Quality of Japanese troops

Discussions on all aspects of the Japanese Empire, from the capture of Taiwan until the end of the Second World War.
User avatar
Imad
Member
Posts: 1412
Joined: 21 Nov 2004, 04:15
Location: Toronto

Quality of Japanese troops

#1

Post by Imad » 09 Apr 2014, 20:15

Hello

I was wondering if anyone could confirm this for me: I heard that the troops of the Kwantung Army were generally of a higher quality than those sent to fight in the Western Allies in WW2 and that the fact that the KA was tied down in China proved highly detrimental to Japan's war effort.

Let's face it, Homma's troops in the Philippines in 1941/42 left much to be desired performance wise. Yamashita's men in Malaya and Burma did somewhat better.

User avatar
LWD
Member
Posts: 8618
Joined: 21 Sep 2005, 22:46
Location: Michigan

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#2

Post by LWD » 09 Apr 2014, 21:28

At the begining of the war from what I've read the Kwantung Army was viewed as something of an elite force. There was little left to substantiate this by the time the Soviets attacked it. Wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwantung_Army for instance notes that it was down to a force of ~600,000 from a high of 1,320,000. Also consider that for the entire war huge numbers of Japanese troops were tied down on the front with China. It goes on to say:
... However, as the war situation began to deteriorate for the Imperial Japanese Army on all fronts, the large, well-trained, and well-equipped Kwantung Army could no longer be held in strategic reserve. Many of its front line units were systematically stripped of their best units and equipment, which were sent south against the forces of the United States in the Pacific Islands or the Philippines. Other units were sent south into China for Operation Ichi-Go. ...
It also didn't do all that well vs the Soviets at Khalkhin Gol. See: http://warfarehistorian.blogspot.com/20 ... anese.html


User avatar
Imad
Member
Posts: 1412
Joined: 21 Nov 2004, 04:15
Location: Toronto

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#3

Post by Imad » 09 Apr 2014, 21:42

You're right about Khalkhin Gol. You mention the reduction in number but I wonder if the poor quality also had to do with the high attrition the KA had suffered by then. After all they had been in China for at least two years before they clashed with Zhukov.

User avatar
LWD
Member
Posts: 8618
Joined: 21 Sep 2005, 22:46
Location: Michigan

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#4

Post by LWD » 09 Apr 2014, 23:02

The Kwangtung army was formed in 1906 athough it didn't bare that name until 1919. They were involved in the invasion of Manchurian in 1931 and were involved in pretty much continuous low level warfare up through 1945. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwantung_Army states that they hit 700,000 in 1941 and their high was in 1945 but by August at their surrender they were back down to 600,000. The site does say:
However, the men remaining were largely semi-trained conscripts or raw recruits, equipped primarily as a counterinsurgency and border security force
My impression is their problem iat Khalkhin Gol was that they simply weren't prepaired for mechanized warfare or Soviet artillery. You might find this page interesting as well:
http://warfarehistorian.blogspot.com/20 ... my-in.html
I know there are others on this site that know a lot more about this than I do. Hopefully they'll chip in soon.

User avatar
hisashi
Member
Posts: 2039
Joined: 12 Aug 2003, 15:44
Location: Tokyo,Japan
Contact:

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#5

Post by hisashi » 10 Apr 2014, 17:29

It's diffecult to define elite force. For example Kuribayashi's 109th division in Iwojima had older, and often inexperienced last-ditch infantries except 145th infantry regiment. On the other hand they had relatively rich firepower.

Even before 1941, Japan had already spent out their reserve personnel. They must begin to call up more men and even inexperienced adults to raise new formations.

Japan had 17 'permanent' infantry divisions. They had the best men and testified team before the war.
1-12 14 16 19 20 Guard
I can count on 8 divisions, 23-29 and 48, as divisions from excellent prewar soldier pool. They had origins from a part of ex-permanent division regiments and old local garrisons which received fresh conscripts for a long time.

So I named 25 best divisions in late 1941. Among them, Kwantung army had 12 in 1941, just the half.
1 8 9 10 11 12 14 23 24 25 28 29
Homma had 16th and 48th division plus 65th brigade (exellent infantry regiments but no artillery). They were among the best, but few to conquer Philippine. Yamashita had a little more; Guard, 5th, 18th and 56th. In the first invasion stage of 1941/42, each invasion force had a few best divisions plus newer, poorly trained division.

By 1945 KA gave up all their best divisions listed above. Don't confuse KA with China expeditionary army, but both lost their best formations for use in the south and homeland.

IJA divisions: an overview
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5&t=150627

flakbait
Member
Posts: 234
Joined: 22 Oct 2013, 02:37

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#6

Post by flakbait » 11 Apr 2014, 06:18

From very late 1944, once the loss of the Phillipnes was all but certain, believe several of the top remaining "crème de la cream" divisions and supporting units were withdrawn back to the Home Islands to prepare for the inevitable Allied invasion of Japan. Most went to Kyushu and were instructed to maintain strict radio silence as well as digging extensive defensive positions. This they did VERY well; the Allied planners for Operation OYLIMPIC underestimated the IJA strength on Kyushu by over 250,000+ troops, most with at least limited combat experience. These units were also tasked with teaching and training the vast bulk of the Japanese citizens there hand-to-hand combat with sharpened bamboo spears; almost 4 MILLION of them would attack the 1st landing forces in LITERAL human wave assaults as they came ashore, hopefully severely depleting the reserves of ready ammunition, saving IJA troops for further combat. This was a primary reason for Truman deciding with very little hesitation to use the atomic bombs...

User avatar
Wellgunde
Member
Posts: 1050
Joined: 24 Feb 2013, 09:02
Location: Poway, CA, USA

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#7

Post by Wellgunde » 12 Apr 2014, 03:40

There were only two former Kwantung Army divisions in the 16th Area Army [Kyushu] area of responsibility. They were the 25th and the 57th. The 25th Division, formed in July 1940, was situated in the vicinity of Kobayashi City in Miyazaki prefecture. The 57th, also formed in July 1940, was located around Fukuoka City in Fukuoka prefecture. Neither of these divisions had any combat experience.

Two other former Kwantung divisions, the 11th and 1st Armored were on Shikoku and Honshu respectively.

Beginning in June 1944 and ending in April 1945, divisions were withdrawn from the Kwantung Army for various destinations as follows:
Philippines: 1st, 8th, 23rd, 2nd Armored
Ryukyus: 9th, 28th
Formosa: 10th, 12th, 71st
Japan: 11th, 25th, 57th, 1st Armored
Palau: 14th
Okinawa: 24th
Marianas: 29th
γνώθι σαυτόν

User avatar
Wellgunde
Member
Posts: 1050
Joined: 24 Feb 2013, 09:02
Location: Poway, CA, USA

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#8

Post by Wellgunde » 13 Apr 2014, 02:16

flakbait wrote:From very late 1944, once the loss of the Phillipnes was all but certain, believe several of the top remaining "crème de la cream" divisions and supporting units were withdrawn back to the Home Islands to prepare for the inevitable Allied invasion of Japan. Most went to Kyushu and were instructed to maintain strict radio silence as well as digging extensive defensive positions. This they did VERY well; the Allied planners for Operation OYLIMPIC underestimated the IJA strength on Kyushu by over 250,000+ troops, most with at least limited combat experience. These units were also tasked with teaching and training the vast bulk of the Japanese citizens there hand-to-hand combat with sharpened bamboo spears; almost 4 MILLION of them would attack the 1st landing forces in LITERAL human wave assaults as they came ashore, hopefully severely depleting the reserves of ready ammunition, saving IJA troops for further combat. This was a primary reason for Truman deciding with very little hesitation to use the atomic bombs...

The Order of Battle
When the war ended, there were roughly 478,000 Japanese Army and Navy ground troops in Kyushu. U.S. intelligence certainly did not underestimate Japanese strength by almost 100 per cent. In actuality, U.S. intelligence estimates of the situation in the 16th Area Army were very good. I will concede that the first Kyushu estimate produced around March 1945 in support Operation Olympic was off but final iterations five months later were very close. All major units and their locations were identified by war’s end as shown by the Report of the Final Pacific Order of Battle Conference, August 1945. If there were any problems with the order of battle it was largely with the qualitative assessments of Japanese forces. Not all of the players were on the same page, however. Major General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence chief and the man responsible for Operation Olympic intelligence planning, was slower than Washington and Pearl Harbor in accepting new Ultra material. It is possible that turf wars and political considerations may have been factors in the differing assessments. Anyone who thinks that there is nothing political about an order of battle has only to remember the contretemps over the Vietnam War NCA/VC order of battle which resulted in General William Westmoreland suing the CBS television network for libel. CBS had alleged in a television special titled The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, that Westmoreland had deliberately undercounted troop strength during 1967 in order to maintain U.S. troop morale and domestic support for the war. See Ultra Order of Battle Bulletins SRH-195, Parts I and II to follow U.S. understanding of the developing picture of unit strengths and dispositions in the 16th Area Army. See Richard Frank’s Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (chapter 8) and Edward Drea’s In the Service of the Emperor (chapter 10) for excellent discussions of the Japanese reinforcement of Kyushu and U.S. efforts to discern it. Franks also pays attention to the U.S. exploitation of Japanese radio traffic on Kyushu. These two books reveal also that very few Japanese units in Kyushu had any combat experience. Japanese defensive preparations and fortification construction on Kyushu were abysmal. See Defense of Japan 1945 by Steven J. Zaloga (pp. 34-35) for a discussion.

The National Resistance Army and the Civilian Volunteer Corps
With regards to the Japanese efforts to form a civilian militia, it is one thing to make a plan and another thing to execute it. Despite the enthusiastic participation in the Volunteer Corps as shown in Japanese newsreels, magazines, and newspapers the actual effort was puny and haphazard. For obvious reasons, the rural agricultural workers who formed the majority of the Japanese civilian population and the factory workers who were working night and day to produce war materiel were not called for service. Enlistments seem to have been mostly confined to cities and then they were hit and miss. For example, in late August 1945, only around 11,000 civilians in all of Hiroshima Prefecture had been temporarily called for service. Rather than training for war, they spent their time demolishing buildings and working on fortifications. Japanese friends of mine who lived in a Kyushu coastal city during the time frame in question remember the Volunteer Corps but were never called up for service or required to participate in military training of any kind.

The civilian population of Kyushu in 1945 was around 10,500,000. Of these, around 35 per cent or 3,675,000 were eligible for call up into the Volunteer Corps. This is close to the 4,000,000 figure given. In actuality, there was no way the Japanese could have transported this number of persons to the invasion areas and then sustained and provisioned them once there. In any case, the Japanese military did not look at the Volunteer Corps seriously. Lieutenant General Kawabe Torashiro, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, stated in a post-war interview, “We planned to use a small select number [of civilians] for supporting intelligence and guerrilla operations but we felt that it would not be practical to use all civilians in combat.” Major General Nishihara Kanji, commander of the 57th Army in Kyushu was even more blunt. John Skates in The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb, provides statements by Nishihara to the effect that, “any attempt to use civilians in combat not only would be “ineffectual” but would also “have disadvantageous effects on the morale of the army” and would hinder, not help, operations.” Some consideration was even given to moving all civilians out of the possible invasion areas. The Ketsu Go plan for the defense of Japan also represented a departure from previous defensive plans in that it emphasized defeat of the U.S. inland rather than behind the beaches and also forbade the use of banzai charge tactics. This certainly argues against any ideas that the Japanese planned to use civilians in human wave attacks. None of the books I have read about the decision to use the atomic bomb give the existence of the Volunteer Corps as a rationale for using the bomb.
γνώθι σαυτόν

gambadier
Member
Posts: 221
Joined: 23 Aug 2007, 15:11
Location: AsiaPac

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#9

Post by gambadier » 20 Apr 2014, 08:49

The Japanese mis-estimated the Red Army at most levels. They hadn't realised that the Red Army was not a re-badged imperial army of 1904. They thought they were being rather clever picking a battlefield 600 km from the Red Army railhead. Their most significant mistake was arrogant under-estimation of Georgi Zhukov.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#10

Post by David Thompson » 23 Apr 2014, 07:14

Please stay on topic -- the quality of Japanese troops.

User avatar
Imad
Member
Posts: 1412
Joined: 21 Nov 2004, 04:15
Location: Toronto

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#11

Post by Imad » 24 Apr 2014, 21:25

It's a little hard to understand why so many high quality troops were kept in China till the end when there was such an emergency situation in the South Pacific and other combat areas. The reinforcements at Kyushu in '44 were a case of too little too late.

User avatar
Wellgunde
Member
Posts: 1050
Joined: 24 Feb 2013, 09:02
Location: Poway, CA, USA

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#12

Post by Wellgunde » 25 Apr 2014, 04:28

Imad wrote:It's a little hard to understand why so many high quality troops were kept in China till the end when there was such an emergency situation in the South Pacific and other combat areas. The reinforcements at Kyushu in '44 were a case of too little too late.
Divisions were also withdrawn from China in the period January 1944 to June 1945 to reinforce other areas as follows:
French Indo-China: 22nd, 37th
Philippines: 26th
Halmahera: 32nd
NW New Guinea: 35th
Okinawa: 62nd

From Korea:
Philippines: 19th, 30th
Burma: 49th

During this time period when divisions were being withdrawn, new divisions were being formed in country or moved from Japan.
Manchuria: 107th, 108th, 111th, 112th, 119th, 120th, 121st, 122nd, 123rd, 126th, 127th and 4th Armored.
China: 113th, 114th, 115th, 117th, 118th, 129th, 130th, 131st, 132nd, 133rd. From Japan: 47th
Korea: 49th, 120th, 160th, and one other.

Most of the new divisions formed above were accomplished by combining Independent Mixed Brigades, Independent Infantry Brigades, garrison troops, fortress troops, and other units.

Japan's reinforcement problems can be viewed as follows:
1. Too few troops to fully defend too large an area.
2. Insufficient armaments to fully equip new units.
3. Inadequate training and training time for new units as the war dragged on.
4. Inability to move units to threatened areas. For all practical purposes, the Southern Pacific and Southwest Pacific areas were cut off and isolated. Any convoys sent to those areas were on suicide missions with almost zero chance of reaching their destinations. For many garrisons, the only method of resupply and reinforcement was by submarine and you can't carry very much on a submarine.

Aside from the two divisions sent to Kyushu from Manchuria, the 16th Area Army was bolstered by the movement of existing divisions from Honshu. With regard to China, complete withdrawal, however critical the situation in other areas, was militarily and politically infeasible.

Wellgunde
γνώθι σαυτόν

gambadier
Member
Posts: 221
Joined: 23 Aug 2007, 15:11
Location: AsiaPac

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#13

Post by gambadier » 25 Apr 2014, 11:45

It says something about Japanese arrogance that they didn't attempt anything approaching total mobilisation unto somewhat late. Two Russian Fronts (+1 in reserve) that had spent 3 years practising on Germans made very short work of them.

User avatar
Imad
Member
Posts: 1412
Joined: 21 Nov 2004, 04:15
Location: Toronto

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#14

Post by Imad » 25 Apr 2014, 12:48

@ Gambadier:Is it possible they were not expecting Soviet intervention?

User avatar
Wellgunde
Member
Posts: 1050
Joined: 24 Feb 2013, 09:02
Location: Poway, CA, USA

Re: Quality of Japanese troops

#15

Post by Wellgunde » 25 Apr 2014, 22:45

I don't think it was arrogance. Japan and the Soviet Union had signed a neutrality pact in November 1941. The Soviets gave notice in April 1945 that they would not renew the pact. One of the provisions of the pact was that it would remain in effect for one year after termination. When queried by the Japanese as to their intentions, the Soviets were non committal. The Japanese failed to read the tea leaves and were lulled into a false understanding of the Soviet's real aims. Foreign Minister Togo suspected that the Soviets had entered into a secret agreement with Britain and the United States to enter the war but had no proof. Then too, the Japanese government was hoping that the Soviets would act as an intermediary between Japan and the Allies to end the war. The Japanese were even considering that a return of Russian territory gained under the Treaty of Portsmouth might persuade the Soviets to assist in that effort. The Soviets dithered, the Japanese operated in a fool's paradise and on August 8th, 1945 the Soviets declared war on Japan.

The war in Europe having ended in May, the Japanese were well aware, as related in Senshi Sosho and the Japanese Monographs that the full power of the Red Army could be brought to bear against the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. They were certainly not sanguine about the prospects of victory. The best they could hope for was that total military collapse in Manchuria could be delayed while questions about the implications of the Potsdam Declaration were being resolved.

Total mobilization of the Japanese Armed Forces for the "final defense of the homeland" had commenced in April 1945 with the formulation of the Ketsu Go plan.

Wellgunde
γνώθι σαυτόν

Post Reply

Return to “Japan at War 1895-1945”