Mutiny and murder incensed control faction members, but imperial way supporters applauded the young officers’ sincere motives and publicly sympathized with the mutineers, who expected the throne to intervene on their behalf. Enjoying high-level army support, the mutinous officers initially appeared successful, but the control faction steadfastly opposed any concessions.57 Most important, the emperor, appalled at the murder of his ministers, rejected repeated appeals from imperial way leaders for leniency. Hirohito’s decisiveness checked any momentum the coup could generate, and after four tense days the mutineers peacefully returned to their barracks.
Nineteen junior officers and ten civilian activists were arrested. The military police perfunctorily questioned every enlisted man involved, asking whether the soldier knew in advance of the uprising and whether he fired his weapon. Because army regulations demanded absolute obedience to orders and the soldiers had followed the commands of their superior officers, authorities reasoned that the enlisted troops should not be punished for mutiny. Nineteen enlisted men were indicted, but only four were court-martialed—for direct participation in the attacks on the ministers. They received suspended sentences. Seventy-four NCOs were court-martialed: fifteen received prison sentences, twenty-seven got suspended sentences, and the remainder received acquittals. Nine other junior officers stationed in Tokyo were accused of collaborating with the rebels and received prison sentences ranging from four years to life; seven officer sympathizers outside of the capital, also convicted as coconspirators, received terms of up to six years’ imprisonment.58
The army takes to the street as rebel troops seal off the Foreign Ministry in the heart of Tokyo during the 2–26 Incident. (Courtesy Mainichi shimbun)
The young officers who had taken to the streets to lead the revolt bore the full brunt of the army’s revenge. In late April they were secretly tried without benefit of defense counsel and without recourse to appeal. Thirteen officers and two civilians were executed by firing squad on July 12. In separate proceedings, civilian right-wingers Kita Ikki and his disciple Nishida Mitsugi were convicted and sentenced to death “in the interests of the state” to discourage future subversion. Along with two former junior officers who testified at their proceedings, they were shot in late August. Aizawa’s political theater likewise ended abruptly. A new, secret court-martial that convened in April took just four days to find him guilty. He was executed by firing squad on July 3.
A sweeping purge of the rebels’ supporters and sympathizers within the army, particularly from among its higher echelons, opened the way for a takeover of key general staff and war ministry positions by control group officers committed to innovation, modernization, and renovation of the army. Seven of the ten full general officers were removed from the active list and retired, seven other flag rank officers were later seconded to the reserves, and during the annual August personnel transfers about 3,000 officers found themselves reassigned throughout the army.59
Despite widespread suspicions, investigators uncovered no evidence that Mazaki had secretly conspired with the young officers, although he did try to take advantage of the uprising. Tipped off by a right-wing crony a few hours before the attempted coup, Mazaki notified a navy colleague, who in turn asked the chief of naval operations, Prince Fushimi, to declare martial law, appoint Mazaki prime minister, and institute an imperial restoration. Mazaki also encouraged the rebel officers who were occupying the war minister’s residence to stand fast.60
Under interrogation by the military police, Mazaki dismissed all the allegations as baseless rumors and slander. A court-martial eventually acquitted him in late September 1937, even though two of the three presiding officers believed that he was guilty of fomenting mutiny. By that time, however, the army’s internal personnel dynamics had completely changed and Konoe Fumimaro, the new prime minister, in the process of consolidating his power allegedly interceded on Mazaki’s behalf to forge national unity for the undeclared war against China.61
Between 1930 and 1935, there were twenty major domestic terrorist incidents, four political assassinations, five planned assassinations, and four attempted coups, the March and October incidents of 1931, the May 15 Incident of 1932, and the great military mutiny of February 1936. Furthermore the army’s continual plotting in Manchuria and North China destabilized those regions and helped to isolate Japan internationally. Military involvement to one degree or another in almost all these conspiracies undercut Japan’s political process and enabled the army to gain dominant political influence.
Conversely, the army’s involvement in attempted coups and assassinations may have ended Japan’s brief era of political party rule, but it exerted little effect on national military policy. If anything, the radical domestic threat from below had obscured an emerging army consensus on China and the Soviet Union.
Imperial Defense Policy
Since the 1923 revision to imperial defense policy, dramatic changes had realigned Japan’s international standing. With regard to diplomacy, Japan reacted to international criticism of its actions in Manchuria by walking out of the League of Nations in 1933. Concerning commerce and the economy, the worldwide Great Depression had closed markets and promoted autarky. In terms of strategy, Tokyo’s decision in December 1935 to abrogate the Washington naval agreements augured for an expensive naval arms race after the treaty expired in December 1936. Militarily, the weak and disorganized Soviet Union the army had faced in the early 1920s had become a formidable threat to northeast Asia—especially on the borders of Manchuria, where the Soviets had rapidly reinforced their Far East garrisons, which by 1935 had three times as many infantry divisions and five times as many aircraft as the Kwantung Army.
When Ishiwara Kanji took over the operations section, general staff in August 1935, he learned that the imperial defense policy was a badly outdated short-war scenario whose operational guidance he found unsuited for modern warfare. Ishiwara’s overriding concern was the army’s unreadiness to fight the militarily resurgent Soviet Union, a condition made more alarming because of his belief the great powers were already on the path to another world war. He believed that the creation of a military-industrial complex in Manchuria would deter Soviet expansion in northeast Asia; if it could not, then the heavy industrial base could still support an army capable of defeating Soviet aggression. After Japan eliminated the threat to its north, the military could move south to secure natural resources and territory. But army modernization, new weapons and equipment, and increased heavy industrial production required large budgets at a time when the navy was simultaneously demanding additional funding to expand its fleets. Last, the increased regional tension that followed the Manchurian Incident had created the possibility that Japan might have to fight against a Chinese-Soviet coalition, but current national defense policy was based on a war with a single opponent. These broader issues involved not just the army and its operational planning, but the matters of national policy, maritime strategy, and diplomacy. Solutions, Ishiwara was convinced, required a new national strategy to align national defense with national policy and make it compatible with the demands of total, protracted warfare.62
With these concerns in mind, in mid-December 1935, Ishiwara approached his opposite number on the naval general staff, Capt. Fukudome Shigeru, operations section chief, about revising national defense policy. Fukudome agreed on the need for revision, but the navy distrusted Ishiwara because he had been a ringleader of the Manchurian Incident, which had furthered the army’s northward strategy at the navy’s expense. Ishiwara favored eliminating the Soviet threat first and then moving to the southern regions. Fukudome wanted to defend the northern flank and advance south. The services also disagreed about the main hypothetical enemy (the Soviet Union for the army and the United States for the navy), whether Japan’s next war would involve a single opponent (the navy’s stand) or a coalition (the army’s concept), and whether a future war would be quick and decisive or protracted and exhaustive. On January 23, 1936, Fukud
ome rejected the army’s emphasis on the Soviet Union, and in mid-February 1936 Ishiwara, resigned to the navy’s position, received the vice chief of staff’s permission to independently revise national defense policy.63
In the wake of the February uprising, Prime Minister Hirota Kōki formed a new national unity cabinet on March 9, 1936. Just ten days later, the navy organized a committee to devise a naval strategy that would protect naval funding from being subsumed by Ishiwara’s plans for army rearmament and expansion. Based on input from fleet commanders, the navy’s mid-April “Outline of National Policy” (Kokusaku yōryō) assigned priority to a southern advance, naval rearmament, improving military forces as required to check Soviet expansion, and limited development and expansion in Manchuria.64
A parallel effort by a joint committee of midlevel staff officers to revise national defense policy had been under way since mid-February. On April 2, they circulated proposed revisions to the respective general staffs for review. As was the practice, the services had excluded civilian cabinet ministers from the process and allowed the prime, foreign, and finance ministers to see the very generally drawn strategic objectives. Only Prime Minister Hirota reviewed the operational force levels, and there is no evidence that he discussed the proposal with any members of his cabinet. No one outside the military services was cleared to see the operational plans.65
In mid-May, army Chief of Staff Prince Kan’in and Chief of the Naval Staff Prince Fushimi presented the draft to the throne, but the emperor questioned, among other things, how the services would pay for such an enormous expansion of their forces and the addition of Great Britain to the list of hypothetical enemies. The military enlisted Hirota, who recommended that Hirohito approve the new policy. With all his ministers backing the revised defense policy, on June 3, 1936, the emperor sanctioned the new policy.66
The updated 1936 imperial defense policy assigned Japan’s two main hypothetical opponents, the Soviet Union and the United States, equal priority and did not resolve a primary strategic axis of expansion. China and Great Britain were considered secondary threats. To defeat the Soviet Red Army in the opening battles, the army’s force structure would expand to 50 divisions supported by 140 army air force squadrons, and the navy would build 2 new battleships (12 total), construct 7 new aircraft carriers (10 total), and add 26 new air squadrons (65 total) to execute a deepwater strategy against the United States.
Contrary to Ishiwara’s expectations, the 1936 version of imperial defense described preemptive offensive operations to seize strategic objectives quickly, the traditional short-war strategy. Conventional ideas of warfare and morale dominated army doctrine, and there was great reluctance to adopt Ishiwara’s philosophy when it rubbed against the grain of that operational and tactical doctrine. Put differently, many army officers whose opinions mattered were uncomfortable with Ishiwara’s theoretical arguments for a protracted war.
Overall military strategy was designed to control the Asian continent and the western Pacific, separate objectives that met army and navy requirements. After winning the first battles, there was no strategy to continue, end, or resolve a war. Nor were there any specifics on how to fight a protracted war, although the document acknowledged the possibility of a lengthy conflict of attrition. Similarly, it conceded the possibility of fighting a coalition, but the services continued to measure their respective force structure requirements against different—not common—potential enemies, defining the issue in terms of their respective operational strategies, not a unified national one.67 Rather than provoke more interservice controversy, avoiding specifics allowed the services to identify their opponents and force structures.
Hirota had expected the services to resolve their fundamental disagreements over long-range military strategy for budgetary reasons and to facilitate his formulation of foreign policy. But he had been excluded from participation in the revisions to imperial defense policy, making it impossible for the cabinet to integrate military strategy and foreign policy. Furthermore, the cost of rearmament and military expansion promised to be enormous. To further complicate cabinet affairs, in mid-May the army reinstituted the provision that only active-duty general officers might serve as war minister. This gave the service the power of life and death over the civilian cabinet because withdrawing a war minister could bring down a cabinet while refusing to nominate one made it impossible to form a new cabinet.
Attempts to produce an integrated statement of national security, national defense, and foreign policy foundered on the same rocks of interservice rivalry. The five ministers conference of June 30 agreed on the “Principles of National Policy,” which endorsed the navy’s mid-April concept for a southern advance and naval expansion and was more a justification for naval rearmament than a comprehensive plan for national defense.68
The same day the army chief of staff approved the “Fundamental Principles of National Defense and National Policy.” Prepared by Ishiwara’s operations section, it would modernize and reequip the army to drive Caucasian influence from East Asia. Japan would maintain friendly relations with China until it defeated the Soviet Union and then move south against the United States.69 It became the basis for army rearmament and modernization, a plan Ishiwara submitted to the war ministry on July 23, not a joint military strategy.
On August 7 the five-member inner cabinet agreed on “Fundamentals of National Policy,” a slightly revised version of their June 30 decisions.70 This called for diplomacy to neutralize the Soviets and approved a southward advance, but it simultaneously strengthened the army in Manchuria sufficiently for it to win the opening battles of the war and expanded the navy so that it could control the seas in the western Pacific against the United States. This was mere lip-service because money and resources were lacking for simultaneous preparations by both services for war against different opponents on different fronts. That afternoon the inner cabinet (less the finance minister) approved the revised “Outline of Imperial Foreign Policy.”
Officials from the foreign, war, and navy ministries had worked throughout July to produce a unified foreign policy. Its objectives were to develop Manchuria, create special zones in North China, check the spread of Soviet communism, move south peacefully, and use diplomatic overtures to secure a nonaggression pact with Moscow. In other words, the foreign ministry endorsed the army’s program. The decision also reaffirmed negotiations between Tokyo and Berlin already under way that would later result in the anti-Comintern Pact, aiming to deprive China of a major foreign ally.71
In theory the August decisions melded imperial defense policy, the five ministers’ approved national policy, and imperial foreign policy into a comprehensive and unified approach to resolve Japan’s international issues. But the result was a series of flawed compromises that left the army and foreign ministry promoting efforts against the Soviet Union at the same time the prime minister and the navy were seeking to expand into the southern regions. Neither the narrower military strategy nor the broader national policy resolved the competing and contradictory objectives of the services.72
There was also the aggravating China question. In April 1936 Hirota had appointed a secret committee composed of officials from the army, navy, and foreign ministries to reconsider China policy. Their deliberations appeared on August 11 in two strategies, one for China and one for North China. The former envisaged an anti-Communist military pact, a Sino-Japanese military alliance, Japanese political and military advisers assisting the Chinese government, promotion of economic cooperation, and so forth. The latter anticipated the separation of North China’s five provinces from Nanjing’s control. The army and navy did agree that a period of stability was needed to retool their respective war machines and therefore the exploitation of North China’s “special zones” would be accomplished peacefully.73 But how could Tokyo reconcile long-term strategic goals, however unrealistic they may have been, with short-range practical interests to detach North China and create a Japanese-dominated puppet state without up
setting the status quo?
In August 1936 Ishiwara brought together the major branches of the general staff and war ministry to formulate detailed plans for the industrialization of Manchuria and preparations for a war against the Soviet Union as expressed in the “Fundamental Principles of National Defense and National Policy.” Ignoring the recently revised national defense policy, he directed a wide-ranging modernization program that shaped the war ministry’s five-year rearmament plan with a proviso for an expanded fifty-division force structure, forty of them available by 1942.74
That November the war ministry announced plans to convert square divisions to triangular ones that would possess substantially greater firepower, mobility, and improved communications, as well as antiaircraft, antitank, and antichemical defenses. The new configuration—one brigade with three subordinate regiments, stiffened with modern weaponry—would streamline units by reducing personnel while strengthening organic firepower and strategic mobility. The seventeen infantry regiments excess to the square divisions (one from each regular division) would become the cadre for six new triangular divisions, which would enable the army to achieve its intermediate goal of fielding twenty-three active divisions by 1940, the year the war ministry expected the outbreak of a world war.75
Japan's Imperial Army Page 27