The new formations were designed for mobility. Unencumbered by a lengthy baggage train, infantry and artillery units could deploy quickly off the march formation and maneuver swiftly around enemy flanks. Army officials further compressed road march formations by eliminating the fourth artillery battery of each artillery regiment, sacrificing firepower for speed and mobility. Field artillery was light, mobile, and small caliber in order to keep pace with fast-moving meeting engagements. Heavier guns were of course also employed, but usually in set-piece battles where mobility was not at a premium. Just as Kodama had earlier sought to destroy the czar’s Far Eastern armies before reinforcements could arrive from western Russia, in 1937 Ishiwara wanted to destroy Soviet military power in the Maritime Provinces before reinforcements could arrive.
With the army and navy embarked on ambitious expansion programs, in November 1936 the cabinet approved a three billion yen budget—a 31 percent increase over the previous year. Military expansion would consume about half the 1937 national budget, and the cabinet relied on traditional practices of issuing bonds and raising taxes to defray the extraordinary expenses. In late 1936 the government issued 980 million yen in bonds, and in 1937 it collected an additional 420 million yen by increasing taxes on rice wine and personal incomes. The rapid expansion of military-related heavy industry, however, relied on imported raw materials from China and Manchuria and finished goods from the United States, which worsened Japan’s trade balance and added to economic uncertainty.76
The Diet balked at underwriting the cabinet’s huge military budget and bridled at the army’s schemes for a planned economy, particularly War Minister Lt. Gen. Terauchi Hisaichi’s incessant demands that the government enact legislation to impose state controls on business and labor organizations. These disagreements erupted openly on January 21, 1937, during a Diet interpellation involving Terauchi and the Seiyūkai’s senior representative, Hamada Kunimatsu, who elicited rounds of applause as he passionately criticized the army’s highhandedness, meddling in affairs of state, and dictatorial aspirations. Flushed with anger, Terauchi demanded an apology, and Hamada dramatically offered to disembowel himself if the stenographic record showed he had slandered the army. If not, then Terauchi ought to commit ritual suicide.77 Later that day Terauchi demanded the cabinet’s resignation for the slander. Hirota’s besieged cabinet resigned two days later.
Army leaders then resorted to the active-duty provision to block recommendations that Ugaki become prime minister by refusing to nominate a war minister to serve in his cabinet. Too many senior officers bore him grudges, and Ugaki carried too much baggage, from eliminating divisions to involvement in the March Incident, to regain the army’s trust and support. Military police prevented Ugaki’s car from proceeding to the imperial palace, and the commander of the military police told him directly that the army would not approve his nomination. Unable to secure a war minister, Ugaki could not form a cabinet and withdrew from consideration. On February 2, retired army general Hayashi Senjūrō, widely regarded as Ishiwara’s puppet, became prime minister. Hayashi was unable to steer his budget through the Diet and resigned a month after an embarrassing defeat in the April 30, 1937, general election.
With the assistance of the quasi-official South Manchurian Railroad research committee, in May 1937 Ishiwara submitted an outline for a five-year expansion of heavy industry to the war ministry. In mid-June recently appointed Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro, who had coordinated on advance drafts, approved the plan that would double or triple industrial output, expand aircraft production tenfold, and convert Japan from light to heavy industry. Manchurian heavy industry would be developed separately so that no matter what happened at home, the army would still control its own military-industrial complex in Manchuria.78 By this time, however, Ishiwara’s star was in decline. He had lost out to Lt. Gen. Umezu Yoshijirō in the selection of the war minister for Hayashi’s cabinet, and during the annual March 1937 personnel assignments Umezu transferred Ishiwara’s backers from Tokyo. Those who remained and supported rearmament would soon split with Ishiwara over China policy.
Although overshadowed by the murderous factional struggles occurring in the war ministry and general staff, line units stationed in Japan went about their normal peacetime routines. Between 1927 and 1937, the army gradually modernized its weapons and equipment. An advanced 75mm Type 90 field artillery piece boasting increased range and a more accurate projectile entered the forces in 1930, forming with the 105mm Type 10 howitzer and 75mm pack mountain artillery (disassembled for transport on pack animals) the standard division’s artillery complement. More than tactical reasons dictated the weapons procurement. To modernize the forces, the army needed to replace about 2,000 artillery guns of all calibers. A mixed government arsenal–private sector steel company consortium produced the new artillery weapons, but because of technological and manufacturing limitations most were the lighter caliber weapons. Put simply, Japan’s industrial base was incapable of manufacturing large quantities of heavy artillery. It took, for example, eight months to manufacture one 150mm Type 15 cannon and eighteen months to produce a 240mm Type 24 howitzer, and the army did not believe that it had that much time.79
Likewise, the supply of artillery shells was well below projected operational requirements. During 1936 government arsenals manufactured less than one-tenth of the projected wartime consumption rates. Live-fire training was rare because of munitions restrictions and consequently emphasized quality rather than quantity, with a doctrine of “one round, one hit.” Training exercises lacked variety and suffered from the scarcity of suitable artillery firing ranges in crowded Japan.80 Industrial and manufacturing backwardness similarly affected motorization and armor.
Motorization was costly, dependent on foreign supply, and of dubious value on the primitive roads of northeast Asia. Military estimates that 250,000 trucks were needed to put the army on wheels were far beyond the fledgling Japanese automobile industry’s capability, which until 1933 annually manufactured fewer than 1,000 automobiles. Tanks also were in short supply. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) seemed to expose the tank’s limited off-road mobility, and smaller tanks light enough to cross unbridged rivers on pontoons or ferries were deemed more appropriate for the North China and Manchurian terrain. Amidst this uncertainty, the army was unwilling to invest heavily in an expensive but unproven weapon. Furthermore, the decision in 1936 to expand the army’s air arm and homeland air defense network shifted resources, capital, and technology to aeronautical projects. Japan’s industrial base could not simultaneously mass produce aircraft, vehicles, and tanks. As late as 1939, factories were manufacturing an average of twenty-eight tanks (all models) per month.81
But dwelling too long on force modernization obscures the fact that the army had tailored itself to operate in East Asia. By mid-1937 the army had a well-honed tactical and operational doctrine crafted over two decades to win the opening battles of a future war quickly and decisively. It numbered approximately 247,000 officers and men arrayed in an order of battle of 17 active infantry divisions, four tank regiments, and 54 air squadrons with 549 aircraft. The China Garrison Army and Taiwan Garrison Army each had two infantry regiments, and there was a separate independent mixed brigade in Manchuria.82 Two divisions were permanently stationed in Korea and four others assigned on a rotating basis to the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo (the puppet regime in Manchuria). The balance were in the home garrison. A large pool of reservists and partially trained replacements were available upon mobilization to fill out peacetime table of organization and equipment (TO&E) units to their wartime strength.
Although predominantly an infantry force, the army’s conventional combined-arms (infantry-artillery) divisions were similar in composition to European and U.S. counterparts. The triangular division had organic field artillery for shock and firepower effect. The army had operational contingency plans to fight all its major hypothetical opponents and was embarked on an ambitious rearmament plan to refit and modernize its forces. It had
popular backing, in large measure because of the state values that schools inculcated in students and the army’s penetration to the grassroots level through organizations like the Imperial Reservists Association, youth training groups, and military training in schools. The army had shown its muscle in the political arena by tacitly and actively supporting illegal plots and coups overseas and at home, by openly meddling in national administrative and economic matters, and by interfering in the political process of selecting prime ministers.
Among the competing elites, the army had capitalized on the volatile international situation, domestic terrorism, internal factionalism, and political party weakness to emerge as the premier power broker in Japan. But it was never powerful enough to impose its will on the navy or for that matter entirely on the civilian cabinet. Army authorities blustered, intimidated, and demanded, but they ended up compromising with other elites. Rhetoric about national defense planning and transcendental civilian cabinets aside, in mid-1937 there was no integrated national defense strategy. There was no coherent and realistic rearmament plan. There was no joint operational planning. Nothing linked doctrine, operations, military budgets, hypothetical opponents, or future war. Still, on balance, it was a very good army, appropriately armed and equipped for limited warfare on the northeast Asia continent.
10
The Pivotal Years, 1937–1941
Since the 1911 Chinese revolution Japanese army officers had repeatedly interfered in China’s internal affairs. They worked with Chinese and Manchurian warlords during the turmoil that accompanied the new Chinese republic, served as military advisers to various Chinese factions, promoted instability, assassinated Zhang Zuolin, and conspired to seize Manchuria. After occupying Manchuria, Japanese field armies redoubled their efforts to subvert the authority of China’s Nationalist government by promoting regional autonomy movements in North China.1 In reaction to Japanese aggressiveness, the Soviet Union bolstered its military forces in the Soviet Far East. By early 1936 Manchuria was a Japanese strategic liability, a salient flanked on three sides by Soviet territory with an open western flank nominally under Chinese Nationalist control. Furthermore, the field armies’ heavy-handedness unleashed latent Chinese patriotism and nationalism against Japan and helped bring together the warring Guomindang and insurgent Chinese Communists who were unwilling to accept Japanese domination of North China and Manchuria.
Slipping into War
Tokyo’s traditional response to the outbreak of serious incidents in China was to deploy troops from homeland garrisons, deal with the localized emergency, and then withdraw. Faced with resurgent Chinese nationalism, the Chinese Communist expansion north of the Yellow River in February 1936, and the spread of anti-Japanese agitation, the army’s revised contingency plans called for occupying North China’s five provinces, securing the Shanghai area by outflanking the city’s defenses with an amphibious landing, and then seizing the Nationalists’ capital at Nanjing. General staff officers sympathetic to Col. Ishiwara viewed the hard-line approach as counterproductive because it interfered with long-term plans for rearmament and army modernization. Prime Minister Hirota agreed and adopted a more conciliatory policy toward China, but his initiatives soon unraveled.2
Since 1933 the Kwantung Army had been promoting Inner Mongolian independence to create yet another puppet regime. In January 1936, Lt. Col. Tanaka Ryūkichi, then attached to the Kwantung Army, was advising a pro-Japanese military faction in Inner Mongolia. In midsummer he secretly raised a puppet army to oust Nationalist forces from neighboring Suiyuan and, with the clandestine backing of the Kwantung Army, launched an unauthorized invasion of eastern Suiyuan in mid-November. It failed miserably, giving the Nationalists a much-needed victory, causing elation among the Chinese press and population, and creating still more intense Chinese hatred of Japanese aggression.3
Meantime, in September 1936 the general staff decided to preempt major outbreaks in North China with a show of force. Should that fail, field commanders had orders to act decisively and rely on rapid maneuver and shock action to settle outbreaks locally as quickly as possible with the minimum forces necessary. The army considered no other countermeasures, so armed intervention in North China, even against minor flare-ups, became an all or nothing proposition.4
A minor skirmish erupted on the night of July 7, 1937, between Japanese and Chinese forces that were stationed near the Marco Polo Bridge outside Peking. The local Japanese commander, Col. Mutaguchi Renya, was a fire-eater who subscribed to the theory popular among army officers that weakness only encouraged Chinese aggressiveness. He reacted to the skirmish by unilaterally escalating the fighting, thereby setting off the powder keg in North China.
Cabinet and military authorities in Tokyo originally adopted a nonexpansionist policy, anticipating a local settlement. Four days after the incident, however, army intelligence reported that Chiang Kai-shek was sending reinforcements to North China, causing the general staff to reinforce the China Garrison Army with units from Korea and Manchuria. Chief of Staff Prince Kan’in and War Minister Gen. Sugiyama Hajime informed Hirohito that the war would be over in a month. The less sanguine emperor wondered what would happen if the Soviet Union attacked Manchuria while Japan was mired in China.5
With neither the Chinese nor the Japanese willing to back down, local clashes soon escalated into multidivision engagements. By the end of July, Japanese reinforcements had driven Chinese forces from Peking and Tianjin as Tokyo mobilized upwards of 200,000 troops. On August 1, the Third Fleet evacuated Japanese citizens from Shanghai because of rising tensions in the city.
The general staff and war ministry were divided over how to handle the latest incident. The former favored a negotiated settlement to limit the fighting whereas the latter argued that a rapid escalation and a short, decisive campaign would eliminate the Chinese threat to Japan’s strategic western flank. As the fighting intensified, the hawks gained prominence as more and more army divisions sailed for China to fight an undeclared war. Massive escalation raised questions about the need for a formal declaration of war against China, and the civilian cabinet pushed for the establishment of an imperial general headquarters in hopes of controlling military operations.
Establishing Imperial Headquarters
Memories of civilian meddling during the undeclared war in Siberia made the general staff suspicious that politicians and civilian ministers would again interfere in military affairs. Staff officers consequently opposed the formation of imperial headquarters without a formal declaration of war. Prime Minister Konoe and some officers in the war ministry also wanted a formal declaration of war, the former because it was appropriate under international law and the latter to preserve operational independence. A joint study, however, concluded that an official announcement would threaten Japan’s international access to trade and raw materials, which in turn would adversely affect national security.6 Thus the emperor opened the Imperial Diet’s 72d Extraordinary Session on September 4, 1937, by describing Japanese determination to resolve the China “Incident.”
That October, after major fighting had engulfed North China and spread to Shanghai, the field armies again requested a formal declaration of war to enable the army to control Chinese customs revenues, postal systems, and financial services in its zones of occupation. An official break would also encourage the formation of pro-Japanese regimes and end the general staff’s restrictions on military operations. A special cabinet subcommittee chaired by the head of the Cabinet Planning Board decided the following month that the advantages of an undeclared war, particularly in international trade, outweighed any disadvantages. Separate studies by the war, navy, and foreign ministries reached the same conclusion.7
The undeclared war likewise complicated the activation of imperial general headquarters (IGHQ). By mid-October, Konoe was increasingly frustrated by the army’s unilateral actions that routinely bypassed his cabinet and believed that an imperial headquarters could unify civil-military control of the inci
dent. The war ministry’s military affairs bureau recommended a centralized policy mechanism to enable civilian and military cabinet ministers as well as the president of the privy council to coordinate the overall war effort. The general staff believed this would only encourage excessive civilian interference in the prerogative of supreme command, and the navy, fearful that the army might use the new headquarters to overrule civilian policy, would only endorse a headquarters to coordinate, not plan, joint operations.8
With matters at an impasse, in mid-November the military affairs bureau director notified the war minister that an imperial headquarters was immediately needed to reassert the general staff’s authority over the field commanders. New legislation amended the statutory provision that a state of war be declared to establish the IGHQ (the new ordinance stipulated war or incident). As constituted on November 27, 1937, imperial general headquarters excluded the prime minister and civilian cabinet officials from military deliberations, leaving operational matters firmly under the services’ control.
Imperial headquarters was divided into army and navy sections directed by the chiefs of the general staff for both services who were the emperor’s highest advisers on operational matters. The respective staffs came from the directors and selected subordinates of the more important bureaus and departments of the war and navy ministries and the army and navy general staffs. Service leaders agreed beforehand on military policy before seeking the emperor’s authorization at special imperial conferences held at IGHQ (Daihon’ei gozen kaigi) that included the emperor and his senior military officials and dealt exclusively with military matters. Eight such sessions were held between November 1937 and May 1943 (see Table 10.1).9
A liaison conference composed of the two service chiefs of staff, the two service ministers, the prime and foreign ministers and other civilian officials (Daihon’ei seifu renraku kaigi) followed the IGHQ conference to coordinate military and civilian policy. The members of the liaison conference could also meet in the presence of the emperor to ratify their consensus on major national policies. These meetings were imperial conferences (gozen kaigi), fifteen of which were held between January 1938 and August 1945. Throughout the period, however, IGHQ was the military policy-making apparatus and senior operational headquarters.10
Japan's Imperial Army Page 28