the officers wished though 30+ being in a company is hardly unreasonable. Formally before then they were supposed to arm only rear area troops and artillery crews as well as drivers and vehicle crews. But the main thing is that most US divisions were organized in 1942 and 1943, and paper changes in Washington didn't change anything in the field except for the raising of new units. Only reductions in manpower would actually get enforced, since units would be starved of 'excess' replacements in combat. Efforts to actually harvest the men carved out by reductions in the TO&E were sometimes enforced (1942 tables actually raised numbers for a bit and made companies much bigger which was soon reversed) but weapons would rarely have been collected. The 1943 tables were what most of the war was fought under at this level, later changes tended not to much affect the forward companies. They were more aimed at taking away drivers and clerks.

Anyway, when we go to the 1943 battalion level things become a lot more stark, as the American battalion headquarters had three 37mm or 57mm anti tank guns, along with four .30cal and .50cal machine guns and eight Bazookas. Its weapons company had three .50cal, eight .30cal machine guns, six 81mm mortars along with seven more bazookas. This is all vastly more powerful then a pair of dinky 70mm guns, though taken individually the Japanese 70mm was actually a highly useful weapon that US forces might have made good use of for cave busting. Total US battalion personal was about 850

Its also worth mentioning that Japanese units sometimes had regimental level 81mm mortars that US forces had no equivalent of, but these were grouped in independent battalions and basically you couldn’t count on them existing, let alone being delegated to battalion and company level operations as the US battalion mortars always were. They would serve as regimental artillery alongside a possible few 75mm guns, while a US regiment had a battery of 105mm howitzers. On the other hand Japanese mortars over 81mm were rare and mostly assigned to chemical warfare units in China, while the US had a number of chemical warfare battalions with 4.2in mortars in the Pacific attached to divisions, and later began mounting large numbers of these mortars on LCIs so they could fire even in support of an initial landing. The Japanese didn’t believe in infantry mortars other then the 50mm grenade dischargers. Dumb considering how well suited mortars were to Japanese fighting styles; but it may have been linked into the naturally high ammunition consumption of fast firing mortars. Japan couldn't afford it, and may have thought its forward units couldn't transport it.

At the regimental and divisional level the best equipped Japanese units actually could have considerably more weapons then a US regiment or division, but they also easily had two or three times as much manpower and so still suffered from a considerable practical inferiority in firepower even before ammunition and supply problems are considered. Such divisions were also rare and almost never got deployed without taking losses or diversions of subunits along the way. The Japanese were very hard pressed to get corps level supporting units into action in the Pacific island fighting, while such support was an integral part of US Army fighting in most campaigns and count be counted on to arrive in combat when included in plans. US Marine divisions were closer to the Japanese in a lot of respects with bigger divisions and lighter artillery, but they still had big practical advantages in automatic weapons and mortar firepower. They also expected after Guadalcanal to fight with heavy naval gunfire support.

But what makes the Japanese really bad was, many Japanese troops were not part of divisions at all but were deployed in independent mixed brigades. These formations were mostly like the divisions up to the battalion level though sometimes they had really bloated rifle companies, but above this had as many as five infantry battalions in a single infantry regiment, supported only by a few regimental 75mm infantry guns, and a single eight gun battery of 75mm guns attached to the brigade. They also had small anti tank, anti aircraft and other support units and sometimes a tank company. Such a brigade would have anything from 5,000 to as many as 8,000 men which is basically two thirds the size of a proper division. Units like this were intended for occupation duty and fighting the Chinese, but a great many ended up in frontline roles against the US. Task organized units like this actually made a lot of sense, indeed they were a fairly advanced concept somewhat akin to the modern Brigade centric organization of the US Army, but simply had to be implemented in a very resource poor manner. Eight thousand men supported by basically two batteries of 75mm guns is pretty awful. Even a 1914 Russian division, by far the worst of major European armies at the time, had a better ratio of guns to men.

As a final note for this, in 1945 the US was working on new TO&E tables that would have radically increased the firepower of each infantry division, largely by adding a lot more supporting weapons at the regimental, battalion and company levels. Divisions intended for the invasion of Japan were going to be deliberately reorganized to meet the new tables as they were trained for the invasion of Japan in theater, or else before shipping them over from Europe. Japan for its part tended to field better equipped units the closer the US got to Japan, but supplemented them with utter hoards of militra with almost nothing but rifles, or in the Home Islands, spears.

[montypython]

It is also worth noting that Chinese military leaders (moreso than the Japanese) understood the significance of modern military equipment and organization from both foreign training (German, Soviet and American) and combat experience, such as the use of belt-fed machine guns, shorter rifles than the Arisaka, and infantry mortars, despite having access to fewer industrial resources than the Japanese and consequent shortages/non-standardization, and internal politics. The biggest combat shortsightedness common to both Chinese and Japanese forces was the underestimation of the usefulness of 120 mm mortar fire.

[Sea Skimmer]

Really everyone underestimated mortars in WW2 except the Soviets, and late in the war the Germans who began producing copies of Soviet weapons and were the first to make 120mm mortars a normal battalion level weapon while having started out the war with one of the most complicated 50mm mortars around. They had 105mm mortars but these were very heavy, and only assigned to gas troops. One can't really blame people too harshly though, because most of the heavy mortar designs that existed in WW2 had rather limited range, it was assumed they'd be ineffective against moving tanks with some reason, and it was generally assumed this combination of features plus a lack of trench warfare would make them too vulnerable to enemy fire. Mostly they were just seen as gas weapons, thus so many being in the hands of chemical troops. You can't breakdown and haul away a 120mm piece and ammo nearly as easily as you can an 81mm in the infantry. Meanwhile if you always have a vehicle for it, why not just have a small artillery piece with much more range and deadly serious anti tank capabilities against the enemies hoards of barely bullet proof vehicles? Prior to Bazookas and anti tank grenades this is a serious consideration for low level units. Its also no surprise that the Soviet mortar and its German copy had the best range performance around, by something like 50% compared to US 4.2in mortars or the Japanese 90mm

As for the Chinese, the Chinese are so mixed its hard to draw any real conclusions from them in my opinion, and the US certainly had an immensely hard time training Chinese forces in India. They had units and leaders who could be very effective, but then the effective units also tended to fight the least. The Chinese would often refuse to fight simply to avoid any chance of loosing equipment, sure they had reasons to want to protect scare equipment but this made little sense in the Burma fighting which was all about preserving/restoring a supply line for them.

Also worth pointing out that the Chinese have now concluded the 120mm is too big for average Chinese troops and are adapting a 100mm mortar instead, I think they've acutally had it a long while but it just wasn't standard for all troops. This may also have been a factor in why Japan randomly had 90mm mortars for its chemical service. Though on the other hand, they also had that 150mm mortar, even if it was very rare. I suspect it needed two Japanese guys to drop load. The Soviets made the 160mm they came up with breach load, and Singapore later made its own version that actually has a muzzle you pull down to more easily muzzle load, then elevate again to fire and slide the bomb home. Firing is via trigger.

[Spoonist]

I think ther is a discrepancy in your title vs your post.

Why did Japan perform so poorly in WW2?

They didn't. They performed above expectation in almost any field. They pulled off stunt after stunt that should have failed. They conquered a great empire in only a few years after all.
For a while they made better equipped and better supplied troops surrender because of sheer suprise and perseverance. The campain to take singapore was a huge success. Pearl Harbor is a really big feat, militarily. Aggressive attacks suited their military culture and deployment.

However, they were always going to lose. The best parts of their military knew that as well, like famously Yamamoto. There was no way they could take on a concentrated effort from any of the greater powers in WWII. See what happened in their fights with russia just some years earlier for instance. But the political situation and the lunacy of nationalism prevailed. And since they had completely missed out on WWI they had no clue on how to conduct defensive warfare effectively, nor were their military or equipment built for such.

In a lot of the USA vs IJA island battles, the casualties are rather lopsided in favor of the US. Why is this? The IJA often had extensive fortifications and must have known every inch of the islands like the back of their hands. A few Google searches turned up comments along the lines of "The IJA was a WW1 army in WW2" without any explanation of what that phrase actually means. Were their tactics wildly inappropriate? Shoddy equipment?

This part the others will answer so much better.
I'll just point out two oddities that they have not covered yet.
The japanese usually didn't defend the beaches because they believed that shore bombardment from the ships would prevent such - instead they dug into the mountains above the beaches. This meant that you could usually go ashore with relatively minor losses, build defenses on the beach + artillery and then pretty much pick the defenses apart at will. In hindsight it's really strange.

Also another factor for the losses being so huge was the banzai/bushido stupidity. When everything else failed the japanese attacked instead of surrendering. This to go out with honor.
So you can never compare the loss ratio. For instance in the "forgotten campain" of Attu the japanese are estimated to have ~2900 troops, of which only 29 surrendered. That is one out of a hundred on the losing side.
So even in pitched, even battles the japanese could suddenly decide to give up defensive positions to make a night charge into oblivion - with extremely heavy losses as the most common result. Scary but completely ineffective.
So even if they would have had better equip they would still outnumber any competent enemy in losses.

[Broomstick]

One factor I haven't seen mentioned here is that as a general rule the Americans had more and better food, and less burden of illness. While few Japanese surrendered and became POW's, those that did were nearly always found to be malnourished, underweight, and often suffering from a higher load of malaria, other tropical diseases, and parasites than their American counterparts. That was partly due to disrupted supply lines, but also had something to do with the supplies and medical care each side gave to their men.

Of course, the Japanese often performed magnificently despite bad food and illness. There is no doubt they were willing to endure enormous hardship and give their all to the cause. My uncles used to relate hair-raising tales of how scrawny Japanese half their size and burning up with fever were ferocious enough to make battle-hardened US marines literally piss and shit their pants at times. However, no matter how motivated insufficient food/nutrition and disease burden do have an effect on a fighting force. It certainly didn't help.

[PainRack]

Regarding banzai charges,this was a consequence of pre WW1 tactics where a well executed bayonet counter-attack was relatively effective.

It always struck me as strange,that the IJA medical corps,so lauded pre war and copied by both the British and US army with regards to tropical disease will do so
badly in war. There are estimates of 30% ineffectives due to diseaselike malaria.

[Force Lord]

The Japanese forces in the Pacific suffered shortages of practically everything, especially once US naval power started to strangle seaborne supply routes, so it's unsurprising Japanese medics couldn't do much, as further supplies of medical equipment would in all certainty be resting at the bottom of the sea. It got so bad that wounded men were given grenades to give them an "honorable" death.

[Blayne]

It didn't help that the Japanese treated their soldiers with appalling brutality to the point they nicknamed them "sen" (like a Japanese penny, not in use today because inflation) or "bushes of wheat", that and harsh conditions was thought to "toughen" a soldier and thus disposable.

There was a lot of changes between WWI Japan and WWII Japan, WWI Japan treated prisoners almost as good as WWII Canada, some German POW's stayed in Japan when the war ended.

[lord Martiya]

In a lot of the USA vs IJA island battles, the casualties are rather lopsided in favor of the US. Why is this?

Trying to resume everything already said: the Japanese Army was undergunned, undermechanized and underfed, had a supply train with more issues than Rommel's and for the exact same reason than the enemy had the bad form of sinking the supply ships, had poor communications and organization, most generals used beach defenses and launched bayonet charges against the invaders, and the Americans always arrived with a huge superiority in numbers and authorized firepower, had more firepower they were supposed to, their supply train was totally unimpeded by anything but distance (a problem countered by the insane number of ships transporting food, medicines, ammo and fuel), had superior communications and organizations, and their officers were smart enough to smash the beach defenses with battleship shellings and place machine guns and wait for the bayonet charge (after which it was much easier).
Frankly it's kind of a miracle the JIA resisted so long...

[Eternal_Freedom]

In regard tot he food comment Broomstick brought up, I read a book recently that said that British and Indian forces thought the Japanese soldiers in Burma must be excellent jungle fighters able to live off the land, when in actuality they were simply used to long marches and poor food.

[CaptHawkeye]

Japan really just didn't plan on fighting western forces on the land that much. They had hoped that a couple of early naval victories in a war with the Allies would give them enough time to fortify the shit out of a bunch of islands scattered throughout the Pacific. With these islands held Japan would be able to resist the greatest threats posed to it by strategic bombing and naval blockade. The Japanese were pretty keenly aware that the Army was inferior by western standards so the desire to compensate for that by building ridiculously elaborate bastions and fortifications was hoped to make up for it. The problem with this entire strategy no matter how you cut it though is that the Navy pretty much has to hold up its end for it to work. Fortify places like Tarawa, Rabaul, and Truk all you want. With no Naval support you won't be able to supply those places with those sort of important things people need like food and water. I'm sure the Japanese probably hoped that light, fast convoys consisting of their relatively fast freighters, destroyers, and modified cruisers making supply runs at night to these islands would probably be enough. Because if it isn't then it's not like they have any other option.

[Isolder74]

The only time where the Japanese Army even had close to Parity with the US Forces was on Guadalcanal. That was during the early part of the war where it was the Japanese that had the initial naval advantage. Even during this time, they were still forced by American forces to need to do their resupply operations at night. Even at Guadalcanal the seeds of why they lost were present. There was still a massive lack of proper supplies and ammunition even with the Tokyo Express. They still did disastrous banzai attacks into heavily armed dug in American Positions. Once the US managed to gain a nighttime naval superiority that quickly ended.

The biggest thing that lead to the defeat was this. from 41 to 45 they managed to produce 16 carriers. During the same period the US produced 141 Carriers(this is including the smaller escort carriers.) So you can see that no matter how well they fought they were going to be steamrolled.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Japanese might have been starved and disease ridden in some battles, but in others like Tarawa and Okinawa they were doing fine in those respects, while in yet other actions like Peleliu such issues only became problems late in the battles. Now in the New Guinea fighting allied troops often went on very short rations, and suffered just as horrendously as the Japanese from disease. The fight for eastern New Guinea was probably the most equal ground fight of the allied Pacific offensive. Munda Point is another battle worth looking at, one so awful, though often ignored, that it actually was what formalized the policy of island hopping because US commanders were desperate to avoid battles like it again. It took a month to advance 2000 yards through a swamp. US forces did outnumber the Japanese by a wide margin, but it was almost impossible to use more than a fraction of US infantry in the swamp.

In regard tot he food comment Broomstick brought up, I read a book recently that said that British and Indian forces thought the Japanese soldiers in Burma must be excellent jungle fighters able to live off the land, when in actuality they were simply used to long marches and poor food.

It helped that the Japanese ate rice, which was reasonable for anyone to cook in the field, while a random GI or Tommy couldn't cook a loaf of bread given a bag of flour.

[Broomstick]

Again, going by what my uncles who served in the Pacific said, hungry GI's managed to make do. There are a variety of flatbreads one can make with flour, water, a little salt (or, if by the ocean, salt water), and a frying pan - and "entrenching tools" a.k.a. shovels can do for that in a pinch. Making leavened bread would have been difficult to impossible, but that doesn't mean a man can't use a bag of flour in putting together a meal.

Uncle Bill, who probably told me the most (and even that wasn't a whole lot) related as how Americans would scavenge beaches and even do some fishing in between fights. He also related the story of how some of his fellow marines went down to a beach to do some crab gathering and something happened. Not only didn't they come back with crabs, they didn't come back at all for three days. When they did show up, they were washed ashore, dead for days, and the crabs were eating them instead of vice versa. Never did find out exactly what happened, unlikely to be enemy action as there wasn't any on that island at the time, probably some sort of accident combining boys from the center of the US who were unfamiliar with the ocean and its dangers that maybe went for a swim and went out too far and/or got caught in a current stronger than they were.

Anyhow, there were times the Americans went hungry, too, or foraged. Our guys weren't above using any rice they found after the Japanese were gone or eliminated, either. When you're hungry you'll eat all sorts of things. You don't just capture land and ammo, you can capture food, too.

[Sea Skimmer]

It would be a bit odd that they would even be issued flour in a forward area really, fishing ect... is only to be expected. Nobody wants to eat the same stuff every day.. The marines on Guadalcanal would have risked starvation if not for the tonnages of canned food and rice they captured in the initial landing, as it was they were on two meals a day for a long time; but that wasn't too typical as far as I can tell because of constant fears of poisoned food and ever fewer Japanese supplies being siezed. The haul at Guadalcanal was kind of comical since the Japanese made no effort at all to destroy material, allowing the marines to capture an actual railroad, ice factory, road rollers and some other equipment one might not expect the Japanese to have.

[Zinegata]

There was no way they could take on a concentrated effort from any of the greater powers in WWII.

The massive resource disparity was made even worse by the crippling inefficiencies that afflicted the Japanese military machine - including a very disruptive rivalry between various services at the highest level. Not to mention a general failure to spread hard-won battlefield knowledge throughout the ranks, resulting in rapidly declining pilot quality and the repitition of failed and wasteful tactics.

[Broomstick]

It would be a bit odd that they would even be issued flour in a forward area really

I treated it as a hypothetical. You're right, regular issuing of a sack of flour would have been unusual, but if hungry soldiers come across one they'll figure out how to use it.

[Vehrec]

Looking at WW2 with seventy years of hindsight, it seems that Japan wanted to ape the success of Vietnam 30 years early and throw out the damn colonial powers by being too hard to remove from the territory they had claimed. The problem is that that's not really what they were thinking, and that's not what they planned for! Instead of a short war, the island defensive perimeter only makes sense in a long one-keep the US from getting any footholds, and if they do, drive them out immediately before they can exploit them! It might discourage the united states-but only if you can successfully hold that line under multiple attacks.

But let's go a little deeper. Average life expectancy of a Japanese man in 1935? 46 years. The United States had 59 years. Better health care, better nutrition, better standards of living. The Japanese life expectancy figures are similar to the ones you see today in Liberia or Rwanda, while the US' figures at least match Iraq's current expectancy for men, all of this before antibiotics. There's a fundamental inequality between these two countries, and the Japanese know and hate it. They were willing to make tremendous sacrifices in the name of victory, and that constant refrain of 'eating dirt' was a big part of why they believed they could win-that they could bear the losses of a world war better than the decadent western powers. And that's an attitude you probably got just as much from their junior officers as from the higher-ups. It had worked for them before, hadn't they won the Russo-Jappanese war in just such a fashion? Surely, history would repeat itself, and the hated Americans would even, by entering the war, DECREASE war weariness in Japan after 4 years of fighting in China. Indeed, the first few weeks and months seemed to bear out the Japanese theories that they WERE as good as they thought they were. It was probably a point of pride that their soldiers fought on while sick-because they had been conditioned to eat dirt and keep fighting until their bodies failed them, and then they were viciously beaten back to their feet.

[Sea Skimmer]

The reality is Japan never had a victory strategy. The Army never wanted to strike south, and the navy thought it would bring victory with another tactical Tushima like decisive battle... only to throw out that doctrine at the very onset of war planning in favor of crippling the US fleet with a sneak attack they knew wouldn't collapse the US, and failed to replace it with anything. The island defensive strategy had some real logic, except it wasn't planned or implemented in any serious form until after the Makin raid showed that small garrisons might be wiped out. Before then all Japan was doing was establishing seaplane bases and a few small airfields for reconnaissance purposes. The IJA simply would not supply the troops for such a strategy and the Special Naval Landing Force lacked the numbers to put more then a few hundred men on any one point. Its kind of amazing but even getting 5,000 men to invade Midway, of which under half were combat troops out of the IJA was so difficult it almost led to the operation being aborted. The IJA always saw the war in China as the real war, everything else was only being fought to facilitate continuing the war in China and was to be accomplished with minimal resources.

Its kind of amazing, but the Japanese began pulling troops out of Java before they would pull any out of China to begin reinforcing the central and south western pacific. At the time of the Guadalcanal landing Japan had only two divisions worth of men in Moresby the entire theater, to garrison Rabaul, all the islands around it and attempt a major offensive against Port Moresby. The central Pacific was held by something like one brigade in total. Meanwhile they had ~35 divisions and dozens and dozens of independent brigades in China Later a bunch of divisions came out of China in 1943-44 but only in time to take heavy losses from US submarines in transport.

[HMS Conqueror]

The island battles are not really indicative, since the Japanese forces were usually cut off from supply, heavily outnumbered, and having little or no heavy equipment or air support. The tendency of the units deployed there to fight to the last man also skews the casualty figures heavily. Typically a European force would not have fought until 99% out of soldiers are dead and less than 1% taken prisoner or captured wounded, as at Iwo Jima.

It also somewhat misses the point. The Japanese goal was to delay the US as long as possible with these battles, and they did indeed take a long time to clear out thanks to their prepared defensive positions.

[Spoonist]

@HMS Conqueror
If you couldn't bother to read through the replies, then what on earth made you feel that you could contribute to the topic in a meaningful way?

[HMS Conqueror]

Do you disagree with it, or did you just rather I complimented you on your post instead of making my own?

Nice post, btw, I agree with it.