BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC: How Japs Fight

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A Japanese named Nagano had an American named Knox feeling jittery last week. Osami Nagano is Chief of Japan’s Naval Staff, and last week his Navy was up to no good in the South Pacific. U.S. Navy Secretary Frank Knox, just back from the South Pacific with his cheeks full of optimism, grew a little jumpy in a press conference when reporters began asking what Nagano’s ships were doing.

Was a great big fight going on?

No, said the Secretary.

But the Japanese had announced sinking two battleships in an air-sea clash off Rennell Island (TIME, Feb. 8). That certainly sounded like a big battle.

Said the Secretary, sharply: “A lot of preliminary dispositions are going on—but no pitched battles of any kind as yet. Any assumption that last night’s communique indicated a tremendous battle in progress is an incorrect assumption.”

But, said a reporter, the communique specifically suggested just that.

“Let me see the communique,” said the Secretary. “I don’t think it did.”

Mr. Knox then read a passage from the communique: “The increased activity on the part of the Japanese indicates a major effort to regain control of the entire Solomons area. . . .” He then commented: “. . . ‘indicates a major effort to regain control.’ Well, that may be so. But it would appear to be only an indication, only a speculative proposition. We don’t know exactly what they are planning.”

Knox’s Point. The difficulty of knowing what Admiral Osami Nagano has planned is far more than the usual difficulty of guessing an enemy’s moves. That is partly because Nagano, in a race of inscrutable men, is notoriously tight of tongue, partly because the Japanese have a mania for secrecy. It is perhaps mostly because probabilities about the Japanese in war cannot be based on the ordinary human standards. Japs fight differently.

But even taking these difficulties into consideration, even without the special information available to Mr. Knox, it was easy last week to see that something big was brewing.

> A U.S. convoy of transports, apparently going to Guadalcanal and covered by a naval task force, had been attacked twice. The first attack was 60 miles due south of Guadalcanal, off Rennell Island. The Japs claimed two battleships, three cruisers.

> According to Tokyo, a scouting task force of U.S. cruisers and destroyers was attacked by the Japs south of Santa Isabel Island—up the slot from Guadalcanal. The Japs claimed a cruiser and a destroyer.

> A.P.’s Bill Hippie reported from Guadalcanal: “Aerial observers reported tonight that a large force of Japanese warships was headed for Guadalcanal.” Nothing more was announced about this contact.

> At least one Japanese carrier task force was apparently in the area. Unusually strong resistance was met by Fortresses raiding Japanese vessels in the Buin area up the slot (20 Zeros shot down three Fortresses and damaged one badly). This was interpreted in Washington as meaning that a carrier was nearby.

After the Rennell Island action, the Tokyo radio said: “It is plain that the U.S. can never regain her sea strength.” At week’s end Secretary Knox said that U.S. losses had been “minor in everything . . . moderate . . . nothing significant.” Apparently no battleship was lost, and probably not much in the way of cruisers or destroyers. Even the Tokyo radio changed its tune: it said that the U.S. had ten battleships, ten aircraft carriers and 20 heavy cruisers in the Solomons area, that the Japanese fleet was “numerically inferior.”

Nagano’s Arc. The pattern of these skirmishes, both naval and verbal, indicated that both sides have some pretty heavy plans for the South Pacific. On the Japanese side, the man responsible for plans was the man who had Secretary Knox on the edge of his chair—Chief of Staff Osami Nagano. He must orient his plans, whatever they may be, to the situation in which Japan now finds herself. It is an excellent defensive position. To the east there is a stretch of Pacific across which the U.S. would hesitate to send an all-out amphibian invasion, knowing what carrier and land-based forces were able to do to such an invasion when the Japs tried to take Midway. To the north there is a temporary security which rests on the virtual certainty that Russia would not be willing to let the U.S. move on Japan over her soil—at least until after the defeat of Hitler. To the west, the mass of China could well base hostile air and land forces, but China is of limited use to Japan’s enemies until they own Burma, and the stalemated minor campaign there indicates that that is not now a danger. To the south there lies a great arc of air and naval bases, one sector of which is threatened at the Solomons.

The logic of this defensive pattern imposes on Admiral Nagano an ironclad duty: he must, either by defensive or offensive measures, make the southern arc secure. Because the U.S. now grows strong south of his arc, he will have to fight to do his duty. The only way to guess how he will fight is to know how all Japs fight. By last week, officers returning from the South Pacific had told some of the truth about how Japs fight.

Hasamoto’s Choice. Probably the greatest misconception about Japanese fighters is the belief that they will never surrender. It is true that when trapped they fight with a burrowing, rodent tenacity, but it is a mistake, say these officers, to credit their stubbornness to fanatic religious beliefs. It is just animal fight. Both on sea and on land, they are capable of giving up.

In the naval Battle of Guadalcanal (Nov. 13-15), Jap surface ships hightailed it out of range of U.S. ships and planes, leaving the Jap transports and their thousands of soldiers to be slaughtered. U.S. aviators later confessed they were sickened at having to bomb that helpless mass.

Last week reports told how on Guadalcanal a group of Japs of the 224th Infantry Regiment, veterans of China, Borneo and the Philippines, were trapped in a heavily wooded ravine. They could hear a U.S. loudspeaker across the way urging them in Japanese to surrender. At night they talked their situation over. They voted to fight on. But next morning Private Akiyoshi Hasamoto and some of his friends marched, hands up, to the U.S. lines and surrendered. To an interpreter Private Hasamoto said: “. . . Finally my feelings as a true Japanese soldier disappeared. … I had nothing to lose by surrendering. My actions were prompted primarily by thoughts of hot food, tobacco and relief from the unending shelling.” Private Hasamoto said he would never be able to go back to Japan—but the fact is that he and others gave themselves up voluntarily.

Talent for Hiding. Marine and Army men returning from the South Pacific almost unanimously hold that, man for man, the Jap soldier is inferior in fighting qualities to the American. But in all the things to do with hiding, stealth and trickery, they give the Japs plenty of angry credit.

The Japanese love night work. At sea their infiltrations to Guadalcanal were nearly all by night, and the fact that Japan has been beaten in most of the great night battles is probably due to superior U.S. detection equipment and gunnery. Almost invariably the Japanese launch their land attacks at night. They hold their fire when the enemy is not firing, so as not to give away their positions. They dig deep, stand-up foxholes, which are safe except under direct artillery fire (and which are better than U.S. slit trenches). On the defensive, they dig themselves dugouts protected by palm trunks, and then they crawl in and resist until some explosive or a human terrier kills them. Parachutist Major Harry Torgeson, who had the job of blasting Japs out of the caves on Gavutu (TIME, Sept. 7), reported finding Japs firing machine guns over the horribly stinking corpses of comrades dead three days.

No Talent for Thinking. The average height of Japanese soldiers and sailors is 5 ft. 3½ in. Physically they are no match for U.S. troops, and whenever the two meet hand to hand, which is seldom, the Japanese are worsted.

The myth of the Japanese sniper is exploded by returning officers. They say that Japanese, snipers are an annoyance, little more. They hide excellently but their aim is poor. Sniping serves, however, to frighten men who will not deliberately ignore it. Japanese machine-gunners often set up their guns in a fixed position, and do not traverse and search. The result is that men in the line of Japs’ fire can move aside and advance safely.

But the greatest handicap of the Japanese is their lack of imagination. They carry out orders to the letter and, if necessary, to death. But when things go wrong, they cannot adapt their tactics. If Jap attackers meet resistance, they advance anyhow—which accounts for the terrible slaughter to which Japanese troops submit themselves.

Energy in Training. The Japs have learned war by rote. They train endlessly, until they have memorized all they should know. Officers are unsparing in training their men, to a point which U.S. trainers would probably think insane. In 1930 naval maneuvers near Saishuto (according to a Japanese officer’s article in the Spanish Revista de Aeronautica), Japan’s present Commander of Combined Fleets Admiral Yamamoto, then captain of the carrier Akagi, launched 30 torpedo planes in a gale to give the men practice in heavy-weather launchings. They all launched, but not one got back to the ship.

Jap training methods are both humorless and tireless. Major Harold Doud, who served six months in 1934-35 as an observer with the 7th Infantry Regiment at Kanazawa, found the life exhausting and looked forward to the regiment’s first holiday. When it came, he found that the regiment did not let the holiday interfere with the regular day’s work. Reveille was at 3 a.m., and before the usual breakfast time the men had worshipped dead Japanese in three separate ceremonies, dueled with bayonets, eaten some dried flounder, shouted “Banzai!” and marched up & down a mountain. Then they trained as usual.

Despair in Defeat. Consequence of this kind of training is that privates rely inordinately on their officers. They are taught to believe in success, and they do. Consequently, when they encounter failure they break down. Diaries taken from Jap soldiers in New Guinea have had their share of despair: “Where is the Imperial Fleet? . . . The end is approaching. . . . We cannot endure another day of this sickness and shelling. We see nothing but American planes.”

Even before they encounter failure, Jap soldiers are anything but supermen. They are notoriously hypochondriac. They carry little oily green cakes which they rub on the skin to keep mosquitoes away. Many carry white gloves which they wear when they sleep. They carry toilet waters and perfumed powders.

They do not like death any more than U.S. troops. In War and Soldier, a Japanese best-seller about the war in China, Ashihei Hino says in describing a defeat: “I actually put my revolver to my head. I thought I would cry out: ‘May Great Imperial Japan live forever!’ in so loud a voice that the enemy would hear me, and then press the trigger. But the feel of the cold steel made me shudder, and I hastily replaced the weapon in my holster. I wanted to live on as long as I could. Thoughts of home brought tears to my eyes, and I shut them and prayed. . . .”

The 5-5-3 Mentality. Unquestionably Japanese officers do fight against British Empire and U.S. troops furiously. This fury is born of resentment at having been treated as inferiors. Symbolic of that treatment was the famous 5-5-3 ratio for capital ships imposed by Britain and the U.S. on Japan. This ratio, says Japanese Expert Wilfred Fleischer, “has, in fact, played a much more important role in Japanese policy in recent years than is generally supposed abroad, and was a contributory factor in Japan’s reversion to an ultranationalist, militaristic policy.”

Admiral Osami Nagano knew the 5-5-3 ratio well. He was instrumental in Japan’s defying it.

The 5-5-3 ratio was invented at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22. At the Geneva conference in 1932, Japan’s delegate Osami Nagano proposed the abolition of aircraft carriers, long-range submarines, limitation of large offensive capital ships. If his proposals had been accepted, Japan would have been safe from transpacific attack, and could have pursued her ambitions in the China seas without fear.

Admiral Nagano also represented Japan at the London Conference, 1935-36, and it was there that he finally blasted the 5-5-3. A Navy man primarily, narrow, naive politically, he kept drumming at the theme of parity, although he knew the idea could never be accepted. Toward the end he said to a British delegate: “If I do what you like, when Nagano goes back, wzzt!”—and he raked his fingers across his throat. The same throat a few days later intoned the death notice of the conference.

“We cannot,” he said, “accept the views that a power is entitled to possess naval forces generally superior to those of others on account of the vastness of its overseas possessions and the extensiveness of the lines of communication it has to protect. If such a view were correct, how could one explain why there should be parity between Britain and the United States?” Nagano went home, Japan completed its present fleet—on a ratio limited not by treaty but by Japan’s ability to compete industrially.

The Officer Mentality. Osami Nagano represents the most aggressive, hearty, popular officer type Japan possesses: he is a kind of Greater East Asian Halsey. He is big for a Japanese—about 5 ft. 9 in., and built like a barrel. He is famous for being able to roll liquor past his tongue without loosening it. He is, as all Japanese warriors should be, a good family man: at the age of 62 he is presently engaged in raising a family with his third wife. He laughs with his belly and his guts are tough.

As little is known in the U.S. about his specific naval skills as about any Japanese officer’s. It is one of the U.S. Navy’s laments that they know so little about the strengths and weaknesses of top-ranking Jap officers. But in both the U.S. and British Navies, Nagano has the reputation of being with the best.

Nagano, on the other hand, knows the U.S. as well as any Japanese naval officer. He was a language officer in the U.S. in 1913 and studied law at Harvard for seven months. He even took courses at the War College. In 1928 he commanded a Japanese training squadron which visited Annapolis, was received by President Hoover. As naval attaché in Washington (1920-23), he assisted at the Washington Conference and was all tact. He always remembered Americans’ birthdays, and always remembered to tell the story of the little cemetery in Japan where some shipwrecked U.S. sailors were buried, whose graves were perpetually and tenderly cared for. In 1937, with tears literally blurring his eyes, he apologized for the sinking of the Panay. “I am merely an ignorant sailor,” he said, “but I want you to know that I am speaking from the depths of my heart. I am positive it was an accident.”

Osami Nagano, the bluff, hearty sailor, became Chief of Naval General Staff in charge of operations on April 9, 1941. He still held the job on Dec. 7, 1941. What happened that day was not an accident.

The essence of the Japanese officer’s code is attack. The essence of the Japanese fighting man’s strength is stealth. What will transpire in the South Pacific is by no means certain, because the U.S. has just begun to fight there, and the U.S. may seize the initiative. But Osami Nagano, too, has just begun to fight. The only certain prognostication about the South Pacific is that Admiral Nagano will attack with all the craft of which he is capable. If he is once defeated, he will attack again, craftily again.

Experience of the South Pacific war shows that the Jap is no superman and can be beaten. Osami Nagano can be beaten, but not without one hell of a scrap.