Splashing Around,, Pacific Strategy - Draft 3a

Dewey Bennett
HST 454
May 3rd, 2015
Dr. Gao Bei
NOTE: The final copy of this document was lost when a hard drive crashed. The majority of
content is included in this near-final draft, though there may be grammatical errors.
Splashing Around: Domestic Political Dynamics and the Pacific War Outcome
Introduction
The popular history of the Pacific War, in both Japan and the United States. recounts that
a United States victory was inevitable due to its abundance of natural resources and industrial
capital.1 The history of naval warfare, however, is replete with David and Goliath victories in
both Eastern and Western traditions, such as Sir Francis Drake’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in
1588, Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s remarkable 1597 victory in the Battle of Myeongyang, Admiral
Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, or even the contemporary Battle off Samar in 1944 where effective
strategy applied by an inferior force still managed to achieve decisive victory. It is thus far too
simplistic to conclude that the United States’ industrial might was the sole decisive factor,
particularly considering its lack of preparation. A more robust explanation for the American
victory lies in the flexibility and accountability of its military and civilian political structures,
which allowed it to rapidly evolve post-Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile, the Japanese militaristic
rigidity and lack of transparency led its armed forces to both poor preparation and an inability to
correct faults after the war began.
The dominant narrative repeats that the Japanese, having awoken the American industrial
dragon, faced an inevitable defeat by an enemy with the endless ability to manufacture
weaponry. This narrative was evident even in early private wartime propaganda, such as in Walt
Disney’s Victory Through Airpower; an animated strategic proposal guaranteeing victory if the
1 Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Failor Cook,Japan at War: An Oral History (New York: New Press,1992),17.

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United States used strategic bombing to leverage its vast industrial reserves against Japan’s
corresponding deficiencies.2 The early post-war assessments seemingly confirmed the wartime
sentiments in the official United States Strategic Bombing Summary Report, which noted in its
introduction that “Japan’s war plans did not contemplate, nor were its capabilities such that it
could have contemplated, interference with the United States.”3 The unofficial - though sourced
with permission from official naval records - academic account of the struggle by Samuel
Morison Jr. echoed its official counterpart. In a blunt assessment regarding the inevitability of
Japanese defeat Morison wrote that in response to the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan would be forced
to “suffer an irresistible counterattack.”4 With the industrial supremacy of the United States a
given, the academic debate regarding the end of the Pacific War turned to an often political
squabble over the atomic bombs’ roles in Japan’s otherwise inevitable defeat.
Japan is noted for its lack of historical self-evaluation in the wake of the Second World
War, as modern politicians continue to take positions on the existence, or purported lack thereof,
of Imperial atrocities – a stark contrast to the Western portrayals of the war. Curiously, the
Japanese account of the Pacific War mirrors and accepts, however, the American view that
defeat was rooted in the potential industrial strength of the Allied Powers. Masanori Ito, perhaps
the most reputed Japanese naval scholar of the conflict, concluded in his seminal monograph on
Japanese naval decline that, based on both the restrictions of the pre-war naval conferences and
resource limitations, “Japan had no chance of winning a war.”5 Written in 1956, Ito’s ideas were
2 Victory Through Airpower, prod. WaltDisney, dir.H. C. Potter, perf. Alexander De Seversky (United States: Walt
Disney Productions,1943).
3 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War) (Washington,D.C.: U.S. Govt. Print. Off.,
1946),1.
4 Samuel EliotMorison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: Coral Sea Midway and
Submarine Actions May 1942-August1942,vol. 4 (Boston: Little Brown, 1949),8.
5 Masanori Ito,The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy, trans.Roger Pineau and Andrew Y. Kuroda (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson,1956),201.

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well-received by a Japanese citizenry seeking to escape blaming either themselves or the national
character. The dominant sentiment recorded by Haruko and Theodore Cook when compiling
their oral histories of Japan in the late ‘80s remained, “the Japanese are far more likely to
attribute defeat to Allied production processes, to blame material more than people.”6 The
consensus on an inevitable, resource-dependent loss can itself be attributed to the overall
reluctance of the Japanese people to examine their own wartime narrative out of the fear they
may find themselves deserving of more guilt. Thus, a further investigation of the non-industrial
roots of defeat lends itself not only to a more accurate understanding of the conflict overall, but
of the Japanese reluctance to discuss it.
Even were American overall victory a foregone conclusion, different behaviors by the
United States Navy and government in its pre-war evolution could have contributed to more
rapid success and lower loss of life than the brutality of island-hopping. Likewise, had Japan
better prepared its own fleet composition and tactics in addition to designing a war aim
inherently consistent with its military means, it may have been able to capitalize on the immense
logistical challenges the United States faced in fighting across the Earth’s most expansive
ocean.7 Neither military, however, entered the conflict in an ideal military position. Due to the
interaction of the international naval status quo, determined in the previous half century by
various naval treaties and the dominance of Mahanian thought, with the domestic political
context of both nations, neither state was truly prepared for the engagement. Nonetheless, the
flexibility offered by the United States’ political regime, in contrast to the stark rigidity of the
6 Cook, Japan at War, 17.
7 Duncan S. Ballantine, U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second World War (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press,1998),
40.

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Japanese military government, enabled it to properly react to its failings and thus subdue the
Empire of Japan.
Pre-War Status Quo
The international naval status quo was created by two treaties in the aftermath of the First
World War. First, the Treaty of Versailles legitimized the Japanese occupation of previously
German-held islands, seized in the war’s early days, including the Marshall, Marianas, Caroline,
and Palau Islands.8 As US naval planners immediately realized, the control of these islands
blocked its sea lines of communication to the Philippines and Guam. Furthermore, the other
major treaty of the twenties, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, dictated that the United
States could not fortify its non-state Pacific possessions.9 This status quo heading into the 1930s
was analyzed by contemporary military strategist Hector Bywater in his 1929 monograph
Nations and Navies, which stated the United States’ positions were simply indefensible and their
re-taking would require “an amphibious campaign exceeding in magnitude and difficulty
anything of the kind that has previously been attempted.”10 The Washington Naval Conference,
seeking mostly to stunt the growth of another Dreadnought-style battleship arms race, limited the
Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) to a 3:5 tonnage ratio with the United States and Great Britain.11
Although seen by Westerners as recognition of Japanese military might, having given them a
greater ship allotment than France and Italy, the Japanese saw the limitation as a humiliation – a
perception which would be key in the way they responded to this and subsequent treaties.12
8 Reilly Ridgell,Pacific Nations and Territories: The Islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia (Honolulu,
Hawaiʻi:Bess Press,2006),62.
9 "Conference on the Limitation of Armament, Washington November 12, 1921 – February 6, 1922," in Papers
Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1922, vol.1 (Washington:Government PrintingOffice,
1861),253.
10 Ballantine,U.S. Naval Logistics in the Second World War , 41.
11“Conference on the Limitation…”, 253.
12Ito, The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 14.

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During the critical period of the 1930s, two further major naval conferences in London,
during 1931 and 1936, attempted to re-assess the now decade-old Washington Conference.
Unsurprisingly, the previously attempts to prevent an arms race in capital ships merely re-
directed military finances and attention to the development of more powerful cruisers and
submarines instead of reducing costs.13 During the first conference, fully held between 1930 and
1931, the ban on battleship construction was re-affirmed as the major powers attempted to also
limit the growing power of non-capital vessels, again drawing the ire of Imperial Japan. As
submarines played a key, but ultimately misguided, role in the Japanese war plans, the IJN
attempted to secure a 78,000 ton limit on submarine fleets but were thwarted by Anglo-American
insistence on a limit of 52,700 tons.14 As this left the Japanese two full submarine squadrons
short of their planned undersea fleet, its negotiators again returned to Honshu with feelings of
contempt and humiliation.15 Due to the increasingly Army-dominated political situation, this
humiliation was met with a determination to circumvent the treaty in secrecy while biding its
time till the treaty’s1936 expiration. Accordingly, the primary controversy and significance of
the 1936 London Naval Treaty was Japan’s refusal to longer acquiesce to international building
restrictions, whereas the Americans continued to design their pre-war navy along treaty
guidelines. The international status quo so set, the Japanese and American responses to this
situation differed radically and, in large part, due to their domestic political regimes.
The naval status quo was not, however, completely defined by international agreements.
An undeniably important factor in international naval warfare long preceded the conferences.
The writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval scholar of the late 19th century
13 Clay Blair,SilentVictory: The U.S. Submarine War against Japan (Philadelphia:Lippincott,1975),136.
14 Ito, The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy,26.
15 Ito, The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 23.

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strongly influenced both the United States and Japanese navies. In his major work The Influence
of Seapower Upon History, Mahan argues that command of the seas is critical to imperial
dominance and that it is best achieved by decisively crushing the enemy’s main fleet to gain
complete control over the fundamental sea lines of communication.16 Although Mahanian
thought permeated all global navies the Japanese took a particular liking to it; more of Mahan’s
works were translated to and published in Japanese than any other foreign language.17 Especially
after the great victory at Tsushima in 1905, the concept of decisive victory central to Mahanian
strategy became equally central to Japanese military strategy as it turned its attention towards the
United States as its next rival.18
Domestic Factors
In the pre-war domestic political factors two primary intra-national relationships were the
most significant in determining the faulty preparation and execution of war aims: the military-
government dynamic and the subject-ruler dynamic. In the United States, the most influential of
these relationships was certainly the subject-ruler dynamic, which initially created doctrinal
weaknesses in the military but would ultimately prove malleable and responsive enough to
correct its peacetime deficiencies. Meanwhile in the Empire of Japan, the military-government
dynamic was more important - a relationship so dominated by the military that the terms were
nearly synonymous. As played out in the war, this dynamic, due to the sources of its power,
created a system too rigid to adequately plan or adapt to emergent realities of industrialized
warfare. The governmental dynamics created in each nation the issues of the reduction of
16 A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (New York: Sagamore Press),6.
17 Sadao Asada,"Alfred T. Mahan: Nativist,Imperialist,and Racist,"in Culture Shock and Japanese-American
Relations: Historical Essays (Columbia:University of Missouri Press,2007),54.
18 Atushi Oi,"Report on Japanese Navy, 1941," in The Pacific War Papers: Japanese Documents of World War II,
comp. Donald M. Goldstein and KatherineV. Dillon (Lincoln:Potomac,2005), 11.

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promising technologies to gimmicks, the denial of rational strategies in favor of orthodox and
politically-correct maneuvers, an ineffective allocation of officers and personnel, and the
acceptance as fact of racial stereotypes into military plans. As first evidenced by the
inadequacies in the United States Navy caused by the moral woes of civilians, in the pre-war era
neither governmental system led to the development of an efficient fleet or war plan.
The United States’ Domestic Political Regime and Impact
Before and throughout the war the dominant strains of Japanese leadership felt that the
democratic nature of government in America burdened it with a weak stomach for military
conflict.19 Although this would prove untrue post-Pearl Harbor, the pre-war navy was seriously
hampered by the civilian control of government and domination of the military by this elected
civilian government. With a strong tradition of separation of powers combined with isolationist,
general moral, and budgetary concerns, the interwar USN was forced to adopt measures of war
in compliance with the presiding treaties rather than strategic considerations. Due to the
subordination of the military to civilians, there would be no secret treaty subversions as were to
be attempted by the Japanese. Locked by its own political situation into compliance with
publicly popular international law, the US government unintentionally created a series of
systematic incentives irrelevant to the needs of a wartime navy. Subject to public opinion, the US
was unable to encourage tactics later considered vital to war efforts.
The issues caused by this subordination of military matters to civilian political anxieties
are best exemplified through what can be described as the bureaucratization of the submarine
corps during the 1930s. To appease the public the military organized itself with a focus on
upholding international treaty obligations, reducing the cost of military action, maintaining the

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utmost secrecy in its legal technological innovations, and an antiquated strategic plan in the
conduct of fleet operations. These concerns developed a series of incentives which undermined
the effectivity of submarine actions by creating an early submarine corps captained by timid
officers, chasing the wrong targets, and literally shooting blanks.20 Thus, the political incentives
of the US Navy on the eve of WWII did indeed create a situation in which promising
technologies were reduced to uselessness, equally promising strategies were ignored, and the
development of effective personnel was limited.
The technological achievements of the 1920s and 1930s in response to the various naval
treaties in the United States held serious potential for destruction if both proper bureaucratic and
military doctrine were applied. As demonstrated through American cryptographic and torpedo
research, however, flaws in organization and use of intelligence made these programs victims of
their own success.21 Through the high-tech, yet understaffed, ‘Magic’ code-breaking program the
USN broke both the Japanese PURPLE diplomatic code and JN-25 Imperial Navy code without
the adversary ever suspecting them having done so.22 These gains, however, were squandered as
intercepted fleet information was used to send American submarines on goose-hunts to locate
larger, faster armed surface vessels rather than paying any attention to the Japanese merchant
marine, which the codes had revealed were significantly under-protected.23 An obsession with
maintaining an advantage consistent with the naval treaties, the Naval Ordinance Bureau made
the fatal mistake of only designing and never properly testing revolutionary torpedo designs
which sported state-of-the-art gyroscopic aiming, magnetic proximity fuses to promote ‘breaking
20 Morison,History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, 232.
21 Stephen L. Wolborsky, ChokeHold: The Attack on Japanese Oil in World War Ii (S.l., 2012), 19.
22 Clay Blair,SilentVictory: The U.S. Submarine War against Japan (Philadelphia:Lippincott,1975),18.
23 Blair,Silent Victory, 18.

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up’ of vessels, and a back-up contact trigger to supplement.24 Unfortunately, these designs
proved too advanced to move into production without proper testing and only succeeded in
manufacturing torpedoes which were duds in all three above respects.25 Of eight torpedoes
launched at docked ships in Luzon harbor by Commander Frederick Burdette Warder of the USS
Seawolf in early 1942 not a single torpedo exploded, despite the attempted use of both magnetic
and contact detonation methods.26 Because of the lack of testing and bureaucratic
communication within the navy - practices which were intended to capitalize on the advantage
conferred by the high-tech torpedoes - they along with other potent technology were rendered
little more than gimmicks in the early stages of combat.
Treaty restrictions and a desire to maintain low costs in the event of war also denied the
adoption of strategies which would ultimately cripple the Japanese merchant fleet. In pre-war
doctrine, per the Root amendment whose overall significance shall be later explored, prize rules
made commerce raiding inefficient and instead placed the focus on attacking armed surface
vessels. Regardless of the Root amendment, it is doubtful American morality would have
approved of unrestricted submarine warfare in the first place – the reason for which the US Navy
permitted no war correspondents on submarines until the very last year of the war.27 Taken
together these conditions essentially put a moratorium on commerce raiding strategies in pre-war
maneuvers and led to the development of a submarine strategy based on remaining with the fleet
as supplementary destroyers for Mahanian-style, apocalyptic naval battles. When commerce
interception strategies were discussed, wolf-packing techniques, although known, were rejected
as the peacetime navy saw them only as a way for subs to be detected and lost. Under these
26 Blair,Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War against Japan, 136.

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restraints, commanders were taught to never fire using periscopes and were reprimanded, if not
demoted, for being ‘pinged’ on sonar during maneuvers.28 Both from a tactical standpoint and
through the effects this had on the promotion of poor submarine commanders, the conservative
submarine strategies created a need to overhaul misconceptions mid-war.
Altogether, the above obsessions with treaty compliance, cost saving, morality, and
strategic rigidity created a series of promotional incentives within the submarine corps
inconsistent with the needs of modern naval warfare. The submarine commanders of the early
war were those who had ‘played it safe’ in maneuvers and were rewarded not for making a
successful simulated hit, but for remaining completely hidden to enemy sonar. Thus, aggressive
submarine commanders capable of making risky decisions were passed over for promotion in
favor of commanders who would prefer to let a target pass than risk detection.29 In the first
months of the war this was exacerbated by the focus on attacking armed vessels, at which
reticent skippers were often afraid to launch. The decision to attack large warships rather than
merchant vessels in pre-war doctrine was based strongly on the United States’ treaty obligations.
Due to high levels of accountability in its civilian government, the United States was
forced to follow the stipulations of the Washington Naval Treaty and London Naval Conferences
to the fullest, as each were popular achievements of isolationists. Most important of these in
regard to submarine warfare was Article XXII of the 1930 London Naval Conference, otherwise
referred to as the ‘Root’ amendment.30 The Root amendment dictated the application of prize
rules to submersible vessels, forcing them to surface, search, and provide safe passage for the
29 Morison,History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II, 233.
30 "International Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armaments 1930," International Treaty for the
Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, ArticleXXII,
http://www.microworks.net/pacific/road_to_war/london_treaty.htm.

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crew of any ship to be sunk in wartime.31 Given the speed advantage of surface vessels, this
effectively outlawed efficient commerce raiding and forced a strategy of attacking warships
alongside the fleet. In terms of the United States’ overall surface fleet, the navy benefited
significantly from its compliance to the treaties, as these forced a complete re-thinking of surface
combat in which aircraft carriers were envisioned as the new capital ships. The Japanese, on the
other hand, would suffer for their efforts to circumvent the treaties and cheat the arms race.
Though having hindered the pre-war development of strategy, the subject-ruler relations
in the United States eventually placed it in a better situation to rely on and mobilize its public
when the conflict began. Having actively encouraged economic and social development in the
1930s through Roosevelt’s New Deal measures, the nation was in a prime position to leverage its
investments in human capital. Compared to Japanese efforts to mobilize its population for a pre-
war footing in the late ‘30s, the United States was overwhelmingly more successful due to this
culture of civilian control and abundance of industrial manpower. Also, primarily rooted in
moral and economic concerns rather than overall faulty military judgement, the civilian-based
hindrances to the development of an effective Navy disappeared during the first stages of the
war, with the appearance of an enraged American public more concerned with vengeance than
morality and an Admiral, Nimitz, more concerned with victory than existing doctrine.
Japanese Domestic Political Regime and Impact
The Japanese military governmental situation was in many ways the polar opposite to
that of the United States, instead creating a military-centric government with little to no civilian
oversight.32 The dynamic between civilians and the military government of Japan became a one-
way street as opportunists in the Imperial Army’s officer corps rapidly grew its political power
32 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War), 1.

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through the ‘20s and ‘30s by sparking military conflicts in Korea and China while
simultaneously assassinating both civilians and military officials who opposed the conflicts. By
governing through this reverse consensus, wherein a consensus was enforced via groupthink
rather than rational debate, the Army-dominated government of Japan consistently generated
strategies and weapons inconsistent with its war aims. With the basis of their consensus around
the pseudo-historic bushido code of honor, the IJA components of the government responded to
insults with aggression. Unwilling to accept criticism even from the most authoritative of
individuals, such as Admiral Yamamoto Isoruko, the Japanese Army exhibited a hubris even
Oedipus would have struggled to match. The rigidity of this regime and its focus on aggressive
position taking led it to a similar level of unpreparedness as the United States in regard to its own
squandered technology, failure to develop a rational strategy, and obscenely low levels of morale
by even its most talented warriors.
The source of Imperial Army power in the Japanese government came through its
continued ability to extract resources from its Korean and Manchurian possessions, which it was
then able to convert into domestic police authority through the forced resignations and
assassinations of non-imperialistic political elites.33 Relative to the participation and share of
spoils garnered by the Imperial Army, the IJN gained very little political influence from the
conquest of mainland Asia. Exemplary of this is the IJN’s paltry monthly budget of 1,190,000
yen on the eve of Pearl Harbor, while the Army received a purse eight times larger.34 This source
of authority was created and reinforced by violence abroad and domestic, garnering its
legitimacy from the namesake of the Emperor who nominally controlled the military, yet whose
true authority remains in doubt. As a result, the continued power of the Japanese military elites
33 United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War) 1.
34 Oi,The Pacific War Papers: Japanese Documents of World War II, 26.

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depended on their ability to maintain its war efforts; an ability which was ultimately reliant on
logistical sourcing from foreign markets to acquire fuel and aviation parts it was incapable of
producing in the domestic market.
The civilian-governmental dynamic in Japan of the ‘30s was very weak. Few resources
were spent developing the human capital of Japanese civilians as the military continued to pour
resources back into its own coffers; by 1937 military expenditures accounted for a full 70% of
the national budget, compared to the still high figure of 30% in 1931.35 Meanwhile, the Japanese
citizenry lived a modest existence almost entirely unreliant on gasoline and mechanization. If
families even owned a radio, it was typically acquired for the sole purpose of listening to
casualty reports for the names of loved ones.36 This lack of technological familiarity deepened
the dependence on foreign technology and energy sources noted in the preceding paragraph as
skilled mechanics, necessary for aircraft and ship manufacture, were few and far between.
Furthermore, the contemporary ideology of the Army was much less consistent with national
values, considered by traditionalists to be too Prussianized, leading the bulk of the population to
associate more strongly with the IJN culturally. The virtual exclusion of the civilian population
from political action is further evidenced by the Army’s lack of a meaningful attempt to
effectively propagandize or arrest “thought criminals” between 1937 and 1943.37 When the
kempeitai, or military police, did pursue dissenters for ideological purposes the targets were in
large part communists, rather than generic East Asian sympathizers. It was not that the Army felt
itself unable or unwilling to convince civilians of its imperial intentions; rather, it felt there was
no political need to appeal to a disenfranchised populace.
35 Thomas R. H. Havens, Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two (New York: Norton, 1978), 3.
36, Japan at War: An Oral History, 4.
37 Hatanaka Shigeo, "Thought Criminal,"in Japan atWar: An Oral History, by Haruko Taya. Cook and Theodore
Failor.Cook (New York: New Press,1992), 222.

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Based on childlike aggression and a perception of humiliation in the treaties of the
preceding decades, the Japanese decided that, following the 1931 London Naval Conference they
would attempt to circumvent the treaty and secretly construct a series of battleships, the Yamato
class, which each displaced twice the tonnage permitted per capital ship in the treaties.38 In doing
this, rather than extend the lead in aircraft carriers they had developed during the 1920s, the
Japanese military squandered untold amounts of resources on engineering the largest ship-based
artillery in history: 18.1 inch cannons with a roughly twenty-five mile range of engagement.
Staffed by the best-connected of Naval officers, these three ships were built in such complete
secrecy that the United States was unable to determine the true speed, displacement, weaponry,
and range of the vessels until the final year of the war, despite their advances in cryptography.39
The decision to focus on these vessels exhibits the IJN’s own faults in theory and strategy, which
remained based on battleships as the spine of a navy.
Japanese naval thought in the early 20th century was strongly, but not exclusively,
influenced by the theories of Mahan. Alongside The Influence of Seapower, Japanese naval
students were taught Admiral Shinshi Akiyama and Tetsutaro Sato’s Essential Instructions on
Naval Battles (Kai-Sen Yomu-Hei), which would remain the handbook of the IJN until the
Emperor’s capitulation.40 While Mahan’s initial work objected to the use of a commerce-raiding
strategy, this manual insinuated that “the colorless, monotonous, and entirely defensive warfare
of trade protection, no matter how important, did not suit the temperament of the Japanese
nation.”41 This basis of strategy on temperament and stereotypes, rather than a hierarchy of
38 “Conference on the Limitation…”, 253.
39 Masuda Reiji,"TransportWar,"in Japan at War: An Oral History, by Haruko Taya. Cook and Theodore Failor.
Cook (New York: New Press,1992),300.
40 Oi,in The Pacific War Papers: Japanese Documents of World War II, 10.

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strategic importance, permeated the army as well, leading to a number of incorrect assumptions
about the Americans which unfortunately were also key justifications for the claimed efficiency
of Japanese strategy.
Army leaders incorrectly assumed the temper, traits, and character of the American
people would make them easy to defeat. Prime among these was a belief that the democratic
nature of the United States would force them into suing for peace easily. Even in the aftermath of
the war a sentiment remained in the interviews of Japanese officers that a naval blockade similar
to the one imposed on Japan would cripple a democracy.42 As a whole, the Army’s position on
the American national character is adequately explained in the words of Japanese diplomat
Yosuke Matsuoka:
“The American would not thank you if you bowed to him and politely gave way.
He would actually look down on you, thinking that you were a total pushover. If
you give him a punch in the face, that’s when he will start respecting you, seeing
you as his equal. Japanese diplomats should take note of this [American
character](sic) from now on.”43
Other, more specific, faulty assumptions were as foolish as believing the Americans, due
to their apparently homogenous blue eyes, could not see well at night.44 Another
miscalculation was that Americans were inadequately built for submarine life. On this
unfounded bit of wishful thinking the Japanese military actually believed the United
States would not utilize submarines at all.45 Ironically, it was the Japanese submariners,
whose vessels were not climate controlled, who struggled to operate efficiently in tropic
42 Saburo Tadenuma, Commander, IJN and T. H. Moorer, Commander, USN, "Nav. No 54 Mine Counter-Measures
27 October 1945," in Interrogations of Japanese Officials, vol. 1 (Washington,D.C.: U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey
(Pacific) Naval AnalysisDivision,1946),217.
43 Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy (Vintage, 2014),73.

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and arctic waters.46 IJN Admirals Yamamoto and Nagano Osami, having both studied in
the United States, were highly uneasy with these character assessments by the Army,
which they considered faulty.
In the Japanese military structure, much like the Prussian foreign policy system
prior WWI, each the army and navy had independent, parallel diplomatic offices leading
to often contradictory stances on major agreements. The IJN, led by Yamamoto and
Nagano, attempted on numerous occasions to prevent war with the United States. 47 The
first round of debate concerned the signing of the Tripartite Pact, which was vigorously
opposed by the Navy’s foreign policy structure who felt aligning against the United
States was pure folly.48 After attempted assassinations and a deal to increase the Navy’s
petty budget, its leadership capitulated. When the Army tasked Yamamoto with planning
an assault on Pearl Harbor to force the United States into ending the oil embargo naval
commanders “expressed serious doubts about a strategy which promised no conclusion to
the war other than negotiation.”49 When asked for honest assessments of war Admirals
Yamamoto, Nagano, and Tomiji Koyanagi stated that Japan could wreak havoc for a
period of one to two years maximum before being forced to begin retreat – prophetic
figures which demonstrate that the IJN, at least, realized the inevitable consequences of
the Pearl Harbor attack. Due to the resistance of the IJN to any and all plans to confront
the Americans it is clear the major strategic faults in their war plan were force fed by a
48 Toshikazu Ohmae, Captain,IJN and T. J. Heding, Captain,USN, "Nav. No 43 Japanese Naval Planning30 October
1945," in Interrogations of Japanese Officials, vol.1 (Washington,D.C.: U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific)
Naval AnalysisDivision,1946),177.

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power-hungry, resource-thirsty Imperial Army at serious risk of losing its gains in China
and concomitantly its political power in Tokyo.
The intrusion of Army officials into naval strategy, without any sort of strategic
justification, went far beyond the initial push towards conflict. In the planning of Pearl
Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto faced serious resistance from Army officers who insisted he
use battleships, rather than aircraft, to bombard the American fleet. Only after firm, but
should have been unnecessary, insistence that aircraft carry out the attack was the plan
approved. Apparently bent on national suicide, suspected officer-led attempts on
Yamamoto’s life continued even at this point, causing him to deploy to a forward fleet for
his own safety. The army’s continued intrusions on naval affairs, in addition to the IJN’s
own internal issues, led to an analogous situation to the United States at the outbreak with
promising technologies improperly employed, the rejection of rational strategy in favor of
politically correct maneuvers, and the undermining of effective morale development.
The battleship-centric growth of Japanese naval forces during the 1930s managed
to squander numerous innovations in aircraft carrier and submarine designs they
pioneered while genuine adherents to the predominate naval conventions. In regard to
submarines, the IJN pioneered both the creation of the submarine aircraft carrier and what
Americans would refer to as the ‘Long Lance’ torpedo capable of accurately travelling
over 40,000 meters.50 For reference, the torpedoes the Americans considered advanced
travelled a mere 5,000 meters before losing effectiveness. Additionally, the IJN’s Class 1
submarines were designed to perform trans-oceanic cruises for long range attacks on the
United States’ west coast. In regard to aircraft carriers, the IJN possessed both the
50 Ito, The End of the Japanese Imperial Navy, 51.

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world’s largest carrier fleet and most capable carrier-born fighter, the infamous
Mitsubishi A6M Zero.51 Likewise, Japan’s five hundred naval aviators were the highest
trained in the world, averaging 500-800 flight hour each.52 Fortunately for the United
States, the Japanese military’s rigidity prevented it from utilizing these effectively.
The wastage of submarines and aircraft carriers in the IJN was not the result of
Army meddling, but continued obsession within the navy for a battleship centric fleet and
the concept of decisive victory. Despite building powerful long range submarines with
equally potent torpedoes, the IJN refused for the entire duration of the war to utilize its
submarines on intercepting the American merchant fleeting ferrying supplies across the
Pacific, instead attempting in vain to attack armed surface vessels before being located by
American naval aviators. The total tonnage of shipping sunk by the IJN submarine fleet
in the war was a mere 600,000 tons, less than the wartime total of the top scoring
American submarine commander.53 To contribute to the decisive victory, the Japanese
submarines were to wait and harass the US fleet as it approached the battle, but the
cracking of Japanese naval codes essentially prevented this from happening. In the later
war, the submarines would be diverted to covert supply operations which would
ultimately cost the IJN most of its experienced sub crews with little gain. Despite having
a clear supremacy in naval airpower at the beginning of the war, even Yamamoto saw the
airplane as a means of providing an umbrella for battleships approaching range and not a
capital ship replacement. As a result, this diversion of Japan’s most skilled combat pilots
51 Sakai Saburo,"Zero Ace," in Japan at War: An Oral History, by Haruko Taya. Cook and Theodore Failor.Cook
(New York: New Press,1992), 138.
53 Masuda Reiji,"TransportWar,"in Japan at War: An Oral History, by Haruko Taya. Cook and Theodore Failor.
Cook (New York: New Press,1992),300.

Bennett 19
would whittle down their numbers as resupply missions would to the submarine crews.
As the average civilians were not technologically literate, both factions of the Japanese
military struggled to find pilots and submariners able to intuitively operate machinery.
The desperation was such that by June 1944, around the time of the Marianas Turkey
Shoot, the Japanese navy was even permitting the disabled, such as one-eyed pilot Sakai
Saburo, to fly combat missions.54
The failure to implement IJN military advances in a cost-effective manner was
part of a larger pattern of inconsistency between war aims and operations. The most
blaring inconsistency with the war effort and goals was the failure of the Japanese navy
to guard its oil shipments from the Netherlands East Indies. Per the Japanese Chief of
Naval Affairs Bureau, Vice Admiral Hoshina Zenshiro, the stoppage of American oil
imports was the primary reason the Japanese declared war.55 Despite this ostensibly being
their main concern, the Japanese never employed escort tactics with sincerity nor did they
invest in anti-mine equipment until the final few years of the war. Having worked
intensely within British escorts during the First World War, the Japanese navy was not
simply lacking in tactics, it was lacking in the relative importance given to the oil and
rice imports. Meanwhile, the Japanese also ignored American shipping and strategic
weaknesses. In failing to destroy the fuel and repair bays at Pearl Harbor they effectively
only bought themselves six months rather than decisive victory. Again off Guadalcanal in
1942, with the Battle of Savo Island, the IJN ships had thirty American transports
cornered yet chose not to attack them because it would have taken too much time and had
54 Saburo, in Japan at War: An Oral History, 142.
55 Wolborsky,ChokeHold, 1.

Bennett 20
no chance of receiving a medal – apparently the more important concern among career
minded IJN officers.56
The final major issue with the Japanese political context was its inability to
mobilize the population and create a sense of cohesion even within the officer corps of its
military As the Japanese government attempted to implement a national worker uniform
and implement austerity measures for women in 1939 they were almost entirely
ignored.57 In a similar vein on the same year, the government also attempted an ambitious
seven-year plan to create synthetic bio-fuels at sixty-six government centers and
supplement the state’s fuel needs, but failed almost entirely – only eight governmental
refineries were built which even at their peak never produced more than twelve percent of
their intended annual output.58 The inability of the military government to implement
domestic reform showed the lack of legitimacy the new military caste held in the public
eye. Post-war interviews with Japanese sailors and even naval officers revealed similar
feelings within the fleet.59
Within both the IJN’s naval aviation corps and its non-Etijima Naval Academy
officers there was a strong displeasure with the treatment and deployment of graduates
from the contemporary merchant marine academy. Lieutenant Masuda Reiji experienced
this parallel hierarchy when an Ensign from Etijima crossed him, resulting in Lt.
Masuda’s transfer to a crippled torpedo-boat chaser, summarizing his experience, “Only
naval academy graduates are qualified to walk the decks…but we merchant mariners in
the Navy were lower than military horses, less important than military dogs, even lower
56 Reiji,in Japan at War: An Oral History, 303.
57 Havens, Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two, 20.
58 Wolborsky,ChokeHold: The Attack on Japanese Oil in World War II, 14.

Bennett 21
than…carrier pigeons.”60 These experiences were echoed in the naval aviation service.
Despite his status as one of the top aces, with over sixty-eight confirmed kills, pilot Sakai
Saburo expressed that he was “fed with food best fit for horses,” while his commanders
rarely contacted his unit, living in luxury five kilometers away.61 Prior to takeoff, Sakai
would give speeches to his wingmen announcing that they flew for neither their officers
nor the war effort, but survival. Likewise, both men noticed that non-academy officers
and non-commissioned officers in general were much more likely to be sent to near
death, resulting in a highly contemptuous relationship within the military ranks.
Overall, the conflict readiness of the Japanese and American Pacific fleets on the
eve of Pearl Harbor were far below optimum. As the American population directed its
political attention towards a less expensive and treaty compliant style of naval combat it
incentivized the formation of weaknesses in its entire Pacific submarine fleet which
undoubtedly prolonged the strategic campaign. As the Japanese population had no
political relevance within the regime, the IJA and IJN continuously wasted raw and
industrial resources on highly technical ships, like the Yamato-class super battleships and
aircraft carrying I-400 submarines which would ultimately contribute roughly nothing for
their massive investments. By 1943, however, the advantage clearly began to favor the
Americans.
The Adaptation
The culmination of the American doctrinal changes came in 1943 when the
United States Navy made several crucial developments in its strategic efforts. First, the
codebreaking machines were finally being put to proper use as Admiral Nimitz focused
61 Saburo, in Japan at War: An Oral History, 140.

Bennett 22
the submarine efforts exclusively on oil tanker imports to Japan – a key step.62 Second,
the United States, using its codebreaking ability, pinpointed the location of Admiral
Yamamoto and in his killing, removed one of the few voices of reason remaining within
the Imperial government. Third, the timid submariners of the preceding year, over two
dozen of them, were relieved from duty and replaced with recent graduates of the US
Naval Academy’s football program, where timidity was seldom found.63 In addition to
these major developments the United States also remedied its technological flaws, fleet
doctrines, and personnel issues as the Japanese simultaneously experienced a lack of both
resources and human capital as the Imperial government’s neglect to invest in its
citizenry for the prior two decades came back to haunt them.
The technological issues facing each nation during the middle of the war differed
significantly from the challenges presented in December 1941; in ways almost entirely
favoring the United States. All three torpedo defects were rectified after complaints by
commanders were heard out by the formerly secretive Naval Ordinance Bureau. The IJN,
however, which had been plagued by far fewer technical bugs than the American Navy,
still had yet to even begin designing the mine countermeasures it had neglected in the
inter-war period.64 Also, the Japanese lack of aircraft parts and fuel began to have a
negative impact on the quality of military aircraft. These technological shortcomings
would eventually combine with the bushido ideology to spark the creation of kamikaze
pilots.
62 Wolborsky,ChokeHold: The Attack on Japanese Oil in World War II, v.
64 Tamura Kyuzo, Captain,IJN and T. H. Moorer, Commander, USN, "Nav. No 5 Allied Offensive MiningCampaign,"
in Interrogations of Japanese Officials, vol.1 (Washington,D.C.: U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific) Naval
Analysis Division,1946),20.

Bennett 23
The dire move to the implementation of kamikaze attacks was directly related to
the military’s single-minded re-investment of taxes and war spoils into its future
conquests during the pre-war era. As it had not re-invested in its civilian industrial
capital, in regard to mechanical familiarity, the Japanese struggled as soon as Midway in
1942 to recruit and train pilots and submariners in a suitable fashion. By 1944 the lack of
piloting ability was made clear during the Marianas Turkey Shoot in which the IJN lost
over five hundred-fifty pilots and aircraft, driving the Japanese strategy down an ever
more desperate position.
Meanwhile, as the results of failing to create pre-war industrial sustainability
became ever clearer, the IJN still neglected its merchant fleets, which were sent into
knowingly sub-infested waters with neither proper air nor naval escort. In supplying
isolated garrisons like Rabaul, the Japanese would lose up to 80% of the cargo sent at the
hands of American submarines and aircraft.65 The merchant marine, held to be of lower
caste by the navy, was subjected to an IJN and IJA shipping strategy no more complex
than shoving them through a meat grinder with crossed fingers. As the stranglehold
tightened, particularly in March 1945 when Japan was almost completely cut off from all
naval imports, Japanese finally decided to increase its anti-mine staff, but what had
previously been a mere thirteen employees was increased to an equally insignificant fifty
in yet another act of desperation which was too little, too late for the rigid and incohesive
regime of Imperial Japan.66 All external shipments would cease the following month of
April, after which the only imports were American bombs. Drained of resources, its
66 Tamura Kyuzo, Captain,IJN and T. H. Moorer, Commander, USN, "Nav. No 5 Allied Offensive MiningCampaign,"
in Interrogations of Japanese Officials, vol.1 (Washington,D.C.: U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific) Naval
Analysis Division,1946),21.

Bennett 24
production capacity was slashed by half of the previous year, 1944 itself being one of the
lowest years of production already, heading into August 1945.
Conclusion
The military-dominated regime type of late Imperial Japan, split between
bickering IJN and IJA factions, failed to reach any true agreement on war means and
aims. As the IJA continued its costly snipe-hunt for the Chinese resistance forces on the
mainland, it implored the IJN to initiate an equally asinine and half-baked strategy to
draw the ire of an admittedly unprepared United States, by an equally unprepared IJN. By
war’s end, however, the Americans had overwhelmingly seized the initiative and learned
not only to fix its mistakes, but to capitalize on the numerous missteps of the Japanese
government. As its civilian-led government was not held hostage by its own military
forces, the democratic structure of the United States, rather than hindering it as the
Japanese pre-supposed, actually enhanced its ability to respond to the foibles in their
early war strategy. Despite their beliefs otherwise, the political intransigence of the IJA-
controlled government would ironically lead only to the demise of its previously
formidable military apparatus.

Bennett 25
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