History Program, Japanese Military

-“History Program, Japanese Military”

World War II in the Pacific, An Encyclopedia, (2001), pp. 229-232.

History Program, Japanese Military

The Japanese imperial government compiled no official, written military history during the Asia-Pacific war. The military destroyed a great number of official documents at war’s end, but many individual officers secretly preserved the most critical documents.

During the U.S. occupation (1945-1952), because the Japanese official documents were not available and the general headquarters for the Allied powers (GHQ) reviewed all books before publication, only a few military history books were published. In face, GHQ encouraged exposés of the Japanese military. Nishiura Susumu, military adjutant general and the first director of the Office of Military History (OMH) of the Defense Vestribule School, wrote his memoir immediately after the war. Using inside information, he meticulously wrote about the Japanese Army Department, including his opinion that many generals were incapable of strategic and tactical studies. This memoir was finally published in 1980 as Showa sensoshi no shogen (Records of Showa War History). Gun sanbocho no shuki (Notes of a Chief of Staff), by Major General Tomochika Yoshiharu, former chief of staff of the 35th Army in the Philippines, was published in 1946. This was the first military history book written by a Japanese military officer to be available to the public in the postwar era. It demonstrated the cruelty of the war, the incompetence of the military leaders, and even the decadence of the rank and file.

In May 1948, GHQ allowed the Japanese to translate and publish books in Japan. That same year, Nakano Goro wrote Kakute gyokusai seri (This Is How We Died in the War). This first comprehensive military history book written by a Japanese in the postwar era was virtually a translation of selected narratives on the Asia-Pacific war from various military histories published in the United States during and after the war.

The Japanese navy published its war history books before the army did. In 1949, Rear Admiral Takagi Sokichi wrote Taiheiyo kaisenshi (The Pacific Naval War History). This book contains accounts not only of naval operations and combat but also of the general policy, diagnosis, and strategic scheme of each naval battle. In 1950, Admiral Toyota Soemu, former commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Squadron, published his oral history, Saigo no teikoku kaigun (The Last Imperial Navy). This work consisted of the admiral’s reminiscences, conjectures, and hearsay accounts, all indicating that there was severe antagonism between the navy and the army. Toyota insists that the navy had competent leaders, whereas the army was rife with inept officers. He concludes that General Tojo was primarily responsible for the loss of the war. In 1951, Vice Admiral Fukutome Shigeru, chief of staff of the Japanese Combined Squadron, published his memoir, Kaigun no hansei (Reflection of the Navy). From the perspective of the Navy General Staff Office, he analyzes naval operations and probable causes of the defeat. Fukutome concludes that the low level of technology and science deployed at the time, especially with respect to the relative inferiority of the air force and the crypto system, was a major cause of defeat.

After the end of the postwar U.S. occupation, the Office of Military History of the Japanese Ministry of Defense collected many of privately held wartime documents. The resulting official works include Kimitsu senso nisshi (The Secret Wartime Journals), Daihonei seifu renraku kaigi shingiroku (The Minute Book of the General Headquarters-Government Liaison Meetings), Daihonei seifu renraku kaigi kettei tsuzuri (The Decisions of the General Headquarters- Government Liaison Meetings), Dai riku mei (Great Army Orders), Dai kai mei (Great Navy Orders), Dai riku shi (Great Army Directives), Dai kai shi (Great Navy Directives), Joso shorui (The Addresses to the Emperor), and Kimitsu sakusen nisshi (The Secret Journals of Tactics). In addition to those official documents, a large number of high-ranking military officials and rank and filers left behind their diaries, memos, and notes written during the war.

Two years later, a high-ranking army officer wrote a military history of the army. Hayashi Saburo, who had held a series of important positions, such as chief of the Russian Bureau, chief of the Regimentation and Mobilization Bureau, and secretary to the war minister, published Taiheiyo senso rikusen gaishi (A General History of the Army Battles in the Pacific War, translated by Hayashi Saburo, Marine Corps Association, 1959). This first book to be written about army operations during the Asia-Pacific war focused on the direction of the war by army headquarters. Hayashi Saburo argues that Japan did not have a united war effort that fully integrated military, economic, and diplomatic policies; rather, the army and the navy had separate, often contradictory, strategies. In addition, he argues that a lack of technology and weapons, compounded by the rigidity of the decision-making process, constituted a major cause of Japan’s defeat.

After the peace treaty with Japan was signed at San Francisco in 1951, many official and quasi-official documents began to appear in public. In 1952, Tanemura Sakou, formerly chief of the War Conduct Section of the General Staff Office, published Daihonei kimitsu nisshi (Secret Journals of the Imperial General Headquarters). Tanemura had worked in the General Staff Office for more than five years (December 1939-August 1945) and had dealt with most of the strategic policies throughout the war. This book was based on the official Kimitsu senso nisshi (The Secret Wartime Journals), noted above, to which he added his memories and experiences. Tanemura made the common criticism of the lack of consistency in war directives, the open conflicts between the army and the navy, the navy’s indecisive and uncompromising attitudes, and the Imperial General Headquarters’ myopic view of the war in general. He believed that the major Allied powers had supreme national leaders who could make comprehensive decisions covering political, military, and economic matters, whereas Japan sorely lacked such a powerful, central figure. He concluded that this absence of strong, centralized leadership in Japan was a primary cause of confusion and lack of effectiveness in the general headquarters.

At about this time, former officers who had became frustrated with the muckrakers began to strike back. Vice Admiral Kusaka Ryunosuke, chief of staff of the Japanese Combined Squadron, published Rengo kantai (The Japanese Combined Squadron) in 1952; in it he insists, improbably, that only slightly more effort would have brought victory to Japan.

In 1953, using the newly available official documents, Colonel Hattori Takushiro, chief of the Operations Bureau of the General Staff Office, published the first full-scale, quasi-official military history work, the four-volumes Dai toa senso zenshi (The Complete History of the Great East Asia War, English translation available). Hattori worked for the General Staff Office from July 1941 until March 1945, when the army dispatched him to China. At war’s end, he joined the Military History Section of the Veterans Administration, then the Archival Section of the Veterans Bureau. He also was a member GHQ’s project to write MacArthur’s military history. His book covers not only top decision-making processes but also the events of important operations and battles, in order to present a complete picture of the war. It explains Japan’s military and political strategies, demonstrating that there was no single institution to integrate military and political strategies in the Japanese government. The work also attests that because of the severe hostility between the army and the navy, there was no comprehensive military strategy in Japanese headquarters. Even though he tries to present an unbiased historical account, Hattori exaggerates somewhat the heroism of the Japanese soldier, and makes this book into something of a requiem for the war dead and a means to save face for the veterans who survived. The book focuses on the war between the United States and Japan, with little mention of the Sino-Japanese war. Because this book does not go into as much detail regarding the operations of the navy as it does those of the army, navy veterans were understandably dissatisfied. Despite these shortcomings, this book acquired enduring fame and became one of the most important military history books on the Asia-Pacific war.

Itoh Masanori, a navy war correspondent, published a five-volume history of the army, Teikoku rikugun no saigo (The End of the Imperial Army; 1959-1961). Masanori believes that a strong national leader with a far-reaching perspective should have ruled wartime Japan. He blames the failure to devise and implement effective military strategies on the fact that the generals governed politics in Japan. According to Masanori, even though Japan had a strong, well-trained army and the Japanese people devoted themselves to the war effort, only a handful of these “political generals” made and implemented the strategic mistakes that lost the war. When the Japanese began to enjoy the fruit of economic growth, there was an understandable backlash against what they perceived as the reckless militarism of the war.

In 1960, the 7-volume Jitsuroku taiheiyo senso (Documentary History of the Pacific War) was published. Volumes 1 through 5 deal with operational processes, and volumes 6 and 7 relate to the situation on the home front and secret stories of the war’s beginning and ending. These volumes compile the experiences of line and/or staff officers of important operations, as well as those of officers and rank and filers who actually participated in the battles. They are important documents for understanding the actual processes in various battles.

In 1966, Satoh Kenryo, former adjutant general of the army, published Dai toa senso kaikoroku (Memoirs of the Great East Asia War). The author argues that while Japan and the United States fought against each other on the battlefield, on the home front the army and the navy were doing much the same. He describes his confrontation with navy officers over the production of weapons and their allocation. This book exposes a fundamental strategic difference between the army and the navy: the former considered defensive as well as offensive strategies, whereas the latter concentrated on the offensive.

The Shidehara cabinet established a commission of inquiry to edit the official military history in 1945, but antimilitary feelings among the Japanese people and a lack funding cut short this project. Former military officers led by Hattori Takushiro insisted that editing the official military history be a national project, but it was some time before this came to fruition. Finally, in 1955, as noted, the Japanese government established the Office of Military History (OMH) in the Ministry of Defense, and began systematically to collect the official documents. The OMH now possesses more than eighty-three thousand documents relating to the army and more than thirty-three thousand documents relating to the navy.

After eleven years of preparation, the OMH began to publish Senshi sosho (The Official Military History) in 1966. Over the next fourteen years it published 102 volumes. The serious conflicts between the army and the navy that marked the way years continued even after the war and influenced the editorial policies of the Senshi sosho. The army and navy officers could not agree on the extra causes of the war and or of the defeat. In the end, the OMH had to publish two separate series of volumes: sixty-eight volumes on the army, thirty-three volumes on the navy, and one chronological volume.

Because this was an official project, the editors focused solely on the documentation of the available records and accepted them as faithful representations of historical evidence, without examining of interpreting. The OMH spent a substantial amount of time and funding on interviewing more than a thousand former military officers a year and verified their statements through existing documents. Despite these efforts, the work was clearly deficient. Because the research had begun ten years after the end of the war, many documents had been destroyed or scattered, numerous important officers had dies, and the memories of survivors could not be considered reliable. In addition, because the editorial board consisted primarily of former military officers rather than professional historians, the editors could not fully integrate the substantial amount of information, but only enumerated documentary facts.

Notwithstanding those shortcoming, Senshi sosho disclosed many important but lesser known facts, especially regarding the navy. The navy assumed that Germany would win the war in Europe and Japan would hold out long enough for the United States to lose its will to fight in the Pacific. The navy believed that once Japan occupied the southern region and secured the necessary raw materials, it could endure an extended war. Consequently, it focused on preparing for the early phase of the war but did not make elaborate long-term plans. Moreover, the navy did not coordinate its strategies with the army either before or even after the outbreak of the war. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Squadron, seemed to recognized that the navy’s general policy would not be feasible, and only in the unlikely event of a short-term war might Japan’s aggression lead to victory. His emphasis on a strong offensive greatly influenced the navy during the war.

In 1975, Vice Admiral Hoshina Zenshiro, former chief of the Military Supplies Bureau of the navy and later its adjutant general, published Dai toa senso hishi (A Secret History of the Great East Asia War). The work consists of Hoshina’s wartime memoirs, which cast light on important developments within the core of the navy during the war. According to Hoshina, he opposed war with the United States, and once the conflict broke out, he sought the timing and methods to end it as soon as possible under favorable terms and conditions.

In 1979, Imoto Kumao, who had worked in the Operation Section of the General Staff Office during the war, published Sakusen nisshi de tsuzuru dai toa senso (The Great East Asia War Through the Operation Journals). This work praises the bravery of the Japanese soldier on the battlefront and criticizes the policies of the General Staff Office. Imoto uses the term konpon gonin (fundamental fault) to explain the cause of Japan’s defeat. He argues that the general headquarters made many fundamental mistakes in waging the war. These underlying faults had been shaped in a long-term and complicated process, and they became firmly established before the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific war. One of the most important konpon gonin, once again, was the existence of considerable enmity and lack of communication between the army and the navy. At the outbreak of the war, the army wrongly assumed that the navy would be able to repel the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The army did not recognize that this assumption was overly optimistic, and its own efforts were dragged down by the weakness of the navy. In other words, Imoto contends that it was the army’s overestimation of the relatively weak navy that ultimately brought about Japan’s defeat.

The most important Japanese military history works dealing with World War II in the Pacific arrive at a number of common conclusions:

1. The Japanese general headquarters was basically incapable of arriving at effective political and military strategies for prosecuting the war; however, the soldiers fought bravely on the battlefront and the Japanese people worked hard on the home front. In other words, it was the top decision makers who were at fault.
2. Japan did not have a supreme national power center that could integrate political, economic, and military strategies. Moreover, there was an uncompromising divisiveness between the army and the navy, which prevented the general headquarters from making and implement effective military strategies.
3. The United States defeated Japan because of its overwhelming productive power and advanced technology, not its greater bravery or sacrifice.

Nonetheless, reading these accounts of the Pacific war, with their remarkably similar conclusions as to festering animosity between the army and the navy, the lack of effective political leadership, and Japan’s technological backwardness and inferior industrial base, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, aside from the incredible bravery of the individual Japanese soldier, Nippon’s initial victories in the Pacific war were due as much to luck and to Allied incompetence as to any innate Japanese ability to wage long-term, large-scale war.

Yone Sugita

SEE ALSO Historiography of the Pacific War; History Program, Japanese Air Force