Are The Japanese Last-Ditch Fighters?

What Will Happen When the Bombs Fall ?

By A. M. Pooley

In “Current Problems”

rE fact that Japanese troops stay in their foxholes until they are killed is largely due to dumbness, rather than to courage. They have been given the order to stay in the foxhole and, as they never get the order to come out, they just stay there.

Among three-quarters at least of the Japanese Army there is no initia tive. No man acts for himself in an emergency, if there is no officer there to give orders. This Prussian disci pline has been the hallmark of the Japanese Army since 1872, when the French Military Mission was sent home and the first German Military Mission arrived in Japan.

The question, “Are the Japanese last-ditch fighters?” applies to the governing authority in Japan and not to the common soldier. If Japan is invaded, her cities bombed, would Japan surrender, or would the Allies have to fight over every inch of Japan to secure final victory?

Opinion is divided on this subject.

Some say that the home front in Japan would collapse, and the Army, without a firm, productive home front, would also collapse. Others claim that, as Japan has never lost a major war, as Nippon’s sacred soil has never been invaded, the Japan ese would fight to the last ditch and never surrender.

It is open to anyone, who has lived in the country for any length of time, and who has had close contact with the people, to enter the discus sion. So I am entering it.

IN my opinion, under naval and air defeat, and Under heavy bombing, Japan would collapse.

Japan is an imitative nation. In 1854, when Commodore Perry lay with his frigates in Tokio Bay, he threat ened that, if Japan was not opened to the world, on his return he would blow down the fortifications of Tokio (then called Yeddo) with cannon, and land an armed force. The Shogun had no modern cannon. The land ing of an alien armed force would have meant the end of the Shogunate in dishonour. So the Shogun agreed to open Japanese ports to Western trade.

What happened then? The Japan ese had been proved to be a second or third-rate power, because they had not got modern equipment. So they set about getting it. They imitated the Western world by creating a modern army, a modern navy and, last of all, an air force. They imi tated the Western world by creating modern industries, including the necessary steel and armament works with which to produce the equipment on which modern military strength rests.

Therefore, being an imitative race, the Japanese have brought them selves into exactly the same category as the Germans.

What is the object of our intense air bombing of German cities? The destruction of the German ability to make war, by the destruction of the industries which enable the making of modem warfare.

Japan, therefore, when her indus trial and armament centres are bombed, will lose her ability to make war. Without the potential there can be no actual.

IT is not to be supposed that the Japanese will resort to a last-ditch defence in ancient armour and with two-handed swords. The Jap mili tarists delight in yapping about the Samurai and the Samurai spirit.

That is all boloney. There is no Samurai spirit left in Japan, and there are no Samurai.

One article says that Japan has never lost a major war. Will any one tell me which major war Japan has won? The war of 1894-5, against China, was not a major war. Japan was fighting a very inferior enemy.

She was using rifles and machine guns against ancient cannon, spears, bows and arrows, and umbrellas. In those days, when it rained in China, the Chinese Army stopped fighting.

It sat down on the job. That was no major war.

The Russian war was neither won nor lost by Japan. It was a draw.

The end came, not at the request of Russia, which was daily strengthening her forces, but at the request of Japan to President Roosevelt, asking him to intervene. That Japan did not win the war is clear from the refusal of Russia to pay one rouble of the 5,000,000,000 roubles demanded, “We pay nothing—you can continue the war if you wish” was the reply of the Russian plenipotentiary, Count Witte, to the Japanese plenipotentiary, Count Komura.

In the last world war, Japan’s part was important to us as Allies, but insignificant in the whole picture— the capture of Tsingtau, and finish.

rpHE only other war in which Japan A has been engaged, before Pearl Harbour, has been the war with China. When Prince Konoye launched the attack on China he informed the Japanese Diet and people that it would be over in six months, with the Chinese “beaten to their knees.”

That war with China, which com menced in 1937, has most certainly been a major war. It has been a major war, if only in the number of Japs killed in China—more than a million. But Japan has not only not won that war—she has lost it, just as surely as Italy and Germany have lost the war in Europe. To say that Japan has never lost a major war is not true.

The older people of Japan know well that Japan did not win the Rus

sian war, because they will remem ber the riots in Tokio, and in all the big cities, which broke out and lasted for days, with heavy loss of life, when the terms of the Treaty of Ports mouth were announced.

Believe me, when the Japs learn that they have lost this war and that they have been fed with lies by To jo and his gang, they will very certainly have something to say about it.

WILL bombing crack the morale of the Japanese people? It is claimed that, because the Japanese are fatalists, it will not. Death will take them the appointed hour, and nothing that they can do will prevent it.

There are limits to fatalism. If you had, as I have, seen the Japan ese ordinary people in a big earth quake, or in one of the great fires that ravage the wood and paper cities of Japan, you would realise that precept and practice do not always go hand in hand.

When there is an earthquake the Japs, men and women, do not stick at home to be engulfed in the tim bers of their houses, as they should do if good fatalists. They grab the children and the meagre family pos sessions and get away as fast as pos sible. In a big earthquake, it is really a panic.

The terrific loss of life in the Yoko hama earthquake and fire was largely due to panic, and the ineffi ciency of the police authorities.

I hold that bombing will break the morale of the people in the street — Suzuki San and O’Sai San and the rest.

ANOTHER point which has to be remembered is this. Food is short in Japan. That country has never been able to feed itself. Bomb ing will drive the people out of the cities into the country, where the food shortage will be considerably worse.

The fact that Japan has never been invaded has a certain significance to the Japanese, who are told to regard it as proof that the Sun Goddess looks down on Japan and protects the soil of Nippon. It is, however, not true, for a combined British and French force invaded Japan in 1868, where Kobe now stands, defeated the Japanese force sent by the Shogun, and a treaty was signed.

The early days of foreign inter course with Japan saw several clashes between foreign troops from the treaty ports, and Japanese forces.

Japan was literally prized open.

Certainly, these clashes were not battles in the usual sense of the word, but they were sufficiently important for the Japs to realise that the Western nations had the upper hand, becausei they had the weapons.

The Japs saved themselves then by agreeing to the foreigners’ demands, and set about preparing for the day when they would have the upper hand.

IT has to be remembered that Japan has been run for the 75 years of

its modern life by a military caste, just as Germany has been run by the Prussian Junker. That class is no more popular in Japan than the Junker caste has been in Germany.

The military caste in Japan, derived from the fighting men of the feudal clans, has built itself up on the doctrine of the sanctity of the Imperial line and, therefore, of the people and of the country.

Nobody really believes in this story or legend. The naval, air and mili tary defeat of Japan, the bombing of her cities, would end that doctrine once and for all. If a sacred land like Japan cannot be invaded, be cause of this myth of sanctity, then the sacred soil cannot be bombed. It has been bombed once, and will be repeatedly.

I personally am strongly of opinion that when the Japanese Navy has been defeated, her planes driven from the skies, her cities bombed, Japanese morale will crack and crumble very quickly. Bombing is dreaded by the Jap leaders, and I am quite certain also by the ordinary people.

There is another thing. Medical men who have practised in Japan claim that portions of the Japanese brain are differently balanced to those of other races, with the result that heavy bombardment creates a daze. It will have been noted in recent heavy bombardments in the Central Pacific and in the South-west Pacific, reports have stated that the Japanese appear to have been com pletely dazed.