A Very Brief History of World War II-Imperial Japan

 THE MAXEY CHRONICLES is publishing a series of Blogs on World War II, A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II. This Blog is on Imperial Japan.

"The statistics of the war are almost mind-numbing. Estimates differ, but up to 70m people died as a direct consequence of the fighting between 1939 and 1945, about two-thirds of them non-combatants, making it in absolute terms the deadliest conflict ever. Nearly one in ten Germans died and 30% of their army. About 15m Chinese perished and 27m Soviets. Squeezed between two totalitarian neighbours, Poland lost 16% of its population, about half of them Jews who were part of Hitler’s final solution. On average, nearly 30,000 people were being killed every day."

How best to understand Imperial Japan in World War II? Stanley Ketchel.

The best way to understand Imperial Japan is to view it as a historical embodiment of middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel. ‘ Stanisław Kiecal (September 14, 1886 – October 15, 1910), better known in the boxing world as Stanley Ketchel, was a Polish American professional boxer who became one of the greatest World Middleweight Champions in history. He was nicknamed "The Michigan Assassin."

Stanley Ketchel was not called the “Michigan Assassin” for a frivolous reason; he was the most powerful puncher in the history of the middleweight class. He could knock out anyone below his weight; he could knock out  any person at his weight. He could knock out many people above his weight. The heavyweight champion at the time of Ketchel’s peak was the great and first black champion, Jack Johnson.

Johnson and Ketchel were friends.

The boxing world, led by former gunfighter turned racist sports writer, Bat Masterson of Kansas, was clamoring for a Great While Hope to defeat the seemingly unbeatable Jack  Johnson. Ketchel and Johnson schemed up a plan to fight a bout, go through the motions and wind up in a draw.

But Ketchel was Imperial Japan in his thinking; he thought he was so fearsome a puncher, he could knock out anyone with one punch.

Ketchel and Johnson fought, going through the motions. Then Ketchel struck, and his ungodly powerful punch knocked down the heavyweight champion of the world, a man who weighed 60 pounds more than he did.

Johnson stayed on his back, stunned, for a count of eight.

Then he got up and beat the hell out of Ketchel; when he finally knocked out Ketchel, two of Ketchel’s teeth were found lodged in Johnson’s boxing glove,

Welcome to Imperial Japan’s military policy. It could knock out powers beneath its weight, like Imperial Korea and Imperial China; it could knock out powers its own weight, like Imperial Russia and the Colonial Dutch, the Colonial British, and the Colonial French.

It could knock down powers bigger than it, like the United States. But it could not finish the job, a la Stanley Ketchel, when the opposing power was a true heavyweight.

After the United States got up off the mat, at Midway,  after the knockdown of Pearl Harbor, Imperial Japan had no chance of winning.

America was a heavyweight; imperial Japan was a middleweight, a powerful puncher but  no staying power.

The population of Imperial Japan in 1940 was 73 million people. It was already fighting in China, and soon would be fighting in Indochina(Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia), Dutch East Indies(Indonesia),Malaysia,Singapore, British India(Burma). With all that on their plate, the Imperial Japanese decided to attack the United States, whose population in 1940 was 132 million, almost 2 to 1 over Imperial Japan.

World War II was Imperial Japan's Lost Cause from the getgo.

So the question must be asked: why did Imperial Japan attack the United States?

Because the Imperial Japanese, as a regime, had two fatal flaws; they were

short sighted and impatient, very Stanley Ketchel.

It was French Premier Georges Clemenceau, The Tiger, who understood war very well. He said, "War is too important to be left to the generals." 

The first fatal flaw of Imperial Japan was that they left war to the Generals.

The Japanese kicked out the stuffy old Samurai based Shogun in 1868, and modernized under the Emperor Meiji. They wrote the Meiji Constitution, "Under the provisions of the Meiji Constitution, the War Minister was held accountable only to the Emperor Hirohito himself, and not to the elected civilian government. In fact, Japanese civilian administrations needed the support of the Army in order to survive. The Army controlled the appointment of the War Minister and in 1936 a law was passed that stipulated that only an active duty general or lieutenant-general could hold the post."

When one deals  with Generals, one of the main lessons is that very few Generals are Gestalt.  Generals in autonomous situations are as creative as Stone Masons building Gothic Cathedrals; they perfect what was done before.  It took an out of the box non General like Hitler to accept van Manstein's blitz krieg on France; it took a non General like Roosevelt to see the value in promoting Eisenhower over  Maj. Gen. James E. Chaney to command the War Against the Nazis.  

Imperial Japan had used surprise, powerful attacks to conquer Taiwan, Korea, defeat China, and Czarist Russia. The Stanley Ketchel Offense, they figured it would work for every conflict.

Surprise and ferocity was Imperial Japan’s war policy.

They tragically under estimated the resiliency of the heavyweight, the United States. Once the United States understood that their flame throwers could out kill the samurai swords of the Imperial Japanese, the war was over.

The Imperial Japanese thought their bushido soldiers were the most fearsome in the world ( see the Imperial Japanese Rape of Nanking); they were shocked and stunned by the recurring viciousness of the individual fighting American marine. The Imperial Japanese never had met a foe like the American Marine and sailor; someone just as brave, someone just as vicious, someone just as barbaric.

HARRY TRUMAN and THE ATOMIC BOMB

As a well regarded field artillery officer during World War I, Harry Truman got ALL his men home alive, an amazing feat for a battle unit.

It was estimated that an American force invading Imperial Japan’s homeland would have suffer one million casualties. With his track record as a fighting officer, there was no way President Truman was going to put the lives of innocent Japanese civilians above the lives of American combat soldiers.

This Blog doubts if it took more than a minute for Truman to decide to use the atomic bomb on Imperial Japan. He was the avenging Jack Johnson, and he relished the opportunity to land a punch that would take out the teeth of Imperial Japan; which he did.

There was nothing more important to Harry Truman than the lives of American soldiers; as soon as Truman learned the destructive power of the A-Bomb, Imperial Japan was doomed.

American war leadership against Imperial Japan was skilled, able and blood thirsty.

During the initial stages of the pivotal Battle of Midway, America sank three of the four Imperial Japanese carriers engaged in the battle,  with the loss of one American carrier, a great victory. Yet the commanding American Admiral, Chester Nimitz, refused to disengage until all the Japanese carriers were sunk. His logic was simple, “I want that fourth carrier.”

At Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the blood lust of the American Marine was incomparable and insatiable. It is not by accident that Japanese civilians jumped to their deaths on Okinawa rather than face the cruel legions of America.

The American Marine in the war against Imperial Japan was equal to the Roman Legionnaire who salted the earth of Carthage so that nothing would ever grow there again-implacable, skilled, courageous and vicious beyond the limits of civilization.

Imperial Japan lost World War II in three battles.

MIDWAY- in which America turned the tide in the Pacific, sinking the Japanese carrier fleet and killing most of the Japanese pilots who had attacked Pearl Harbor. Three carriers were destroyed in six minutes.

The most fascinating aspect of the Battle of Midway is how the Imperial Japanese leadership informed their people of the defeat.....THEY DID'T INFORM THEM. In fact they did not inform the Japanese public that a battle had been fought. 

Imperial Japan lost four aircraft carriers at Midway; the famed, feared and fearsome Kido Butai was destroyed.  The Kido Butai  had destroyed the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, the British Pacific  fleet at Singapore, and the Dutch Pacific fleet in the East Indies. 

Post Midway, the four carriers were singularly stricken from the registry of the Imperial Japanese Navy, without details of how or where they were lost.

The families of the Japanese dead were informed that they were killed in action, but no battle was mentioned. The wounded were taken to secret hospitals and cared for, in secret; once they were recovered, they were shipped to battle fronts without the ability to contact friends or families.

The living survivors were shipped to the battle zones of the Pacific islands, to remote places, to die in battle, without telling anyone about Midway. No survivor was allowed leave home, and all letters to families and friends were censored. 

No one in the press was allowed to mention the defeat, or even the battle.

The Japanese public did not know that the Imperial Japanese Navy had suffered a major defeat at Midway until the American occupation; if fact the Japanese public did not know a battle had been fought until the Japanese surrender.

The Imperial Japanese navy was very ahead of its time, in its Orwellian thinking.

OKINAWA- the United States launched the greatest fighting armada in history and threw it against the Imperial Japanese homeland at Okinawa. In response Imperial Japan threw everything against that fleet- the kamikaze (the Divine Wind) planes piloted by suicide pilots, the largest battleship in history, the YAMATO, and the kitchen sink. The American fleet just buried its dead, and stayed to win…earning itself the legendary moniker, THE FLEET THAT CAME TO STAY.

However, the most important battle for the fate of Imperial Japan was fought in 1939, not against the Americans but against that other heavyweight, the Red Army.

KHALKHYN GOL-Hitler was imploring Imperial Japan not to engage with the United States but to attack the Soviet Union from the East. The Imperial Japanese tested the waters, and launched an attack on the Red Army.

“The Battles of Khalkhyn Gol was the decisive engagement of the undeclared Soviet–Japanese border conflicts fought among the Soviet Union, Mongolia and the Empire of Japan in 1939.. The battles resulted in total defeat for the Japanese Sixth Army.”

The Red Army under Marshal Zhukov so defeated the Imperial Japanese, that the Imperial Japanese decided to forgo any plans to help Hitler by invading the Soviet Union, Instead they decided to knock out the other heavyweight, the Americans to the East.

Middleweight Imperial Japan was TKOed by the heavyweight Red Army and crushed by the heavyweight American Navy and Marine Corps. Imperial Japan would still be extant today, lording over half of China, if it had continued to fight middleweights, and had stayed away from the Jack Johnsons of the world.