WAR RESPONSIBILITY--delving into the past (19) / Rise of reckless officers, the bureaucratized military

The Yomiuri Shimbun

What should we learn from Showa War?

The course followed by Japan during the Showa War was decided mainly by elite officers in the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. How could they acquire such power?

After graduating from the Army Academy and the army's War College, those military officers were appointed staff officers at such institutions as the Army General Staff. They were characterized by their sense of elitism and closed mind-set. On the strength of the power of the supreme command, they gained a grip on military personnel decisions, budget allocations and policymaking.

The Meiji Constitution stipulated that the Emperor has supreme command of the army and the navy. This became grounds for military officers to refuse to allow the Cabinet and the Diet to interfere in military affairs. The elite officers held the reins of state policies, basking in a sense of superiority inside the military while staying independent from outside government organs.

Personnel decisions of the Operations Department were mainly in the hands of the chief of the Army General Staff. Even Prime Minister Hideki Tojo did not have the final say in such decisions.

Even if the Emperor expressed his wishes regarding operational planning and policy matters, military officers turned them down. After the decision to capture Port Moresby in August 1942 was made following the setback in the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Emperor referred to a dispatch of the army's air force units.

But the army continued to refuse such a deployment. Aribumi Kumon, head of air warfare at the Operations Department at the Army General Staff, said, "I'll never seal [the plan] as long as I'm in office." The air units were dispatched only after Kumon went missing in an airplane crash in October 1942 near Etorofu in what is now part of the northern territories.

Heading the army's operations planning during the Battle of Guadalcanal were Takushiro Hattori and Masanobu Tsuji, the duo tarred with the defeat by Soviet forces in the Nomonhan region on the Manchurian-Mongolian border in 1939.

Military officers holding squad-leader or section-chief level posts wielded considerable sway regarding matters over which they had jurisdiction. But a system under which they were never called to account for distorted the nation's policies, together with the characteristics of general staff officers who hated being examined by third parties.

Lawmaker Takao Saito reportedly warned in the early years of the Taisho period (1912-1926), before a political wrangle over interference in the power of the supreme command, that abuse of the Meiji Constitution could lead to an autocratic government. But this issue was never examined under the Constitution, which was seen as untouchable.

After the Manchurian Incident, fighting broke out sporadically. During this period, the military organs and personnel swelled and became increasingly bureaucratic. The army regarded the Soviet Union as a potential adversary, whereas the navy was more concerned about the United States. They vied over budgets.

Unfortunately for the nation, both forces had extremely poor military capabilities. Education at the army's War College and Naval War College was dominated by the victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Importance was attached solely to fighting tactics, such as hand-to-hand combat by infantry, seizure of enemy targets by small units of soldiers and decisive battles by fleets of big ships with powerful guns--all factors in the 1904-5 victory. The military believed its authority would be shielded by following precedent as a golden rule.

They were unwilling to acknowledge reality on the battlefield did not match their expectations. They were confused by the Chinese military's retreat tactics, and they suffered crushing defeats by mechanized Soviet forces and when mobile units became a major player in battles in the Pacific.

Navy Minister Gonbei Yamamoto in the Meiji era (1868-1912) ousted senior ministry officials who were unable to adapt themselves to modern warfare and replaced the director of the Combined Fleet before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military dismissed the commander of the Pacific Fleet and picked Chester Nimitz to replace him. The U.S. forces also implemented a shift in strategy to use aircraft and aircraft carriers.

What about the Japanese military in the Showa era (1926-89)?

The navy, which was unable to let go of the traditional doctrine of having decisive battles fought by fleets, failed to work out a long-term strategy and had its fleets destroyed as it expanded its battle fronts too quickly. Neither Osami Nagano, the chief of the Naval General Staff, nor Navy Minister Shigetaro Shimada exercised leadership. Even after the devastating defeat in the Battle of Midway, no top official, including Combined Fleet Commander in Chief Isoroku Yamamoto, Naval General Staff chief Matome Ugaki or Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the 1st Air Fleet, was summoned to take responsibility. Even as the hopes for victory faded, elite officers such as Shigeru Fukutome, Ryunosuke Kusaka and Sadatoshi Tomioka maintained the confidence of their superiors and were promoted to higher ranks.

Sidestepping responsibility for actions and decisions, uncoordinated strategies, rhetorical state policy guidelines and sectionalist disputes over scarce resources between the army and the navy--all were typical bureaucratic characteristics. These gaping deficiencies were uncovered during the war, the very time of emergency.

Before his execution after being tried by the Tokyo Tribunal, Tojo said: "The system of supreme command up to that time was flawed. Under that system, army and navy forces could never integrate their actions."

Kenryo Sato, a close ally of Tojo since his time in the army's War College and who later rose to chief of the War Ministry's Military Affairs Section as well as the Military Affairs Bureau when Tojo was prime minister, said the Showa War was a time of "revolution." He concluded that military-led politics, under which policymaking and decision-making processes were dominated by elite military officers, was the root cause of the nation's failure in the war.