Artillery must’ve been the principal killer in WW2.

It certainly had been in WW1.

How much of the Luzon fighting was close quarters stuff ?
Regards, Phil

Didn’t the trees themselves make deadly havoc when the shell bursts send branches and splinters of wood flying into the soldiers trying to hide in the forest ?

Hurtgen (spelling? ) comes to mind. I know very little about that battle in late 1944, but if memory serves me the Germans perfected the air bursts to make that effect.

Artillery isn't that efficacious against men dug in in the jungle. Too easy to get below the "frag line" behind a tree or a fallen log. We relearned that again in Vietnam.

Editing: the Japanese casualties tended to include grotesquely high proportions of killed, didn’t they ? Rather than several men being wounded for every one killed, it was the other way round with them. Fighting to the death , literally, with no quarter expected or even desired. Suicide in many cases. Did the Japanese use terrain effectively, and disperse among the various forms of cover ? We tend to think of the massed banzai charges, but these didn’t happen often, did they ?

A comment on a point raised by Phil: Quote:
The bent Bushido practiced by Japanese troops included fighting to the death. Surrender stripped a warrior of dignity and honour. Hence a IJ soldier would continue to fight while he was able, and would also sacrifice his life to help his comrades. Most IJ forces accepted this concept as part of their own code; most applied it to enemy who surrendered.

Cheers
Brian G

Hi OP,

I wasn't defending him or his actions, just relating a story I had heard that I thought demonstrated some of the wanton brutality of that sphere of the conflict.

Colin

Hi OP,

I wasn't defending him or his actions, just relating a story I had heard that I thought demonstrated some of the wanton brutality of that sphere of the conflict.

Colin

Quote:


Colin,

Have you read Quartered Safe Out Here, by George MacDonald Fraser, the author of The Flashman Books ?

He served as an infantryman in the Fourteenth Army, and encountered the Japanese in hand to hand combat.

It’s a powerful and angry book. I think I’ll revisit it.

Regards, Phil

Hi OP,

I wasn't defending him or his actions, just relating a story I had heard that I thought demonstrated some of the wanton brutality of that sphere of the conflict.

Colin

By late war banzai charges were not very common. The Japanese had learned that they could kill or wound more allied troops by fighting from prepared defensive positions than by charging like crazed mad men into allied machine guns.

The bent Bushido practiced by Japanese troops included fighting to the death. Surrender stripped a warrior of dignity and honour. Hence a IJ soldier would continue to fight while he was able, and would also sacrifice his life to help his comrades. Most IJ forces accepted this concept as part of their own code; most applied it to enemy who surrendered.

Cheers
Brian G

The earliest years of the twentieth century had revealed this Japanese self sacrificial code of honour in a rather different light.

The Russo Japanese war 1904-5 had seen Japanese triumph achieved by reckless and prodigal frontal attacks by infantry against entrenched and powerful Russian positions. The Japanese commander at Port Arthur was so remorseful about the loss of life his orders had entailed that he declared his intention to commit sepuku, a gruesome ritual suicide. The Emperor refused permission, saying “ not while I draw breath! “. As soon as the Emperor’s funeral had been finished, this Japanese general and his wife carried out their sepuku, years after the Port Arthur triumph.

A decade later, on a much smaller scale, similar Japanese tactics had overwhelmed a resolute German defence at the Kaiser’s colony at Tsing Tao, as Japan entered WW1 on the side of the Allies.

No bad treatment was meted out to the German prisoners: quite the contrary.

In both Port Arthur and Tsing Tao , however, the Japanese committed atrocious massacres of the indigenous Chinese population, something they perpetuated on a monstrous scale from 1937 onwards in WW2.

What had happened to the Japanese code in the 1930s that imparted such an amplified cruelty to its practice ?

Edit : sorry if I seem to be diverting the thread. Not my intention, let me assure you. The conduct of the Japanese in WW2 met with execration, and it still does, justifiably in my view. The earlier examples I cited exhibit traits which I find admirable, excluding the massacre of Chinese people. The 1930s imparted something horrific which was made very apparent in the warfare in the Far East a couple of years before the German onslaught against Poland. How far was this new manifestation a “ Japanese “ attribute ? Germany comes to mind, of course, and , to a lesser degree, Italy. Other examples are easy to cite. I’m inclined to the view that WW1 was the provenance of this. Or was the nihilism already developing before 1914, and just given a lethal impetus which was brought to its deadliest fruition in WW2.?

Regards, Phil

Quote:

Your not diverting the thread.

I had seen some where that during the Russo Japanese War that Japanese forces would surrender rather than commit suicide.

So as you ask what had changed in Japanese military culture in less than 40 years?

A haughty (with rascist undertones) rejection of their legitimate wishes and considerations, especially by the British (Australians) and Americans, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 ? Similar to the treatment of Italy.

Trevor

”A haughty (with rascist undertones) rejection of their legitimate wishes and considerations, especially by the British (Australians) and Americans, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 ? Similar to the treatment of Italy.

Trevor”

I'm not familiar with Japanese post World War I demands. What did they want they didn't get? I had been under the impression that Japan had little involvement in World War I yet gained many former German possessions in the Pacific due to being on the winning side. . I'll admit to limited knowledge of Japanese efforts in World War I

And how would this dissatisfaction have such an effect on Japanese military culture?

The Nine Power Conference would be a good starting point. Need link?

The Nine Power Conference would be a good starting point. Need link?

It is true that Wilson proposed that the League’s Covenant should require all new states and League members to bestow equality of treatment on ‘all racial or national minorities’, and to provide guarantees against interference or discrimination against any creed or belief which was not actually inconsistent with public order or public morals. His proposals, however, met with considerable opposition, even in the American delegation, on the grounds of violating state sovereignty and because of the practical problems of defining and enforcing a freedom-of-religion clause. Traditional attitudes and domestic purities also coloured the treatment of the Japanese recommendation in April that the Covenant be amended to include the recognition of ‘the principle of equality among nations and the just treatment of their nationals’. A number of states, in particular Australia and the United States, fearing that this might affect their ability to control foreign immigration, vetoed the Japanese clause. Wilson believed that the acceptance of a racial-equality clause would lead to Senate rejection of the treaty. For Americans, Australians, and South Africans, racial equality was a highly emotive issue. Liberal, internationally minded Japanese were deeply offended by the absence of a racial-equality clause, and the check by the ‘so-called civilized world’ was not forgotten. Japan was given a share of the victor’s spoils. It acquired the former German Pacific islands north of the Equator as ‘C’ mandates (Wilson opposed outright possession, despite Japanese occupation and the recognition of its claims by the British, French, and Italians in 1917). There were realistic American fears at the time, shared by Australia and New Zealand, that Japan would fortify the islands and exclude foreign trade. Japan also demanded Kiaochow and other key points on the Shantung peninsula, which the Chinese had leased to Germany in 1897 and which the Japanese seized at the start of the war. American and Chinese objections received only limited support from the British who, along with the French and tsarist Russians, had already recognized the Japanese position and who, in view of their own multiple concessions in the Yangtse, could not accept the presidential proposal that all foreign concessions in China be internationalized. In the end, engaged in a fierce contest with the Italians over Fiume and fearful that the Japanese would abandon the treaty negotiations and even reject the League, Wilson yielded. The Chinese, unmollified by the face-saving stipulation won by Wilson that Kiaochow was to revert to China at some unspecified date, were outraged. They left the conference and refused to sign the Versailles treaty. The Japanese victory was seen generally as a striking presidential defeat on the issue of self-determination. In China, fury over the Paris negotiations mobilized Chinese students; on 4 May 3,000 demonstrators converged on Tiananmen Square, in a massive rally that marked a new stage in the development of Chinese nationalism. Disillusionment with the west and disappointments with their own brand of western-style democracy led some to look to the new Bolshevik government in Russia as a role model, particularly when the latter promised to give up all the earlier tsarists’ conquests and concessions. A year after the peace conference a small Chinese Communist Party was formed. The Bolshevik promise was not kept.

Hi Chi Minh , future leader of North Vietnam, was working in the kitchens in Paris and served the delegates to the Peace Conference in 1919.

Exquisite !

Regards, Phil

Quote:

He was going by the name Nguyen Ai Quoc at the time and only later changed it to Ho Chi Minh.

Gary