Food rations in the Japanese forces
Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Another barracks photo
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Food rations in the Japanese forces in the Philippines
Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its aftermath also documents food rations for the Japanese military during WWII. (http://www.tearsinthedarkness.com/)
A severe shortage of gasoline left Japanese soldiers in the Philippines marching everywhere, often thirty-five miles at a stretch and under seventy pounds of equipment, ammunition, gear, and gun parts. But food ran short as well – often they received no more than 'a half-pound of rice and some blackish potatoes' or tuna flakes.
Rations were so short that the soldiers preparing for battle – even when they thought it likely they would be killed – would reminisce about the food back home.
"Hideo Sekihara, who led the Seventh Company in the 142nd Infantry, was sure he would never see his men again, and he tried to keep his feelings from overwhelming him. After the fall of Manila, he had been ordered to chase the withdrawing American-Filipino force south to what they thought was a thin line of outposts, but had been misinformed: they rushed headlong into the enemy’s strength, a well-fortified second line of defense that stretched across the middle of the peninsula along the East-West Road.
Earlier he had gone among the dead and scrounged the last of the food, mostly crackers and condiments, and now he offered these grim spoils to his men. They should share a last meal, he said, and talk of home.
There under the stars they told stories of their parents, their children, their favorite foods, dishes that made them think of home, of Japan. Most of all they longed for rice, gohan, a meal that always made a displaced Nipponjin wistful. They talked of takuan too, pickled radish, and
umeboshi, pickled plums. They talked until their mouths began to water and their eyes filled with tears.
'This, comrades, is the graveyard of our youth,' the gunso said. 'And this gathering is our farewell.'"
….
In Japan, civilians were facing food shortages as well.
"Cold weather had hurt the fall harvest of 1944, and by early 1945 the United States had control of the sea-lanes around Japan, in effect blockading the country and preventing vital shipments of foodstuffs from the south. Often the only place a Japanese shufu, housewife, could buy food was on the black market, where rice sold for seventy times the normal price."
Prisoners of war were among the hardest hit. Breakfast, for US POWs in a Japanese camp, "was ricebarley gruel, often laced with weevils; lunch was cooked rice with a sprinkling of vegetables, various greens, and tubers; dinner, more rice with vegetables and perhaps fish, always stinking or spoiled. The fish was usually mackerel or tuna, but there was never enough for individual portions, and it was served as a condiment on rice or in soup. At each meal the men also got soybean buns, a wartime staple in Japan, as tough to chew as hardtack.
The overall individual ration was small, an average of twenty-two ounces of food a day. The Japanese said their own people were starving, and the prisoners should expect to suffer along with everyone else."
Ben Steele talks about hunting caribou after food rations run desperately short for US troops in the Philippines.
A severe shortage of gasoline left Japanese soldiers in the Philippines marching everywhere, often thirty-five miles at a stretch and under seventy pounds of equipment, ammunition, gear, and gun parts. But food ran short as well – often they received no more than 'a half-pound of rice and some blackish potatoes' or tuna flakes.
Rations were so short that the soldiers preparing for battle – even when they thought it likely they would be killed – would reminisce about the food back home.
"Hideo Sekihara, who led the Seventh Company in the 142nd Infantry, was sure he would never see his men again, and he tried to keep his feelings from overwhelming him. After the fall of Manila, he had been ordered to chase the withdrawing American-Filipino force south to what they thought was a thin line of outposts, but had been misinformed: they rushed headlong into the enemy’s strength, a well-fortified second line of defense that stretched across the middle of the peninsula along the East-West Road.
Earlier he had gone among the dead and scrounged the last of the food, mostly crackers and condiments, and now he offered these grim spoils to his men. They should share a last meal, he said, and talk of home.
There under the stars they told stories of their parents, their children, their favorite foods, dishes that made them think of home, of Japan. Most of all they longed for rice, gohan, a meal that always made a displaced Nipponjin wistful. They talked of takuan too, pickled radish, and
umeboshi, pickled plums. They talked until their mouths began to water and their eyes filled with tears.
'This, comrades, is the graveyard of our youth,' the gunso said. 'And this gathering is our farewell.'"
….
In Japan, civilians were facing food shortages as well.
"Cold weather had hurt the fall harvest of 1944, and by early 1945 the United States had control of the sea-lanes around Japan, in effect blockading the country and preventing vital shipments of foodstuffs from the south. Often the only place a Japanese shufu, housewife, could buy food was on the black market, where rice sold for seventy times the normal price."
Prisoners of war were among the hardest hit. Breakfast, for US POWs in a Japanese camp, "was ricebarley gruel, often laced with weevils; lunch was cooked rice with a sprinkling of vegetables, various greens, and tubers; dinner, more rice with vegetables and perhaps fish, always stinking or spoiled. The fish was usually mackerel or tuna, but there was never enough for individual portions, and it was served as a condiment on rice or in soup. At each meal the men also got soybean buns, a wartime staple in Japan, as tough to chew as hardtack.
The overall individual ration was small, an average of twenty-two ounces of food a day. The Japanese said their own people were starving, and the prisoners should expect to suffer along with everyone else."
Ben Steele talks about hunting caribou after food rations run desperately short for US troops in the Philippines.
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
And another Navy mess tin with its lid, marked and inscribed differently from those above:Peter H wrote:IJN mess tins
(from Nakata and Nelson’s Imperial Japanese Army and Navy Uniforms & Equipment revised edition (Hong Kong: Chesa Publishing Ltd, 1987), page 198}
Army soldiers’ mess kits are commonly known, photographed, and illustrated in the English-language literature of Imperial Japanese equipment. But Navy sailors’ mess gear seem less known there
- To a first-time viewer these have some small interest for being made of heavy-gauge aluminum -- a relatively expensive metal. More importantly it was a strategic metal for the aviation industry, especially in wartime. For example, German and American army mess kits and canteens were originally made of aluminum, but were changed to steel in wartime. Did this happen with the same or other pieces of Japanese field equipment?
In shape, the Navy mess tin somewhat resembles that of the British / Commonwealth armies, which had two such rectangular pans nesting one inside the other. Maybe the rectangular shape is better for storage aboard ship?
- Yoshimura Akira’s book Battleship Musashi: the Making and Sinking of the World’s Biggest Battleship, paperback translation (Kodansha International , 1999), page 162, describes the tension among that ship’s AA gun crews awaiting a second wave of American attack planes:
There is no knowing what these lunches were or how contained, although I imagined in tins as in the photos. Of course, men going into battle often do not want to eat in the first place, or will only eat a few things. The Yamato-class ships were talked about in the fleet for their accommodations and good food, but how unusual was it for send up a small lunch to men at their battle stations?Everyone knew the enemy aircraft would return. The galleys on the Musashi passed out lunches to the men, but most were too busy checking equipment to eat.
I thought the men here might be eating travel rations as some forces gave their troops in transit, but if so they also seem to be using Navy mess tins. Japanese destroyers and cruisers saw enough use as troop transports. Did the Navy issue these tins to their own SNLF troops as field equipment, just as the Army did its own mess kits? Are they evident in other photos of landing force sailors ashore?Peter H wrote:Meal on transport
There are enough photos of the Army field kitchens, whether they are the old kettles atop sectional stoves, or the rolling kitchen trailers. What did the Special Navy Landing Forces use in this line?
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Rum had been issued in the British Army as well as the Navy, but whisky seems to be mentioned more often in connection with IJN officers, as above. Was it? –- although beer was issued to other ranks in both IJA and IJN, as told and pictured earlier here. Captured British liquor from Singapore was so abundant that they were still available late in the war, with officers’ stocks of it aboard battleship Yamato on the eve of the Navy’s Last Sortie in 1945.Peter H wrote:Japanese whisky and warThe Imperial Japanese armed forces drank whisky in massive quantities in the 1930s and 40s. In the Imperial Navy, it had a place similar to that of rum in the British Navy. As conflict removed any possibility of importing the drink, Japanese whisky producers were tasked with slaking this thirst… it is fair to say that whisky and the armed forces were pretty much synonymous in this period ...
- Although good Japanese whisky was kept available as a Navy commodity, I have the impression that the captured British drink had some premium attached to it. Since it was from Singapore, it was a memento of the height of Japanese victories that year – and maybe the height of the entire war. That whisky had come from the esteemed Royal Navy opponent, which many senior Japanese officers had long thought of as a “big brother” to their own Navy.
Also, bottles of fine spirits sometimes served as high gifts from ranking officers to colleagues and subordinates. From this viewpoint the Japanese brands were as excellent as any, but the British ones could not be replenished and so could have had that extra edge of scarcity about them.
Small, sampler-sized bottles of whisky were mentioned earlier as included in some IJN aircrew survival rations.
- The US Army had stopped its limited liquor issue in the early 1800s, as did the US Navy in the 1860s, leaving some from both in envy of foreign forces up through both World Wars. After his election in 1932, President Roosevelt had cheerfully offered to restore alcohol to the Navy, but his admirals were rather scandalized at the idea and recommended against it.
However, even the Royal Navy ended its long and honoured tradition of the rum ration in 1970. This was out of the need to man ever-more complex ships, planes, and weapons.
-- Alan
Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Thanks Alan.
Re liquor on IJN ships,from Ronald Spector's At War At Sea,page 158:
Re liquor on IJN ships,from Ronald Spector's At War At Sea,page 158:
A popular escape from the demands and discomforts of shipboard life was alcohol.Some sailors proved adept at improvising a kind of home brew by combining the industrial-type ethyl alcohol used in machinery with large qualities of water.Because ethyl alcohol has a strong smell,sailors would burn the excess alcohol in order to prevent any passing petty officer or officer from noticing the telltale odor.If the fumes had permeated the closed-in spaces,however,a sudden explosion could result.A number of Japanese warships sunk or damaged by accidental explosions,including Togo's flagship Mikasa and the battleship Mutsu in 1942,were widely believed to have been lost from such causes.
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
I am partly embarrassed to admit that I do not know as much about Philippine Commonwealth history from Filipino sources as I would like. Has there been at times some low current of joint Filipino-Japanese scholarship about the war that led to works like the one cited here? I infer some between Australia and Japan, and wonder about similar efforts with the US.Ron Sundby wrote: [Rice imported by wartime Japan] wouldn't have come from the Philippines, more probably it came from French Indochina and Thailand. During the decades leading up to WWII the Philippines grew less rice than it's people used and imported rice to make up the shortfall (mainly from French Indochina). Under the Japanese occupation the Japanese authorities tried hard to make the Philippines self sufficient, but failed miserably … And when the farmers saw their crops being requisitioned for little or no payment many cut back and grew only enough for their own families. See the chapter on The Rice Shortage and Countermeasures during the Occupation in The Philippines Under Japan by Ikehata Setsuho & Ricardo Jose
My paternal grandfather had been a business agent for these rice imports from French Indochina. I’ll have to see if I can learn more about it.
Reportedly, Philippine rice shortage was due partly to the sugar cash crop established there. It sounds roughly like the Confederate States finding themselves short of corn with onset of the US Civil War. Before then, planting cotton before then had been so profitable at the expense of food crops, which were made up with imports from the North. Filipino farmers apparently retreated from crop seizures and worthless currency as had Southern Confederate farmers in their wartime, and the general populace was deprived accordingly.
Presumably there was limited Japanese concern for sea routes from the Visayas west to Indochina, although activity on the latter’s coasts might have come under their patrol. Was this around 1943? Since by 1945, Allied air power would be cutting off the sea lanes and ports, and sinking traffic in them.Ron Sundby wrote:Rice shortages became very bad in the Philippines during the war. Some Filipino civil authorites in areas with minimal Japanese control such as the central Visyan islands, against Japanese regulations, secretly sent sailing ships full of sugar cane and cattle to French Indochina to trade for rice ...
It would seem easy to confirm such a propaganda ploy, when rice allegedly sent by Japan appeared nowhere in the markets. Shipment of vital staples during a shortage, is something which would become known quickly enough by “bamboo telegraph” -- from the dockhands, to other port inhabitants, and then to the general populace.Ron Sundby wrote:One interesting note: In early 1942 the Japanese authorities tried to show the Filipinos how generouse they were [to] the citizens of the Phillippine. They ran an article in the Manila papers, under a picture of a large Japanese ship unloading sacks of rice, which boasted of the large amount[s] Japan was importing … for the Filipinos. The propaganda backfired …[as] rumors circulated that the … bags of rice wasn't being [unloaded], but … actually being loaded … for shipment to Japan. Whatever the truth the Filipinos believed the rumors.
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High and low ends of brewery were kept up in Japan after the surrender, with civilians and different soldiers drinking the product.
In John W. Dower’s Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999). page 169:
I had wondered if there were any Japanese traditions of home-brewed alcohol that some of them took abroad as soldiers, just as some Americans and others have before and since.… Indigenous liquor manufacturers, who only a few years earlier had been toasting Japan’s spectacular victories against the “devilish Anglo-Americans,” quickly came to market with a smooth intoxicant (so the story goes) bearing the friendly and reassuring label “Special Six-Year Old Brandy, Brewed Especially for the Occupation Forces.”
“Moonshining” reported on board IJN warships seems hard for me to picture, whatever the extent of it. Not so much because of methods and places of brewing it, because soldiers and sailors can be at their most clever for such things. It is from the disciplinary standpoint. Petty officers might know enough about it from their time in the ranks to look for it.
It seems hard for me to imagine how any belief arose that moonshining led to the mysterious loss of battleship Mutsu to an internal explosion in 1943. The areas around a warship's magazines are always well-policed, and a bootlegging sailor making an explosive train anywhere near them would seem to run an especially harsh punishment risk. Admittedly, even though a disgruntled seaman was officially thought to be responsible in this particular ship's history, sailors will still talk and tell tales about it -- involving alcohol brew or not.Peter H wrote:Re liquor on IJN ships,from Ronald Spector's At War At Sea,page 158:... If the [moonshine alcohol] fumes had permeated the closed-in spaces, however, a sudden explosion could result. A number of Japanese warships sunk or damaged by accidental explosions,including Togo's flagship Mikasa and the battleship Mutsu in 1942, were widely believed to have been lost from such causes.
Apparently moonshine did not fall off in the early Occupation chaos for lack of grains, but in one case made use of military supplies. Dower continues:
Wouldn’t such alcohols have been from aircraft hydraulics or engine power boost? Although gasoline and fuel oil shortages were dire, presumably alcohol was not. There are anecdotal recipes of post-VE-Day Allied soldiers using captured German alcohol. If any of the same was found in newly-occupied Japan, it too would reasonably be expected to go to drink one way or another.… In one corner of one [open-air black] market, vendors who regularly made a killing would gather around a third-country person who sold an ungodly drink made of alcohol used in aircraft lubricants mixed with artificial sweetener. With this he served – and this would have been a rare delicacy at any time in Japan –- jellyfish in sea-urchin sauce.
Also, wouldn’t aviation alcohol have been denatured with methanol? A few US Marines on Saipan after its capture had died from this, who had been incautious with Japanese alcohol they had found and mixed for drinks. One of these is believed to have been actor Lee Powell, of “Lone Ranger” Western movie serial fame before the war. If the alcohol was denatured it could simply have been that these Americans couldn’t read any Japanese label for it, while the prospect of drink literally blinded them to the chance.
-- Alan
Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Spector also brings up IJN liquor in his Eagle Against the Sun,page 320.
When Guam was captured in August 1944:
Another novel use of empty beer bottles:
http://community.discovery.com/eve/foru ... 4319183201
I don't know if Mythbusters have tested this myth.
When Guam was captured in August 1944:
I remember Eric Hammel in one of his books also dispelled the myth that Banzai attacks were alcohol induced.His studies on Saipan showed no empty bottles found behind the Japanese attack starting points so the Japanese did not need 'Dutch courage' to launch their assaults...the Japanese had apparently used the island as their main liquor supply dump[in the Pacific]."Nowhere else did the troops on our side ever come on such prodigious stores as were captured there:Scotch and American whiskies,and Japanese imitations thereof,sake galore and beer in quantities.Before the occupation was far along,men who could have given their all for a snort of jungle juice..were becoming choosy as to brands and accepting no substitutes."
Another novel use of empty beer bottles:
http://community.discovery.com/eve/foru ... 4319183201
The poster must be Terry Mays,the author of the book( http://www.schifferbooks.com/newschiffe ... 0764333446 ).During WWII, US soldiers on Guadalcanal claimed Japanese pilots threw empty bottles from their aircraft and they sounded like falling bombs. In turn, American night intruders pilots did the same over Japanese bases. Do empty bottles sound like falling bombs? The following is a passage from a book I wrote on 13th Air Force Nightfighters of WWII (Night Hawks and Black Widows: 13th Air Force Nightfighters of the South and Southwest Pacific, 1943-1945 - released August 28, 2009 by Schiffer Books):
Not all of the ordnance dropped by “Washing Machine Charlie” or “Louie the Louse” during the raids involved explosives. Many times, the Japanese dropped empty glass bottles from their aircraft. Reports passed between Americans in the era claimed that the wind whistled into the bottles as they fell and could be heard by those on the ground just prior to striking the earth, where they shattered. Supposedly, an empty bottle had just as much morale damaging impact as a bomb due to its sound in flight and when shattering on the ground. Many American crews, including those of Detachment B 6th Night Fighter Squadron (NFS) and the 419th NFS after the latter’s arrival on Guadalcanal in November 1943, returned the favor by dumping empty beer bottles from their aircraft over Japanese targets at night whether or not they could be heard on the ground. American P-70 Nighthawks carried small bomb loads, preventing their crews from striking multiple targets during night intruder missions. Their former bomb bays were redesigned as belly tubs for guns. Second Lieutenant Jim Allen of the 419th NFS recalled an innovative solution to the problem of small bomb loads: “The P-70s could not carry much ordnance, and by the time we hit Japanese areas up the Slot we would be out of bombs and could not hit their bases located along theroute back. We had received a nice ration of Australian beer, and their bottles were twice as large as ours. One of the guys said that he heard a bottle coming from a fairly high altitude sounded like a bomb coming down.
We loaded two or three cases of beer bottles—empty, of course—and on return trips would throw them out over Japanese camps. We never did know if this worked, but it sure was fun to throw them out.”
I don't know if Mythbusters have tested this myth.
Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Beer
Link on Japanese brands up to WW2
http://www.sha.org/publications/technic ... icle02.cfm
Some early 20th Century photos of the beer boom in Japan then.It also highlights beer advertising then was as crazy as it is nowadays.
Link on Japanese brands up to WW2
http://www.sha.org/publications/technic ... icle02.cfm
Some early 20th Century photos of the beer boom in Japan then.It also highlights beer advertising then was as crazy as it is nowadays.
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Beerhall with a difference--note the Rising Sun ceiling.
Anyone drunk on their back could still feel patriotic.
Anyone drunk on their back could still feel patriotic.
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
From Youtube,tomavard
Japanese Beer Bottle Artifacts Chuuk Lagoon
Japanese Beer Bottle Artifacts Chuuk Lagoon
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
The standard work written in the Philippines on the Japanese occupation is Teodoro Agoncillo’s The Fateful Years (2 volumes). It was originally released in 1965, but there is a 2001 paperback edition which was published by the University of the Philippine Press. Agoncillo wrote several good works on Filipino history, especially the period from 1896-1946, and anything by him would be worth getting a hold of.Sewer King wrote: I do not know as much about Philippine Commonwealth history from Filipino sources as I would like. Has there been at times some low current of joint Filipino-Japanese scholarship about the war that led to works like the one cited here?
Let me also recommend three more recent works by Ricardo T. Jose and his wife Lydia Yu-Jose. Ricardo Jose is a professor at the University of the Philippines and received his doctorate from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. I’m not sure where Lydia Yu-Jose got her doctorate, but she is a professor at Ateneo de Manila University.
The Philippines Under Japan, Ikehata Setsuho and Ricardo T. Jose, Ateneo de Manila University press.
Philippines-Japan Relations, Ikehata Setsuho and Lydia Yu-Jose (available on Amazon)
Japanese Occupation of the Philippines: A Pictorial History, Ricardo T. Jose and Lydia Yu-Jose, Ayala Foundation Inc. (240 pages of pictures and commentary)
These may be hard to get since most books published in the Philippines are seldom sold abroad. This is even more true of the wealth of unpublished works; theses, discussion papers, primary source documents, etc. Since moving to Mindanao I really miss the access I had when I lived in Manila.
Ron
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Prior to WWII one of the largest breweries in the Philippines, the Balintawak Beer Brewery in Manila, was Japanese owned. During the war production was diverted to the Japanese military. There are tales that upon it's "liberation" by American soldiers a steady stream of GIs was seen going in and then coming out with helmets full of beer scooped from the vats. After the war the factory was taken over by San Miguel Beer and is still in operation.
Ron
Ron
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Sorry, I left off a very interesting book from the Japanese point of view. The Remains of War: Apology and Forgiveness by Ishida Jintaro, Quezon City, Megaboks Co. 2001. It details many of the atrocities by juxtaposing interviews of both Filipinos and Japanese present at each event. It is available on Amazon.
Ron
Ron
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Thanks Ron for these recommendations. I had suspected as much as you said about Filipino scholarly histories, but not known until now. There might well be a similar wealth of Japanese military history scattered (or hoarded) in mainland China -- where it would be even less appraised, translated, edited, collated, and available for study and debate.
The only Philippine-published book I can think of that recently received visible distribution in the US was Ishida Jintaro’s The Remains of War: Apology and Forgiveness (Lyons Press, 2004). This is one of two books about an IJN veteran’s journeys of apology across the Philippines, and through the divided memories of his wartime comrades. Though not a study by any means, it is mostly a moral and emotional approach to its subject.
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A Japanese beer bottle used for the classic Molotov cocktail served worldwide:
(US War Department Handbook of Japanese Military Forces TM-E 30-480 (US Government Printing Office, 1944), page 212
I had always thought this bottle said “KINSEI” on it, which I took for “Gold Star” as in the Mitsubishi warplane engine of the same name. It does not match up to the beer bottles' brands or their molded distinctions listed in the sourcelink, but either the Handbook or I , or both could be wrong that it is a beer bottle at all.
-- Alan
The only Philippine-published book I can think of that recently received visible distribution in the US was Ishida Jintaro’s The Remains of War: Apology and Forgiveness (Lyons Press, 2004). This is one of two books about an IJN veteran’s journeys of apology across the Philippines, and through the divided memories of his wartime comrades. Though not a study by any means, it is mostly a moral and emotional approach to its subject.
==========================
Most everywhere, beer does seem to bring out some small-comedy celebration around it that other beverages and liquors don’t. Why might that be?Peter H wrote:Beer Link on Japanese brands up to WW2
A Japanese beer bottle used for the classic Molotov cocktail served worldwide:
(US War Department Handbook of Japanese Military Forces TM-E 30-480 (US Government Printing Office, 1944), page 212
I had always thought this bottle said “KINSEI” on it, which I took for “Gold Star” as in the Mitsubishi warplane engine of the same name. It does not match up to the beer bottles' brands or their molded distinctions listed in the sourcelink, but either the Handbook or I , or both could be wrong that it is a beer bottle at all.
I hope that the many wrecks have not been looted. The thousands of skeletons known to be aboard might make for more sensitivity to them as graves, but probably not for the rapacity of our time.Peter H wrote:Japanese Beer Bottle Artifacts Chuuk Lagoon
-- Alan
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Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
I would have thought that if there were any stocks of liquor, they might be kept near 31st Army headquarters on Saipan, or its rear areas on Chichi Jima in the Bonin Islands. If so much of it were captured in the retaking of Guam, it sounds like a small reverse of the same at Singapore earlier in the war. Presumably the American whiskies had been captured there in 1941,Peter H wrote:Spector also brings up IJN liquor in his Eagle Against the Sun,page 320.
When Guam was captured in August 1944:
..the Japanese had apparently used the island as their main liquor supply dump[in the Pacific]."Nowhere else did the troops on our side ever come on such prodigious stores as were captured there:Scotch and American whiskies, and Japanese imitations thereof,sake galore and beer in quantities.Before the occupation was far along,men who could have given their all for a snort of jungle juice..were becoming choosy as to brands and accepting no substitutes."
Sugar cane was cultivated down in the Nanpo Shoto (Southern Island chain) of the Bonin Islands, Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands, and the mandated Marianas. As a result, rum as local drink is mentioned in a few accounts of the garrisons there, or at least a few of their officers, although nothing of its distillery.
Didn't the Russians customarily issue a slug of vodka to troops before H-hour? Among armies that did this I always thought it was considered a manly gesture that warmed the interior and toasted victory despite the likelihood of death.Peter H wrote:I remember Eric Hammel in one of his books also dispelled the myth that Banzai attacks were alcohol induced.His studies on Saipan showed no empty bottles found behind the Japanese attack starting points so the Japanese did not need 'Dutch courage' to launch their assaults.
As noted earlier the Imperial Navy seems to have had more chance to do anything like this.
Returning once more to Russell Spurr’s account of Yamato cited earlier, A Glorious Way to Die (Newmarket Press, 1981), page 229:
Morning, April 7, 1945: the battleship’s bridge knows that the Americans have already spotted the great ship and her escorts making for Okinawa.
Ensign Yoshida whiled away the time in the main radar room. He was not due on watch until noon. The sets were temporarily switched off, leaving [escorting light cruiser] Yahagi to maintain surveillance. Men sat around smoking the emperor’s cigarettes specially issued on the eve of battle, and sipping liquor from hip flasks. It was not unusual in the Japanese navy to take a drink before action. Old Koyama was said to down half a bottle of Scotch before taking the wheel in combat. An orderly gleefully told the radar crew that there would be a special treat for dinner. The cooks were preparing shiruko, a sweetened red bean soup with rice cakes.
When Yoshida reported to the bridge he found the staff surprisingly relaxed. “Halfway there,” someone announced. “It’s going well,” said Vice Admiral Ito, smiling. They all laughed nervously. Rice balls with plenty of hot black tea were served by relays of orderlies. The ensign gulped down cup after cup in the auxiliary radar cabin, back of number one bridge where sets were being switched on as Yamato resumed radar watch …
But only hours later, at 1240hrs onward, the second of three waves of US attack planes had scored heavy damage. From Spurr, page 273
This would be understandable in those terminal moments, terrible aboard any warship sinking in battle, but compelling for the titan and technological pride that this one ship had carried. Interior lights would likely have begun to fail, leaving only darkness or shadowed firelight. Thus it would literally be a steel-walled hell echoing with explosions and screams, filling with smoke and inrushing seawater. Machinery and furnishings ripped loose would come crashing down around those men still whole and conscious below decks if not crushing them instead, as the ship capsized and then exploded, with the luckier ones having died quickly before then. And few among either of them privileged to have those last drinks.… Ensign Katomo gave up trying to raise damage control on the telephones and sent a man to the upper decks to investigate. The sailor made his way to the amidships section where the stores clerks were getting drunk on sake. Some of the storerooms were on fire. Others were flooding. But what was the point of wasting good booze? No one seemed to care. Reports of damage were filtering down from the main deck. An emergency casualty station was being organized farther forward and it was filling up with wounded men. Most of them seemed to be gunners …
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Bottles dropped from the sky remind me of the popular South African comedy film The Gods Must be Crazy (1980).Peter H wrote:Another novel use of empty beer bottles:
I don't know if Mythbusters have tested this myth.During WWII, US soldiers on Guadalcanal claimed Japanese pilots threw empty bottles from their aircraft and they sounded like falling bombs. In turn, American night intruders pilots did the same over Japanese bases. Do empty bottles sound like falling bombs? The following is a passage from a book I wrote on 13th Air Force Nightfighters of WWII (Night Hawks and Black Widows: 13th Air Force Nightfighters of the South and Southwest Pacific, 1943-1945 - released August 28, 2009 by Schiffer Books):
Not all of the ordnance dropped by “Washing Machine Charlie” or “Louie the Louse” during the raids involved explosives. Many times, the Japanese dropped empty glass bottles from their aircraft. Reports passed between Americans in the era claimed that the wind whistled into the bottles as they fell and could be heard by those on the ground just prior to striking the earth, where they shattered ... One of the guys said that he heard a bottle coming from a fairly high altitude sounded like a bomb coming down.
We loaded two or three cases of beer bottles—empty, of course—and on return trips would throw them out over Japanese camps. We never did know if this worked, but it sure was fun to throw them out.”
Is the idea that the slipstream of a falling bottle would blow across its open top and make noise by resonance? It doesn’t sound likely since the airflow would have to stay steady while the empty bottle tumbled in fall unlike an aerial bomb. As for smashing on impact, bottles would seem to scarcely jar anyone on the ground unless dropped in large numbers and hitting closely in a tight concentration.
Even if an improvised “bottle bombing campaign” had been “fought” by either side, it sounds rather like a diversion that amused one’s own side more than it was any nuisance or damage to the other. Although it seems to have been good for morale, at least.
-- Alan
Re: Food rations in the Japanese forces
Onions?
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