NEVER BEATEN-YET

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 28 August 1942, Page 2

NEVER BEATEN-YET

THE JAPANESE ARMY

FAITH IN STRICT TRAINING To-day Japan controls an area stretching from Manchuria in the North to Malaya in the South, and from Ran goon on the Indian Ocean in the West to the Marshall Isles far out in the Pacific in the East. To day the Japanese army numbers close on two million men; it is organised on western lines, is well equipped with modern weapons from 36-ton tanks to tommy guns and employs dive-bombers and paratroops. Yet barely 70 years ago Japan had n 6 colonies and had conquered no terri tory; she had no national army and her feudal troops were still using bows and arrows, swords and halberds, said Major Hugh Winterborn in a B B C. broadcast Japan managed to transform her army from what was little more than a feudal rabble in 1860 to the highly trained and efficient army of to-day. For, make what excuses we like, the Japanese army has never had a serious defeat in its history, neither against Russia, nor against China, nor against ourselves, nor for that matter. America. No army that was not well trained and well led could have that record. What then is the secret of this unbroken run of success? To my mind it lies mainly in the mental, physical and technical training that the Japanese soldier receives. Japanese equipment is simple, efficient and plentiful. its very simplicity in some cases makes it superior in action to more complicated western weapons, but except possibly against the Chinese, the Japanese can never truthfully be said to have gained their successes solely because of superior equipment.

MEN BEFORE MACHINES A Japanese officer who had studied both in this country and in Germany once said to me, “To our way of thinking, your idea of what is an efficient army is all wrong. You think only of equipment: of machines rather than the men who fight. In Japan we believe that unless the soldier is trained as a fighter no machine on earth will enable us to win battles.” That is the keynote of Japanese training. A man who is ruthless, who maintains his offensive spirit in all circumstances, who is capable of sustained physical effort on the minimum of food, who is entirely regardless of personal comfort, who will fight on with no thought of retreat or surrender even though it means certain death, and who is capable of using whatever weapons he may be provided with, is the ideal soldier from a Japanese point of view, and for that matter, for ours as well. They have got very near that ideal but in doing so have produced an army that is not only efficient but is aLso dead to all moral decencies. Although this seems on the fac. of it to be a tiavesty of their code of honour, “bushido,” their behaviou* in Nanking, Hong Kong and in New Guinea is sufficient evidence of th' value of this code. Before he ever joins the army, the Japanese youth has learnt in his home of necessity the virtues of simple living and has received a rudimentary knowledge of the army from his military training school. EMPHASIS ON TRAINING From his first day in barracks until he is discharged or dies the Japanese soldier is being trained. His mental training aims at making him ruthless, impervious to the thought of death, and full of the spirit of attack at all times. One has only to ead newspaper accounts of Japanese actions where such phrases as “The Japanes showed an almost fanatical disregard of death” or "The enemy pushed cn regardless of the very heavy casualties inflicted on him” to realise that this mental training has beer, effective. There has been a tendency in the past to ascribe the undoubted bravery of many Japanese soldiers to some almost superhuman quality. It would be more accurate to ascribe it to the nearly subhuman nature of Japanese mentality. Although the number of Japanese who regard the Emperor as a god is probably now fairly small, the number who think of themselves solely as the servants of the Emperor, and who are completely contended to die in his service, is undoubtedly large. This attitude of mind is instilled into the Japanese soldier by constant repetition. Every day of his military life he has to read to him the Imperial rescript adjuring him to do his duty towards his Emperor and his country, until it becomes almost second nature to him to believe vhat to die in his Emperor’s service is the supreme honour. It is the same when it comes to instilling an offensive spirit into the soldier All his manuals deal far more fully with attack and pursuit than they do with defence. In all nis training whether it be platoon or higher training, one sees twenty attack schemes to every defensive one. This does not mean that the Japanese are incapable of fighting a defensive battle. They can, but they believe intensely that victory goes to the side that can keep on attacking longest whatever punishment it may receive.

PHYSICAL PREPARATION In peacetime the Japanese carry out their physical training more religiously perhaps than any other country*in the world. Anything which tends to soften the man, comforts in his barrack room, fancy food, excessive leisure, is ruthlessly cut out. His barracks are bare, his bed hard, his food simple but sufficient, his pay about a dollar a month and his leisure possibly a half day a week including Sundays. On field training there is an endless quest after realism. The aim is to give the soldier an experience of the worst physical conditions that he is likely to encounter in war. so that when he comes up against the real thing he will be confident in his ability to withstand them. On manoeuvres in 1937 the division I was with marched 200 miles in 8 days and the majority of the men probably covered an additional 50 miles in tactical battles. As they left barracks on the first day the whole division from the commander downwards marched through a river perhaps a hundred yards wide up to their waists in water. They repeated this performance twice during the manoeuvres, on the last occasion after marching for 15 hours in a freezing downpour. Some men died through exhaustion, others fell out for one reason or another but the bulk of the division although desperately tired were still capable of hard fighting at the end. This is the sort of training selected shock troops of other armies receive; in Japan the whole army gets it —even in peacetime.

The technical training of the Japanese soldier is sufficiently thorough for the job he has to do. The Japanese are not as a race mechanically minded and one of their greatest difficulties three years ago was in training mechanics and in keeping their vehicles on the road. The Japanese however are thorough and this Is unlikely to be a weakness for long. Their equipment, as I said to begin with, is simple but efficient. Judged by modern standards much of it is out of date, but it must never be forgotten that the Japanese army is primarily equipped to fight in Eastern Asia where there are few roads and fewer railways, and where pack or river transport may be the rule rather than the exception. LITTLE ADAPTABILITY This may give you some idea of where the strength of the Japanese army lies. What then are its weaknesses? Poss-

ibly the greatest potential weakness in the Japanese army is the greatest difficulty which all ranks appear to have in adapting themselves to unexpected situations. It is a weakness which shows itself even in civilian life in Japan, and is, I think, largely a product of an education which definitely discourages indeepndent thought. Whatever its cause, the Japanese realise it to some extent and try to offset it by making their army text books provide a solution for every possible situation. This again tends to make the soldier rely entirely on his books, which he frequently learns by heart. It is a common sight in barracks in Japan to hear an officer or n.c.o. repeat whole passages out of his manuals to justify his actions. Their a& titude towards these manuals may bf explained by the fact that they are lasued by the direction of the Emperor and are therefore infallible —in fact a sort of guaranteed child’s guide to modern tactics. This attitude of relianc# on books, however excellent they may be. is a very definite weakness when he comes up against an enemy who i* strong enough to take the initiative whose training is based on observance of principles rather than on slavish at tention to details. In other words, the Japanese Army has not been trained to withstand surprises or reverses and it must be our business in future to that it gets its full share of both. We have seen enough of the Japanese Army in action to know that it is not going to be beaten by purely defensive tactics or by an army worse equipped or trained than it is itself, but given reasonable equipment and training and above all a firm determination to go on attacking the Japanese wherever they can be reached, the barbarous hordes will be beaten and driven back to their native land.