Hirohito’s role in operational deliberations and in policy formulation remains controversial, some claiming he rubber-stamped military policy, others that he initiated it. There is no doubt that Hirohito tried to influence policy, but he rarely displayed the type of leadership associated with strong wartime leaders. Rather, he questioned details to indicate his inclinations during the policy process. A lack of information also restricted the emperor. The privy seal and courtiers were well connected and gathered information from a number of sources. But they were few in number compared to the service staffs’ and civilian ministries’ bureaucracies. Those agencies offered the emperor selective, and sometimes contradictory, data in order to gain imperial support for their programs. Hirohito thus often operated on incomplete or biased information, and sometimes in near isolation.11 Perhaps a stronger leader could have brought the ministries and staffs into line, but that person would not be Hirohito.
Table 10.1. Imperial Conferences at Imperial General Headquarters, 1937–1943
Date
Event
Nov. 24, 1937
Army/navy report on operational plans to emperor
Feb. 16, 1938
Outline of China operations for summer/fall 1938
June 15, 1938
Wuhan operation approved
Jan. 13, 1939
Hainan Island occupation approved
Dec. 31, 1942
Guadalcanal withdrawal approved
March 5, 1943
1943 operational policy approved
March 26, 1943
Eighth Area Army (Rabaul) established
May 20, 1943
Aleutians withdrawal approved
Source: Yamada Akira, Daigensui Shōwa tennō [Generalissimo Shōwa emperor] (Tokyo: Shin Nihon shuppansha, 1994), 70–72.
The first imperial general headquarters conference convened on the palace grounds on November 24, 1937, attended by the service chiefs of staff, the vice chiefs of staff, the operations division directors of the respective general staffs, and the war and navy ministers. The chiefs of staff informed the emperor that the military was reestablishing security, not expanding operations, in North China; that the army was pursuing the disorganized Chinese in central China and considering the capture of Nanjing; and that naval air raids were interdicting railroads in South China. They sought no imperial decision regarding pending plans or operations, and the emperor asked no questions.12
Later that afternoon the first IGHQ government liaison conference met at the prime minister’s official residence, where the prime minister, both service ministers, and their deputies discussed limiting operations in China because of the Soviet threat and the possibility of U.S. or British intervention. The fragmented system satisfied no one and made coordination between the civilian cabinet members and the military complex and time consuming. With the services unwilling to reveal, much less discuss, operational plans, the liaison conference was discontinued in early 1938 and replaced by a four- or five-minister conference system until Konoe revived the liaison conference as a policy-coordinating entity in late November 1940. Between then and February 1944 it convened 145 times, initially every Thursday at the prime minister’s official residence.13
The War in China
The undeclared war in China was primarily a struggle between ground forces fought over an area equivalent in size to the United States east of the Mississippi River. The vastness of the countryside rendered a contiguous defensive line impossible, and it abetted the army’s aggressive tactical and operational doctrine to sweep swiftly around or outflank Chinese strong points. But these same geographical conditions that conferred operational advantages simultaneously imposed extraordinary requirements on the army’s long-neglected logistical system. Supply problems were endemic, logistics support always teetered on the edge of collapse, and operations were usually conducted on a logistical shoestring.
In strictly military terms, operational guidance and official tactical doctrine were validated but evolved in an ad hoc fashion, lurching from campaign to campaign with little if any linkage toward a strategic military goal, much less an integrated national objective. Diplomats worked to resolve the crisis while field commanders demanded greater operational autonomy to expand the war. Attempts by the cabinet and general staff to limit the fighting foundered. IGHQ’s creation did not unify the command structure.
The Japanese axis of attack to secure North China raced down two parallel main rail lines—the Tianjin-Pukou route on the east, and the Peking-Wuhan route on the west. Logistics doctrine dictated that the field armies operate within a 150–180 mile radius of a railhead to ensure a reliable line of communication. Whenever units moved beyond this zone, resupply and sustainment declined, often dangerously so. The First Army drove south from Peking while the Second Army was to move south then swing west to trap Chinese forces between the two armies north of the Hutuo River in a massive double envelopment. Tokyo activated the North China Area Army (NCAA) on August 26, 1937, to control and coordinate the two armies.
In August heavy fighting erupted in Shanghai, where Chiang Kai-shek opened a second front, hoping to overwhelm the Japanese units stationed near the city. Hirohito initially wanted to send two divisions to Shanghai to show Japanese resolve, control the dangerous situation, and prevent further escalation. The general staff, however, refused to commit any reinforcements while the army was so heavily engaged in North China, fearing that dividing its forces might encourage the Soviets to enter the war. Only when Nationalist forces threatened to drive the lightly armed Japanese naval infantry from the city in mid-August did the general staff deploy three divisions to Shanghai and activate the Shanghai Expeditionary Army. The emperor then asked his chiefs of staff about the possibility of massing forces to deliver a knockout blow to end the fighting.14 Chiang was also thinking along the same lines and poured in more reinforcements (eventually seventy divisions) for a decisive battle.
Both sides avoided combat in the city, the site of significant foreign commercial, financial, and administrative interests. Japan wanted to prevent an open clash with the western powers, and China could not afford to alienate them. As a consequence, major fighting occurred north and west of Shanghai, where reinforced army units tried to break through well-fortified Chinese positions. Unable to dislodge the determined Chinese defenders and suffering severe losses, the general staff in mid-September ordered three more divisions to Shanghai to break the stalemate. Gen. Matsui Iwane, recalled from retirement to command the much-strengthened Shanghai Expeditionary Army, massed his reinforcements for an unimaginative frontal attack that quickly broke down before the skillfully sited Chinese fortifications that took maximum advantage of numerous creeks crisscrossing the area to disrupt and destroy the attackers. Infantrymen fought desperately for a few hundred yards of ground; both sides suffered severely, and both committed more reserves and replacements, but neither could break the cycle of attrition warfare.
In early October the general staff ordered the North China Area Army to destroy Chinese forces throughout Shanxi to eliminate the threat to Japan’s western flank. It also transferred two NCAA divisions to Shanghai service and activated the Tenth Army on October 20 to conduct an amphibious envelopment southwest of the city. Ten days later, the general staff created the Central China Area Army to oversee the Shanghai campaign. By early November repeated Japanese assaults had broken through China’s last line of defense west of Shanghai, and on November 4 the Tenth Army landed more than three divisions south of the city, threatened to encircle the Chinese, and forced Chiang to withdraw the remnants of his badly mauled armies to avoid annihilation. Losses for the four-month Shanghai fighting were enormous: more than 40,000 Japanese and perhaps 200,000 Chinese were killed, wounded, or missing.
Casualties of this magnitude shocked the Japanese public. Tokyo police had to be called to disperse angry demonstrators surrounding the home of a regimental commander whose unit had suffered heavy losses at Shanghai. In Shikoku the wido
w of another regimental commander killed at Shanghai committed suicide, unable to bear the stream of vituperation directed at her late husband.15
As Japanese ground forces pushed southward through North China and fought their way around Shanghai, Kwantung Army units and the NCAA’s strategic reserve, the 5th Division, opened a third major offensive that occupied Chahar northwest of Peking. Operations went smoothly at first as Japanese mechanized forces and aircraft opened the way for mobile infantry columns moving along the Peking-Suiyuan railroad. In mid-September, however, the 5th Division suffered a tactical setback in the mountainous terrain at Pingxingguan, where the Central Army and Chinese Communist troops bloodied the Japanese before being forced to withdraw.
Japanese columns overran much of North China but failed to destroy the Chinese armies, which withdrew inland, leaving the overextended Japanese with the prospect of still more territory to occupy. The general staff’s repeated attempts to limit operations had foundered when field commanders insisted on bolder offensives to annihilate the Chinese armies. Believing that the capture of the Guomindang capital at Nanjing would force Chiang to negotiate, the Tenth Army spearheaded the 170-mile march upriver from Shanghai in mid-November. Officers issued orders to torch buildings and homes along the way that might shelter Chinese troops and, because of the danger that mufti-clad Chinese soldiers might infiltrate their lines, to deal severely with all Chinese civilians suspected of aiding the enemy.16 By December 10 rapidly moving Japanese infantry had reached the towering 50-foot-high brick walls that encased Nanjing.
Fighting continued in the city for the next three days as Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly changed his mind about the defense of the capital, which was not formally surrendered and added to the chaos that overtook the doomed city. When the Chinese defenders finally retreated in confusion, Japanese troops sacked the city and perpetrated one of the most notorious war crimes of the twentieth century as they pillaged, raped, and murdered Chinese prisoners of war and civilians in the notorious Rape of Nanjing. “Since our policy is not to take prisoners,” the 16th Division commander wrote, “we made a point of executing them as soon as we captured them.”17 Estimates of the total numbers of Chinese deaths remain contentious; the Chinese claim upwards of 300,000 victims whereas Japanese counterparts suggest a range from a few thousand to around 100,000.18
Whatever the precise figures, this was more than a breakdown of discipline brought on by the heavy losses suffered during the Shanghai fighting. The 16th Division, which perpetrated some of the worst atrocities at Nanjing, did not fight in Shanghai and had suffered relatively light casualties.19 This suggests that the army targeted the civilian population as a critical component of a total war and applied indiscriminate terror to cow the Chinese into submission.
Despite Japanese conquests, the terror at Nanjing and elsewhere, and a sustained bombing offensive, the Chinese did not submit. The Guomindang relocated its capital to Wuhan on the Yangzi River in central China, and Chiang’s Central Army withdrew deeper into the vast hinterland beyond the immediate reach of Japanese military might. The fall of Nanjing had not brought an end to the China war, and the news of widespread Japanese atrocities hardened Chinese resistance. Although often outmaneuvering their foes, the army had neither enough troops nor operational mobility to seal their envelopments. Chinese armies repeatedly escaped through gaps in the attempted encirclements, and Japanese field commanders constantly pressured the general staff and the IGHQ to extend the area of operations ever deeper into China.
The Mobilized Army
By the end of 1937 the army had sixteen divisions and 600,000 men committed to China operations with no end in sight. Imperial army forces in central China were exhausted, worn down by heavy casualties, insufficient ammunition stocks, and inadequate logistic support. IGHQ temporarily stood down major operations in central China in order to reconstitute, refit, and restore discipline in the ranks. It also needed the respite to mobilize ten new divisions in the home islands by mid-1938 and convert essential industries to wartime production schedules. Hirohito sanctioned this policy at a February 16, 1938, IGHQ imperial conference. The army accordingly would avoid large-scale operations while it secured the occupied zones.20
To replace losses, the army almost doubled draft calls for 1938 and mobilized tens of thousands of reserves. By the late summer of 1938, mobilization had doubled the prewar seventeen-division force structure; twenty-four (eight regular, sixteen reserve) of the army’s thirty-four divisions were fighting in China, eight were in Manchuria (seven of them regular), one regular division garrisoned in Korea, and the other (the Guard) remained in homeland reserve.
The recalled reservists were older men, often with wives and children, and most marched off for war in the summer of 1937 confidant that they would be back home in time to celebrate New Year’s Day 1938 with their families. Instead, as of August 1, 1938, just over 11 percent of Japanese soldiers in the China Expeditionary Army were regulars, 22.6 percent were from the first reserve (aged 24–28), 45.2 percent from the second reserve (aged 29–34), and 20.9 percent from the conscript reserve, the last consisting of untrained or semi-trained personnel used as replacements mainly in transport and logistical units (see Table 10.2).21
This distribution occurred because the general staff insisted that the regulars be immediately available in Manchuria or in homeland reserve for anticipated future operations against the Soviet Union. In other words, the army withdrew regular divisions from China for reconstitution in late 1937 and replaced them with mobilized reserve divisions (see Table 10.3).
Table 10.2. Conscription Figures, 1937–1940
Year
1937
1938
1939
1940
“A” Class
Examined
Conscripted
153,000
153,000
195,200
195,200
200,600
200,600
188,800
188,800
“B” Class
Examined
Conscripted
470,635
17,000
410,239
124,800
412,475
139,400
402,283
131,200
Total Cohort*
Conscripted
% Conscripted
742,422
170,000
22.9
720,761
320,000
44.4
729,852
340,000
46.6
703,670
320,000
45.6
*Includes “C,” “D,” and “F” categories, which accounted for no conscripts. Source: Kindai sensōshi gaisetsu, shiryō hen, 35, table 2–1-8, and 36, table 2–1-9.
Table 10.3. Regulars and Reserves on Active Duty, 1937–1940
1937
1938
1939
1940
Regulars
354,000
615,400
844,400
965,700
Reserves
595,000
514,600
395,600
384,300
Total
950,000
1,130,000
1,240,000
1,350,000
Source: Kindai sensoshi gaisetsu, shiryo hen, 35, table 2–1-8, and 36, table 2–1-9.
Army authorities blamed the reservists’ commitments to families and jobs for weakening their spiritual power and contributing to their poor discipline and criminal misconduct in China. In fact, recalled reservists were charged with four times as many criminal offensives as regulars in the first two years of the China war, and there was a widespread perception throughout the army that ill-disciplined reserves caused too many problems. Junior officers assigned to regular divisions in China believed the reserve units suffered from poor leadership, which contributed to their disciplinary problems.22
As the fighting expanded and the casualty lists lengthened, the Japanese home front’s expectations of the rewards of the war grew accordingly.23 After the fall of Nanjing, the Konoe cabinet adopted a harder line on peace terms, in part because the heavy losses (much like those during the Russo-Japanese War) provoked public demands for proportionate compensation in the form of concessions and indemnities. To address this issue and to obtain the emperor’s authorization to set national policy, on January 11, 1938, the first imperial conference convened on the palace grounds. Participants included military leaders and the prime and foreign ministers.
Neither the prime minister, navy minister, nor foreign minister wanted the session, but the Vice Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Tada Shun, believed imperial approval of a lenient policy would restrain the military hardliners in Tokyo and aggressive field army commanders. Following senior statesman Saionji Kinmochi’s advice that the government had already decided policy and therefore he need make no inquiries, Hirohito sat silently throughout the proceedings. Rather than a conciliatory approach that Tada had expected, there emerged a confirmation of the expansionists’ harshest demands, including reparations and an ultimatum to China.24 Five days later Konoe proclaimed that Japan would no longer deal with the Chiang government, leaving no one to negotiate with to end the fighting.
Japan's Imperial Army Page 29