Japan's Imperial Army

by Edward J Drea

  In North China the Japanese army likewise depended on indigenous Chinese units to provide local security. A series of strongpoints were constructed along major roads and railroads, many manned by puppet Chinese troops, while Japanese garrison divisions—specially configured light infantry units without field artillery or motorized transport—periodically swept through the more dangerous Communist-infested areas to deny the guerrillas a safe haven. This “point and line” strategy coupled with punitive raids was somewhat effective against traditional hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

  In the aftermath of the Hundred Regiments Offensive of late 1940, the North China Area Army moved from a passive strategy of blockade to an active counterguerrilla strategy based on terror, forced relocation, and plunder. Its subordinate First Army routinely executed Chinese males between the ages of 16 and 60 with impunity on the premise that guerrillas often disguised themselves as locals. Hamlets suspected of sheltering guerrillas were burned to the ground. In July 1941 the NCAA’s three-year plan to restore order and eliminate guerrillas consisted of destroying villages, forcibly relocating villagers, and confiscating crops and food for the purpose of depopulating zones to deny guerrillas sustenance.64 The Chinese mordantly nicknamed it the “Three All” policy—“kill all, burn all, loot all”—an appropriate description of the hundreds of small punitive campaigns that brought destruction and misery to North China well into 1943. Given the upsurge in counterguerrilla operations, IGHQ’s revised January 16, 1941, policy called for fewer troop reductions from China spread over a longer period, leaving at least half a million troops there for the foreseeable future.65

  At the strategic level, IGHQ relied on a combination naval blockade and aerial bombardment of China’s cities to break the Chinese Central Government’s will. Limited multidivision amphibious operations in early 1941 sealed many of south China’s harbors, disrupted coastal traffic, and cut overland supply routes for Chiang’s armies. Army aircraft normally struck tactical targets within specific ground areas of operations. Naval land-based bombers spearheaded sustained bombing campaigns against Chongqing, Kunming, and other major cities that drove their populations into underground shelters and wrecked Nationalist efforts to construct an industrial base and arms industry. Navy planners had concluded that strategic air strikes would contribute to naval control of the China coast and inland waterways, especially the Yangzi River.

  By the summer of 1941, with its strategic focus shifting to preparations for a Pacific war, the navy began withdrawing its bomber force from China, giving respite to Chongqing and other cities. The army, with a few exceptions such as the amphibious operations in south China that complemented the blockade strategy, avoided large-scale ground operations and concentrated on security operations by cleaning the occupied areas of anti-Japanese or anti–Wang Jingwei elements.66

  The imperial headquarters sanctioned limited ground campaigns insofar as they preempted Chinese operations and disrupted enemy troop concentrations. Invariably, the Chinese traded space for time in a series of indecisive campaigns in north and central China during the first half of 1941. Japanese troops repeatedly reconquered the same places only to withdraw after a few days, knowing that they would soon be back. In April 1941 the new commander of the Eleventh Army, Lt. Gen. Anami Korechika, frustrated by the futility of these back-and-forth forays, proposed to capture Changsha, destroy the 300,000-strong GMD armies defending the city, and seize China’s granary. These blows would, he believed, end the China war.

  By that time, however, international pressure compelled a reassessment of Japan’s strategic goals and the means available to achieve them. In January 1941 the United States had embargoed copper and brass shipments to Japan. Tokyo’s attempts to secure oil from the Netherlands East Indies had foundered as the Dutch stalled repeatedly in the negotiations. In mid-June, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had announced that domestic oil shortages compelled the United States to stop shipping oil to Japan from U.S. East Coast ports.67

  Large segments of Japan’s civilian economy had already converted from civilian to military production, and the dislocations created shortages of consumer goods. Gasoline rationing had started in March 1938, and charcoal-burning automobiles appeared that June. Leather goods were scarce because of military requirements, and government-sponsored campaigns urged citizens to avoid luxury items and buy war bonds for the family and state. The cabinet imposed price controls in September 1939, which encouraged black marketeering. It simultaneously raised prices on tobacco, a government monopoly. Matches and sugar were rationed beginning in June 1940. In April 1941 the six major cities began rationing rice.68 In other words, belt tightening was a harsh fact of daily life as the seemingly endless China war dragged on.

  Foreign Minister Matsuoka tried to end the war by enlisting the USSR in a tripartite commercial pact with Japan and Germany to form an economic bloc that would isolate the United States and also end the Soviets’ considerable aid to China. During Matsuoka’s late March 1941 visit to Berlin his Nazi hosts showed no interest and instead pressed him to attack Singapore immediately. Matsuoka then turned to Moscow, where he concluded a neutrality pact with Joseph Stalin. Although it was not the nonaggression pact he sought, Matsuoka accepted the hero’s welcome he received in Japan. In truth, all he had accomplished was to annoy Germany, appease the Soviet Union, and displease the United States.69 Within weeks Matsuoka’s flamboyant diplomacy turned to ashes.

  The mid-April 1941 neutrality pact with the USSR seemingly secured Japan’s northern flank, made a southward advance possible, and gave Japan more leverage in its ongoing negotiations with the United States. But the deteriorating relations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union threw Japanese plans into disarray. Retired lieutenant general Baron Ōshima Hiroshi, the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, reported in April the likelihood of a German attack on the Soviet Union. Ōshima’s subsequent warnings—especially one of June 5 that recounted a meeting with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who told him that war was imminent—prompted a series of inconclusive meetings in mid-June among army, navy, and foreign ministry officials.70

  If Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Vice Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Tsukada Osamu and IGHQ’s war guidance section wanted to move into southern Indochina, the operations department favored preparations to attack either north or south depending on the situation, and the war ministry’s military affairs bureau supported military action against the western powers in East Asia. Fearing that the army would unilaterally attack Siberia, navy leaders stepped up their advocacy of a southern advance to forestall such an eventuality. An emotional Matsuoka demanded an immediate attack on the USSR. Prime Minister Konoe was left with the army’s divided estimate, a mercurial foreign minister, and a policy in disarray.71

  Following the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the general staff adopted a wait-and-see attitude, essentially to enter the fighting only if the Soviet Union was in danger of collapse—“falling into Japanese hands like a ripe persimmon,” as the staff put it. That time would come when the Soviets pulled one-half their 30 divisions and two-thirds of their 2,800 aircraft from the Far East. According to the general staff’s two-stage 22-division contingency plan, the remaining 15 Soviet divisions, judged the equivalent of 11 Japanese divisions, then would be outnumbered two-to-one. Stage one would mobilize 16 divisions to wartime strength; stage two would add 6 more divisions, including 2 from the China front.72

  The mobilization requirements were staggering. The 12 divisions currently in Manchuria would need 500,000 more troops in addition to their associated animal transport, supplies, and equipment to reach wartime strength. To move those forces to the continent would require at least 800,000 tons of shipping, tie up one-third of Japan’s domestic railroad capacity, and monopolize the entire resources of the South Manchurian Railway, Japan’s quasi-official rail line in Manchuria, for two months.

  The June 25 liaison conference temporized about the Soviet Union while continuing preparations to move
north or south. Conferees did, however, agree to use military force if the French refused demands to station Japanese troops in southern Indochina. That same day, IGHQ’s operations division laid out a mobilization timeline that required a cabinet decision for war with the Soviets no later than August 10 in order to give the army sufficient time to concentrate the massive forces in their forward assembly areas. The latest the invasion could begin was September 10 because the campaign had to be concluded by mid-October before the harsh Siberian winter closed in and made large-unit operations impossible.73 The preconditions mandated the classic short, decisive campaign to eliminate the northern threat to Japan.

  Hawks on the general staff wanted to strike the USSR immediately, but the war ministry disagreed, fearing the army would be trapped in a protracted war of attrition and lose its strategic flexibility to move south. The war ministry also restricted the troop basis to 16 divisions because of fears that the Kwantung Army, with 22 divisions, might resort to its notorious propensity for unilateral action and drag Japan into war with the Soviet Union.74 Surely the ghosts of Nomonhan motivated the cautious officers in the war ministry’s military affairs branch who advocated moving south.

  Germany urged Japan to attack the Soviet Union on June 30 and again on July 2, but the July 2 imperial conference only endorsed the continuation of secret preparations for war against the USSR for the time being. The fateful conference further agreed that in order to achieve its objectives in the southern regions, Japan would not hesitate to fight the United States and Britain. Thus the army was simultaneously preparing for operations in Southeast and Northeast Asia while fighting an open-ended war in China.

  Three days later, operations department chief Maj. Gen. Tanaka Shin’ichi convinced Tōjō to deploy two homeland divisions (50,000 men at wartime strength) plus logistical and support troops to Manchuria to sustain the Kwantung Army’s buildup. Hirohito approved the mobilization on July 7 despite misgivings that troops were being scattered everywhere without a clear strategic purpose. To preserve secrecy, the call-up was code-named the Kwantung Army Special Maneuvers and army authorities prohibited the usual neighborhood send-offs and public tributes to the recalled reservists. But the disappearance of so many military-age men from the streets and workplace made it impossible to conceal.75

  By mid-July, the Soviets still had not transferred as many troops to the west as the general staff had expected, and doubts had crept into army thinking about the Germans’ ability to wrap up the war by year’s end.76Amidst this uncertainty over the northern front, the Twenty-fifth Army moved into southern Indochina.

  Under the pressure of an ultimatum, on July 21 the French allowed Japanese troops to occupy southern French Indochina. Unlike the earlier occupation of northern French Indochina, designed to blockade China, the move into southern Indochina signaled Japan’s intentions to acquire advance air and staging bases to wage war against British and Dutch possessions to the south and the Americans’ Philippine colony. The navy insisted on including the Philippines in order to protect the sea-lanes from the Netherlands East Indies to Japan.

  Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama justified the risks to Hirohito because it would be difficult to settle the China Incident without striking Britain and the United States. In response to the latest Japanese aggression, on July 26 President Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in the United States, and five days later, after Japanese troops had actually moved into southern Indochina, he embargoed oil exports to Japan. Although it is often remarked that this forced the navy to decide on war, it should be remembered that the army had less than two years of oil stocks for its air, mechanized, and motorized units.77

  On July 31, Hirohito questioned Sugiyama about canceling the Kwantung Army mobilization because it had generated international ill will toward Japan, worsened the nation’s strategic position, and likely accounted for the Soviets’ reluctance to redeploy troops to the west. Stopping the mobilization before the Kwantung Army reached its wartime strength, Sugiyama replied, might encourage a preemptive Soviet attack. Besides, the mobilized units could serve as a strategic reserve for contingencies in the southern regions.78 The next day Hirohito reluctantly authorized the mobilization to continue.

  By early August, however, national policy was shifting, partly in response to the economic freeze being applied to Japan by western powers, partly because of the allure of Southeast Asia, and partly because the army was less confident about the possibility of a German victory over the USSR occurring during 1941. The general staff became more amenable to war ministry proposals to avoid provocations, remain neutral, and wait until the Soviets were near collapse before entering the war. Furthermore, the China Expeditionary Army commander, Gen. Hata Shunroku, opposed the withdrawal of any of his divisions to reinforce the Kwantung Army, and Gen. Anami was still clamoring to attack Changsha. Accordingly, on August 9 the general staff decided against attacking the Soviet Union in 1941; instead the sixteen mobilized divisions would remain in a high state of readiness and operations in China would continue. The general staff would plan a spring 1942 offensive against the Soviet Far East and concurrently complete preparations for war with Britain and the United States by the end of November 1941.79

  The general staff and war ministry well understood the enormous latent power of the United States, but they expected that it would take the Americans several years to bring that full potential to bear. During the interval Japan could secure the territory and resources it needed to fight a protracted war from advantageous forward positions.80 Because the U.S. military had already started its buildup (national conscription was approved for one year in September 1940 and later extended, army expansion began in May 1940 with the National Guard federalized that August, and the pace of naval construction sharply increased in June), the sooner Japan acted, the better, because time was on the Americans’ side.

  Even with the China war steadily draining Japan’s military and industrial capability, the September 6 imperial conference decided that for self-defense and national survival the services would complete preparations for war with the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands by October. Meanwhile, negotiations would continue on a parallel track, but if diplomacy proved unsuccessful by mid-October, Japan would opt for war. Around the same time opinion makers popularized the idea that the ABCD (American-British-Chinese-Dutch) encirclement of Japan threatened its livelihood and existence. This interpretation refocused popular resentment over shortages of all kinds from the government to sinister foreign conspiracies.81

  The termination of the Kwantung special exercise also unleashed new operations in China. IGHQ gave Anami the green light to attack Changsha in late August, which four of his divisions captured by late September. When threatened by Chinese counterattacks, they withdrew to their original positions in early October. An aggressive commander, Anami had previously proposed to capture Chongqing, an operation of unquestioned boldness but limited practicality. The Guomindang capital was about 270 miles upriver from the westernmost Japanese outpost on the Yangzi and sheltered by narrow gorges and mountains that made any attack a daunting prospect. Still, IGHQ took the plan under advisement.

  The expanded fighting in China was directly linked to Japan’s deteriorating relations with the western powers, particularly the United States. At an October 14 cabinet meeting Konoe suggested that diplomacy had to address the issue of Japanese troops in China. Tōjō exploded, angrily denounced American demands that Japan withdraw its troops from China, and asserted that such a policy would wreck any chance for a settlement, endanger Manchukuo, and threaten the security of Korea. He emotionally invoked the spirits of Japan’s war dead, their grieving families, and the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers to reject what he termed the diplomacy of surrender. Despite the war minister’s bellicosity, when the navy notified the army the same day of its wartime operational schedule, army officers were caught off guard because they had no corresponding plans for ground operations.82 Four days later, Konoe’s thi
rd cabinet collapsed.

  Hirohito rejected Prince Higashikuni, the army’s nominee for prime minister, because he wanted to shield the imperial house from any responsibility should war with the West occur.83 Instead Tōjō became prime minister, based on the assumption that he could control the army just as he had reasserted discipline after the Indochina crisis. When appointing Tōjō, Hirohito instructed him not to be bound by the September 6 imperial conference decision, allowing the new prime minister a fresh start.

  Although staged (in the original film a cameraman is standing upright at lower left), this February 1939 photo taken on the Peking-Wuhan rail line conveys the immensity of the Japanese army’s task in controlling the vast Chinese countryside. (Courtesy Mainichi shimbun)

  At the November 1 liaison conference, a seventeen-hour marathon, despite reservations from the foreign and finance ministers it was the navy’s argument that it was better to go to war sooner rather than later that carried the meeting. The emperor and the navy focused on insuring the empire’s survival whereas the army and the government concentrated on establishing a new order in greater East Asia. Preparations for war continued, but if diplomacy succeeded the army could recall troops as late as December 1. Henceforth the army regarded diplomatic talks with the Americans as mere camouflage to mask Japan’s final preparations for war.84

  The November 5 imperial conference formally ratified the liaison conference decision to continue negotiations until December 1, after which Japan would go to war with the West. Adm. Nagano Osami told Hirohito that Japan could fight the Americans and British for two years, but after that he had no guarantees. Sugiyama was confident that if Japan could maintain its maritime line of communication it could build an invincible position. After the session, they presented their respective operational plans to Hirohito, including a detailed account of the Pearl Harbor attack and, with imperial approval, dispatched orders to the responsible commanders.85