Saburo Sakai

[Luftwaffle8]

Originally Posted by Stig Jarlevik

Luftwaffle8

No real surprises in what you say, very logical indeed.
However, how did the Japanese High Command work?

If no one 'dared' to state anything upon return, how did they determine the outcome of a battle? To me (but then again I am a Westerner...), hiding inside the Group has a lot of inherent drawbacks especially in wartime.

Did the High Command (Navy and Army) believe in the often very fanciful claim (group?) reports? How did they ensure relevant supplies etc were forthcoming to various battlefronts? What I mean is that if they believed the Allies had basically been destroyed at some front line, they were bound to make mistakes due to, in the end, totally faulty feed back from their own pilots.

Then again there were a few flamboyant characters both in JAAF/JNAF, but perhaps they were far too few to be really counted?

The Japanese mentality is interesting, but beyond the scope of this site/topic, but I cannot help wondering at what level individual thinking/initiative began. It had to start somewhere, since otherwise the Emperor would have been completely overwhelmed in five seconds flat if he would have had to make every decision at every point in every Japanese life.....

Cheers
Stig

The HQ staff made battle decisions based upon intelligence information. And of course, there was politics involved, and saving face.

You can be severely punished for showing any initiative if it violated orders. A case in point is the Nomonhan Incident, the summer border war between the Soviet Union and Mongolians vs the Japanese and the Manchurians. If the Japanese unit is being overwhelmed, it would make logical sense to fall back and regroup. Such was not permitted. If the unit commander gave orders to retreat without permission from HQ, he was branded a coward and executed. So he elected to die at his station.

Then there was this policy of protecting the unit's flag (colors). Many men died to protect it, and they even sent out teams to try and recover it.

Then there was the policy of trying to recover their dead...and once again, many men died doing this.

The Japanese military structure was extremely rigid. And soldiers were expendable in order to achieve victory. You know the old saying, "Uncommon valor was a common virtue" ??? In the Japanese unit, there was no valor. You were expected to kill and sacrifice your life for Japan.

Here is an example of cannon fodder. Zero pilot Minoru Honda didn't come back from a mission, so he was written up as KIA. Then he returned 3 days later, and the paperwork was already submitted stating that he was KIA. None of the officers wanted to take the time to correct it so when he returned, he was sent on mission after mission, against impossible odds, but he returned each time! They were hoping that he was killed so that there would be no need to correct the paperwork!!!! Boy, he was pissed!!!
Luckily he survived the war.

Conduct which awarded our guys with the Medal of Honor, was common amongst the Japanese military. They would hurl themselves with explosives against tanks, crash dive into enemy ships and positions, and charge the Americans single-handedly in the face of deadly fire. We called those Japanese "FANATICS" - but if they were Americans, we called them 'HEROES!"

Our military commanders must show initiative and be flexible and fluid.
Sometimes, orders are violated or ignored, or "not received" or "garbled in transmission." If we win the battle, the unit commander is awarded and praised...if not, he is relieved of command, but not executed. We Americans are not hung up on "saving face" as the Japanese were.

So that is why Japanese soldiers were extremely tough. But they were hampered by the chain of command, and the inability of officers to take the initiative.