Title: The Rising Sun
Rating: 5 Stars
I’ve read a couple of books about World War 2. Usually, they are written from the point of view of an American or British historian writing about British or American soldiers. John Toland was an American historian. However, for The Rising Sun, he interviewed hundreds of Japanese generals, politicians, soldiers, and civilians. He spent fifteen months travelling around the Far East researching his history. Although he does cover American politics and generalship, for the most part, this history is told through the viewpoint of the Japanese nation.
Just to be clear, it’s not a biased history trying to justify Japan’s actions. It discusses, among other things, the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, and what even some Japanese saw as the dishonorable attack on Pearl Harbor.
Even so, it does give the war a fresh perspective. You leave with a deeper understanding of what motivated the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor (this was discussed in my most recent blog post). You develop a deeper understanding of why Japanese soldiers were so motivated to fight to the last man and why even when defeat was inevitable, that there were plans being made to sacrifice the entire nation of 100 million.
This is a pretty mammoth book. It runs to some 1200 pages. My edition came in two volumes. Toland covers the tumultuous years before World War II, the fighting during the war, and its immediate aftermath. Understandably it’s difficult to sum up 1200 pages in one blog post, so if you have an interest in World War II or of Japanese history, I’d strongly recommend this book. Instead of summarizing, I’m going to describe some of the more interesting things that I read.
The war in the Pacific started with the Second Sino-Japanese War. This is way more complex than I ever imagined. At the time, Japan had already invaded Manchuria and Northern China. The Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek were trying to unify the country. The communists were trying to create a communist state. China still had local warlords that ruled over parts of the country. At any given point in time, two or three of these different entities would be battling each other in one part of the country while a different set would be fighting in a different part.
The Second Sino-Japanese War started with an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge. The Nationalists were facing a Japanese force. Shots were fired at the Japanese from the Nationalist forces. Hostilities died down. The Nationalists then fired on the Japanese again. Things died down again. This continued until the Japanese had enough and attacked the Nationalist force. This set off events that resulted in a full war between Japan and China. Even though China is much larger in both size and population, it was actually much weaker. This made Japan look like the aggressor nation (and once the war started, they were definitely the brutal aggressor). This provoked widespread global condemnation and was one of the key events that led to sanctions and embargoes on Japan. These in turn led Japan to believe that its existence as a first tier nation was in doubt and was a huge factor in striking unexpectedly at Pearl Harbor.
Here’s the thing. There’s a chance that it was Chinese communists that were firing on the Japanese. They fired on the Japanese hoping that the Japanese would react and destroy the Nationalists, paving the way for the communists to take over China. It could be said that the Pacific part of WWII was started by a couple communists trying to pull a fast one over on their Nationalist opponents.
Another reason why the Japanese felt the need to be more aggressive was its population. One of the side effects of its rapid modernization was a dramatic increase in its population. At the time of the war, it had a population of one hundred million living on a series of islands that were collectively about the size of California. The Japanese leadership felt a dire need to gain additional territory to meet its growing population. That was one of the reasons behind Japan invading and taking over Manchuria. I found that interesting because ‘Lebensraum’ (eg living space) was one of the key reasons that Hitler invaded Russia. Hitler wanted to have countries such as Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus emptied of their inhabitants and replaced with Germans because Germany needed that space for its growing population.
The Japanese military was almost obsessively offensive. Their credo was centered around fighting some great decisive battle. At the individual level, everyone was encouraged to great acts of valor and, if necessary, willingly go to your death in the name of the Emperor.
While this led to great success in the aggressive early stages of the war, it did lead to problems later. For a war of any duration (and the Japanese knew that the US wouldn’t easily surrender), logistics and supply become crucial. However, supply is not heroic. Protecting a transport ship isn’t going to lead a sailor to a great decisive battle. In fact, the Japanese didn’t do a good job of protecting transports and supply. Once the US regained its footing and was able to project an offensive force in the Pacific, these ships became easy pickings. It wasn’t until late in the war that supply ships traveled in battleship protected convoys. Japanese admirals looked upon such duty as being beneath them. Even more weirdly, Japanese admirals looked upon attacking unarmed Allied supply ships as also being beneath them. So, while Japanese supplies were under constant threat, Allied shipping was relatively much safer.
Given the supply problems that Japan was already facing, not protecting its supply ships was a terrible mistake. The Japanese troops never had enough men, weapons, and material (like food). This was especially true in comparison to the US. Once it cranked up its war economy, the US soldiers were, relatively speaking, abundantly supplied with material. The comparison between the two military supply situations is stark.
One final interesting side effect that I hadn’t previously read about was the result of Japan losing so many of its experienced pilots in the relatively early stages of war. Japan just wasn’t able to replace them as easily. They were so low on fuel that they couldn’t afford to give new pilots adequate training. While US pilots took years to train and entered battle for the first time with a lot of flight hours, Japanese pilots by contrast were trained in the 1940s equivalent of a simulator where they watched videos demonstrating how to fight and bomb. This made them less effective combat pilots than the US pilots. By 1943 or so, the US pretty much had command over the air.
I knew about some of that. What was new was the fact that since these pilots were so inexperienced, the pilots that survived and returned back to base, not knowing any better, would report wildly inaccurate details of the attack. The pilots would report numerous carriers, battleships, and destroyers sunk when in fact possibly one cruiser might have been sunk.
These reports were taken at face value. The Japanese press would publish great victories that were actually staggering defeats. The military leaders also took them at face value. In battles of the later part of the war, plans were made assuming that the US navy had been effectively neutralized. They would plan expecting to face one carrier group when in fact there were three carrier groups still in the area. Of course, such false assumptions virtually removed any chance of success. In particular, when the US was in the process of taking back the Philippines, the Japanese leadership there suffered from monumentally bad intelligence.
OK, I think that I’ve written enough right now. I might post on this subject again if I get time in the next day or two. If any of this sounds interesting to you, I’d strongly advise you to consider looking into Toland’s book.
dorkenstein 