Japan's Imperial Army

by Edward J Drea

  Nogi’s selection for high command also illustrated the regional biases and web of personal connections that hampered the creation of an effective professional officer corps. The army originally recalled Nogi from retirement in February 1904 to command a reserve Guard division.40 Two of the three serving army generals (Oku and Kuroki Tamemoto) were slated to command the First and the Second armies. The third, Sakuma Samata, had retired in October 1902 and at age 61 was judged too old to withstand the rigors of field campaigning. Yamagata then selected the 55-year-old Nogi to command the Third Army and assigned him the responsibility for Port Arthur because Nogi had captured the fortress in 1895. Nogi’s Chōshū lineage and long-standing acquaintance with Yamagata made him acceptable to the Chōshū clique that dominated the army; in addition, Nogi was on friendly terms with many senior naval officers, making him a suitable liaison for a joint campaign. But Nogi was a martinet and an aesthetic who carried his notions of a samurai code to extremes and had never psychologically recovered from losing his battle standard during the Satsuma Rebellion. Yamagata and the other generals recognized his limitations, but they still agreed that Nogi could handle what was planned as a minor secondary operation to isolate Port Arthur.

  The army selected Maj. Gen. Ijichi Kōsuke as Nogi’s chief of staff. Ijichi was a superannuated artillery officer and former instructor at the staff college. He hailed from Satsuma, the cradle of many naval officers, making him acceptable to the navy and serving the army’s desire to balance its regional cliques. He was also Ōyama’s son-in-law. Though army authorities did not think much of Ijichi’s abilities, they considered him at least capable of conducting a siege. Neither Ijichi nor Nogi, however, understood modern fortifications, and Nogi’s lack of self-confidence allowed Ijichi to make operational decisions. Ijichi was incompetent, opinionated, but cautious, and he deferred to his overworked deputy, Lt. Col. Ōba Jirō, a Chōshū native, and a very aggressive personality.41

  In this dysfunctional headquarters, staff officers displayed little ability or initiative, leaving Ōba, an infantry officer unacquainted with siege tactics, to handle most planning. The army’s expert of fortifications and siege warfare was Maj. Gen. Uehara Yūsaku, a French-educated engineer officer. But Uehara’s father-in-law was Lt. Gen. Nozu Michitsura, the 64-year-old commander of the Fourth Army, who insisted on Uehara for his chief of staff. Unfortunately Nozu’s difficult personality made it all but impossible for anyone but his son-in-law to work with him.42 Personal relationships were no better in the two main armies.

  Lt. Gen. Kuroki, a 60-year-old Satsuma native, commanded the First Army. He had led a division in the Sino-Japanese War, cultivated a rude and simple lifestyle, and loved good cigars. Despite appearances, he was a bookish officer, fond of history, and not a risk-taker. His chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Fujii Shigeta, was mean-spirited, nasty, and ignorant of the working of a headquarters staff. He had been the commandant of the staff college, and after it closed for the duration of the war he was assigned to Kuroki. Fujii proved inflexible, indecisive, and continually at odds with his highly talented deputy. Vice Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Nagaoka Gaishi regarded Fujii and Ijichi as equally dangerous incompetents whom the army would be better off without.43

  Lt. Gen. Oku Yasukata, commander of the Second Army, was barely on speaking terms with his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Ochiai Toyosaburō. A protégé of the late Tamura, Ochiai had headed the general staff’s fifth (war history) department and served as an instructor at the staff college. He had a flair for map maneuvers and tabletop tactics, but in actual operations he proved stubborn, inflexible, and ignorant of logistics as well as rear area security requirements. Ochiai handpicked his subordinates from the ranks of staff college instructors, and, like their mentor, they were fixated on map exercises and theory, unable to adapt swiftly to rapidly changing battlefield conditions of real warfare.44

  Intelligence collection and analysis was also personality-driven and idiosyncratic. Maj. Gen. Fukushima was the chief of the intelligence department of the general staff. Col. Matsukawa Toshitane, an infantry officer and director of the first (operations) department, however, relied on his own intelligence sources, splitting the general staff into fiercely competitive Matsukawa and Fukushima factions. The general staff’s arrogance so alienated the foreign ministry that diplomats refused to share the intelligence that they gathered in the United States or Europe, leaving the army without strategic data regarding domestic unrest in Russia, manipulation of radical elements there, or the Port Arthur defenses. At the operational level, officers treated intelligence casually because the top graduates of the staff college invariably went into combat arms—infantry, artillery, cavalry—and were taught to and preferred to make their own assessments.45

  Operational intelligence repeatedly ignored inconvenient discoveries that might disrupt planning already in progress. After the Liaoyang battle, the long-serving military attaché in London, Lt. Col. Utsunomiya Tarō, received intelligence from British sources that the Russian Second Army was about to counterattack the Japanese right flank. Imperial General Headquarters decided that the Russians could not move large formations through the rugged, mountainous terrain and did not pass on the warning.46 Oku was thus surprised on October 5 when the Russians struck his exposed right flank to open the Battle of Shahe.

  In mid-January 1905 Utsunomiya and the military attaché to Berlin, Lt. Col. Ōi Shigemoto, reported that Russians planned to attack the left flank of Ōyama’s Manchurian Army along the Shahe River. Manchurian Army staff officers insisted that the bitter cold and deep snow made a major offensive impossible. When eight Russian divisions attacked in the middle of a late January snowstorm, Ōyama’s headquarters dismissed the offensive as a minor reconnaissance-in-force.47

  The displacement of IGHQ to Hiroshima a decade earlier had been disruptive because the government ministries remained in Tokyo, requiring extensive and expensive coordination that resulted in frequent delays. This time the emperor stayed in Tokyo to coordinate civil government as well as military affairs. Senior officers then complained that IGHQ was too far removed from the front lines to act as an operational headquarters, and in March 1904 Vice Chief of Staff Kodama suggested a supreme command headed by a crown prince be established in Manchuria.

  Ōyama, the newly appointed commander of the field armies in Manchuria, insisted on total control of the overseas forces, including logistics and personnel matters. War Minister Terauchi rejected the general staff’s proposal to grant Ōyama such sweeping authority because it would turn IGHQ into a cipher. Furthermore, Terauchi and Prime Minister Katsura—the latter acting as a general, not as the prime minister—wanted IGHQ to coordinate the joint campaign against Port Arthur directly from Tokyo. Based on Yamagata’s counsel, on May 25 the emperor instructed Terauchi and Ōyama to establish a senior field headquarters to command Manchurian armies and gave Ōyama operational control of the field forces.48

  On June 20, the war ministry activated the Manchurian Army Headquarters, appointed Ōyama as supreme commander, promoted Kodama to general, and reassigned him as Ōyama’s chief of staff. Yamagata became chief of staff (rear) with control of logistics, personnel, and administrative matters at IGHQ; Nagaoka Gaishi was the vice chief of staff (rear). The brightest young officers were assigned to the Manchurian Army while recalled officers or senior statesmen staffed Imperial General Headquarters. Friction quickly developed between the Manchurian Army and IGHQ, especially over the development of the Port Arthur campaign, the deployment of strategic homeland reserves to Manchuria, and the mobilization of new divisions.49

  Dysfunctional personalities, a cumbersome command-and-control network, and a poorly integrated imperial headquarters exacerbated the army’s fundamental problem: it was essentially refighting its last war, having projected casualty rates, ammunition consumption, and logistics requirements based on its Sino-Japanese War experience.

  After driving the Russians from Nanshan, IGHQ expected to systematically isolate Port Arthur, caus
ing it to fall. As mentioned, the second department’s outdated intelligence underestimated the much-improved fortress defenses that skillfully blended formidable new strong points into the hilly topography. Based on shopworn intelligence, in late February 1904 Maj. Ōba Jirō and Maj. Tanaka Giichi (both then concurrently general staff and IGHQ staff officers), among others, recommended seizing the seemingly weak fortress before reinforcements arrived from western Russia.50 Kodama wanted to keep his armies intact and thought it better to isolate Port Arthur rather than storm it. Once the navy closed the harbor entrance, the Russians would be isolated and the Third Army could prevent the garrison from threatening the First Army’s rear areas. Port Arthur would wither on the vine.51

  Because the navy failed to close the harbor, it had to blockade Port Arthur and patrol the nearby waters to prevent the escape of the Russian naval squadron. Put differently, the Russian fleet-in-being at Port Arthur tied down a goodly part of the combined fleet. To unleash the fleet, the navy pressed IGHQ to order the army to capture the fortress, which would also neutralize the Russian fleet. Under mounting pressure from the navy, on June 24 IGHQ ordered Nogi to attack Port Arthur as soon as possible. A few weeks later, intelligence reported that the Russian Baltic fleet was making preparations to sortie. Tōgō then requested via the naval chief of staff on July 12 that the army attack Port Arthur without delay to allow the navy the time it needed to refit before arrival of the Baltic fleet. Whatever Nogi’s faults—and they were many—he was the only field commander subjected to repeated operational interference by Imperial General Headquarters and the navy.52

  IGHQ hoped to avoid a frontal attack by maneuvering the Third Army farther west to take the fortress from the rear. Nogi and his staff complained that repositioning the troops and artillery would take too much time and pull the Third Army farther from its railhead supply point. He understood his mission was to capture the city, not the defensive outposts on the high ground overlooking it, and, as mentioned, was unable to read topographic maps so chose the shortest direct route to Port Arthur.

  A two-day bombardment by Nogi’s light artillery did not seriously damage the concrete-and-steel–reinforced bunkers. Russian machine-gun crews secure inside their fortifications raked the massed attackers, who became snarled in barbed-wire entanglements. Faulty intelligence that the Russian line had broken prompted Nogi to renew the costly attacks. By the time he called off the assaults, the Third Army had suffered almost 16,000 casualties, including more than 5,000 killed in action. An Osaka-based regiment refused to attack after suffering heavy losses and was escorted to the rear under guard.53

  Losses among officers were extremely heavy because tactical commanders followed their training and led from the front. The 44th Infantry Regiment, for instance, had two of its three battalion commanders killed and the third wounded; it lost all twelve of its company commanders, eight killed and four wounded; and thirty-five of forty lieutenants were killed or wounded.54 Nogi’s losses and the subsequent 23,000 casualties suffered at Liaoyang precipitated a chronic replacement crisis that was exacerbated by the lack of tactical skills and leadership ability among many replacement reserve officers and NCOs.

  Government authorities tried to conceal the magnitude of Nogi’s defeat through a combination of strict censorship, tight restrictions on war correspondents, and control of battlefield news releases. Army service regulations issued in January 1904 to protect military secrets complemented home ministry restrictions on newspaper articles enacted the previous year to stifle dissent. Police censors paid special attention to articles that they thought might lower the morale of soldiers’ families.55

  At the opening of the Russo-Japanese War, the government mobilized patriotic associations to organize nationwide relief campaigns to assist families of soldiers serving overseas and send troops small packages of sundries. Officials also diverted public attention from battlefield realities by publicizing real or imagined heroism and tales of glorious death in battle. Official propaganda unintentionally inflated popular expectations, working the public into a patriotic fervor that backfired when unrealistic goals could not be met. For instance, in August the government-sponsored preparations were under way nationwide to celebrate the anticipated fall of Port Arthur, but popular enthusiasm soon waned when victory was not forthcoming. After another Tokyo pro-war rally degenerated into a brawl that left thirty-nine people dead or injured, even “spontaneous” victory parades fell under greater police scrutiny.56

  Despite government and army propaganda, Nogi too fell under a cloud of growing criticism. Irate citizens denounced him as a butcher, stoned his home, and threatened his wife. Nor could the government’s upbeat official version of events conceal the grievous losses from the Japanese public. Hospital trains departed nightly from Ujina, and by mid-September the sight of caravans of wounded soldiers passing through the Tokyo streets to hospitals was commonplace. Letters from frontline soldiers and stories from replacements reached home with tales of heavy casualties, widespread illness, and war weariness. Inflation, numerous new special taxes on land and consumables to pay for the war, the continual reserve mobilizations of replacements, and rumors of terrible casualties weighed heavily on popular morale.57

  Supplying the Army

  Just three months before the outbreak of the war Col. Ōshima Ken’ichi, the director of the general staff’s fourth (transport and military communications) department, and two lieutenant colonels began offering two-week crash courses for staff officers assigned as division logisticians. Each field army established an inspector-general for logistics, usually a major general or colonel with a chief of staff who reported directly to Imperial General Headquarters. Their independence rankled army commanders who denounced logisticians and accountants for dictating operational policy.58

  The army’s paucity of logisticians was directly related to its low esteem for supply and transport duties. Top graduates of the military academy invariably selected infantry branch while the lowest-ranking found themselves shunted aside to the transport corps. Only 4 percent of all military academy graduates selected the transportation branch, as opposed to 63 percent entering the infantry branch. The staff college curriculum neglected logistics, and graduates later showed little interest in the subject.59 In peacetime, divisions had minimal transport and logistics personnel; wartime mobilization left the transport ranks populated with reserve officers and enlisted fillers, who although wearing uniforms, lacked rudimentary basic training.

  Nevertheless, more than 25 percent of almost 950,000 deployed troops were involved in some kind of logistics duties, but infantrymen disparaged them, and even the Chinese mocked them as coolie labor. The army again resorted to auxiliary quartermaster units to move supplies, employing perhaps 700,000 Korean and Chinese porters and laborers.60 Wagons frequently broke down along the unimproved dirt roads, and few tools or spare parts were available for repairs. Korean and Chinese laborers toiled at a series of depots and subdepots that followed the wake of the advance and manhandled supplies to forward units.

  Railroads, the arteries that supplied the army’s lifeblood, were few in number, and all needed major repairs. While the Manchurian Army’s advance paralleled the South Manchurian Railway, army engineers were simultaneously rebuilding the line, whose wide-gauge track required extensive renovation. By July 30, 1904, the First Army had laid a light rail line from Andong to its forward positions, which eased its logistics backup. But the main rail lines needed to support the armies did not reach as far north as Mukden until May 1905, by which time the major fighting was over.61

  Provisioning an army on the move was a constant struggle. Torrential rains washed out roads and rails and forced the Second Army onto half-rations for several weeks. An officer who had survived the Liaoyang battle wrote that malnutrition and sickness had reached a point where he doubted his regiment had 1,000 effectives from its original 3,000-man complement.62

  Despite limited evidence that mixing rice with barley prevented beriberi, t
he army issued a polished white rice ration mainly because it was easier to transport large quantities of plain rice than rice mixed with barley. Similar considerations ruled out a bread ration because hauling flour and the bulky foiled baking ovens to forward areas took too many additional wagons. Besides, soldiers could always eat dried rice, a staple of field rations, but no one could digest a steady diet of stale bread.63

  Troubling logistics breakdowns occurred. Japanese gunners at Nanshan fired more than 30,000 artillery rounds in a single day. This amount exceeded the army’s entire artillery expenditure in the Sino-Japanese War and consumed two months’ worth of shell production even though munitions factories had been working around-the-clock for two years to increase stockpiles.64 The simultaneous offensives against Port Arthur and Liaoyang consumed ammunition stocks at unexpectedly alarming rates, and IGHQ’s diversion of shells intended for the Second Army to meet Nogi’s requirements worsened the shell shortage. Arsenal production expanded in August 1904, and the government purchased 450,000 artillery rounds from British and German munitions makers, but they would not be delivered until December.65 Munitions shortages and shell malfunctions persisted because the domestic industry lacked the capacity and quality-control techniques required to mass-produce large amounts of reliable ammunition. On the eve of the decisive battle of Mukden in February 1905, Ōyama had to warn his assembled field commanders to be frugal with their artillery because there were no reserve ammunition stocks.66 Heavy artillery was especially disappointing; observers at Port Arthur estimated that one in four of the giant 28-centimeter shells failed to explode.67

  Yamagata’s October 16, 1904, cable to Kodama detailed the precarious state of logistics and personnel shortages. It was impossible to supply sufficient artillery shells until December 1904, and no officer replacements would be available until February 1905. Hokkaidō was defenseless, and Japan had no strategic reserve. The four newly activated divisions would not be available until late May 1905. The Manchurian Army would have to wait for those reinforcements before attacking Mukden unless Nogi’s Third Army could capture Port Arthur and then reinforce the northern armies.68