Japan’s Colonial Moment in Southeast Asia 1942-1945

The Occupiers’ Experience

Nakano Satoshi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351011471
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The first-ever attempt to paint a full-scale portrait of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia during the Asia-Pacific War (1942–5). This book draws on the huge body of available narrative—military documents, bureaucratic records and personal accounts of combatants and civilians, including diaries, memoirs and collected correspondence—most of which have previously been either unknown or unavailable to non-Japanese readers. It examines how the Japanese imperial adventure in Southeast Asia sped up the collapse of the Japanese Empire as a whole, not only through its ultimate military defeat in the region, but also due to its failure as an occupier from the very beginning.

Nakano explains the significance of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia as a learning experience for the occupiers, whether soldiers on the frontlines or civilians on the home front. He uses a synthesis, overlay and juxtaposition of a selection of these narratives, to reassemble the narrative as a whole. This brings into focus the outlook of those Japanese who set out for Southeast Asia with the purpose to urge the region's occupied people to collaborate with Japan to transform the region into an integral part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Many would eventually discover that what required change was Japan and its whole approach to colonial rule, as was realized so quickly in the postwar era.

The original Japanese version was published as Tonan Ajia senryo to Nihonjin: Teikoku Nihon no kaitai [The occupation of Southeast Asia and the Japanese: The dismantling of the Japanese Empire]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012. ISBN: 430922542X.

1 The “Southern question” and the Imperial General Headquarters Army General Staff

1 The South as an exit from the war in China

War planning and management detail’s Classified War Journal

Saturday, 1 June 1940. It was on this day, a year and half prior to the start of the Asia-Pacific War that Tanemura Suketaka (b. 1904), a member of IGHQ Army General Staff (Rikugun Sanbōbu) Operations Section War Planning and Management Detail (Sensō Shidōhan), sat down and wrote on page one of a blank journal, “From this day forward … a daily account of our work will be recorded here.” This marked the beginning of the detail’s Classified Journal (Kimitsu Sensō Nisshi; hereinafter Classified War Journal), which would be continued by a string of the detail members until August 1945 [Gunjishi Gakkai, ed. 1998, Vol. I: 7; JACAR: C12120316400].¹ Encouraged by escalation of the war in Europe, the breaking of the strange silence that had enveloped the region since the German invasion of Poland, which marked the beginning of World War II on 1 September 1939, that is, the recent German invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands (10 May 1940), the battle of Dunkirk followed by the retreat of British troops from the continent (4 June) and the German occupation of Paris (14 June), the Army General Staff had suddenly begun entertaining the possibility of Japan’s own military advance to “the South.”

In the introduction to the full text of the detail’s Classified War Journal, edited and published by the Gunjishi Gakkai in 1998, the editors inform readers that in 1936 at the suggestion of Col. Ishihara Kanji, the War Planning and Management Section, originally set up under the Army General Staff, as “an organization for national defense policy planning from a long run perspective,” was the following year demoted to the organizational status of “detail” (han) as Ishihara left the Army General Staff; and from that time on the weakened organization with no more than five staff members at any one time was in no position to assume the responsibility of planning a war. Nevertheless, the detail was able to represent the Army General Staff in the Ministries of War and the Navy, as well as the Navy General Staff, in its duties of management for the Liaison Conferences between IGHQ and the government (Daihon’ei Seifu Renraku Kaigi; hereinafter IGHQ/Government Liaison Conference).² The Introduction goes on to explain the reasons why the Classified War Journal’s publication had been delayed, citing “the character of the text itself … which is rife with the personal opinions and emotional outbursts of its authors” [ibid., Vol. 1: viii–ix]. In sum, this is a record left by a group of officers, albeit peripheral to policy-making per se, in a position to see the full picture; and by the very fact of their “emotional outbursts” that appear from time to time, constitutes a very interesting “narrative” depicting the ideas and perceptions of the army’s elite on both the temperamental and day-to-day work environment levels.

Tanemura Suketaka, who remained in the War Planning and Management Detail the longest of anyone, from December 1939 to August 1945, reproduced parts of the journal sprinkled with his personal recollections and commentary as Daihon’ei Kimitsu Nisshi (Classified Journal of IGHQ) published in 1952 [Tanemura 1952]. The book, which was written upon his repatriation from Siberia where he had been detained as a POW since he surrendered to the USSR as a member of the Korean Army General Staff, to which he was assigned on 1 August 1945, departs considerably from the text of the original journal, containing both remorseful misgivings and self-serving justifications from a postwar perspective as commonly found in postwar memoirs written by other military figures and politicians. Now that the complete original has been published, the way in which it was first re-narrated by Tanemura and his comrades makes for even more interesting reading.

In his introductory remarks to his book, Tanemura emphasizes the fact that as of the end of March 1940, the proposal for a step-by-step withdrawal of Japanese forces from China beginning the following year was formally accepted by both the Ministry of War and the Army General Staff. In contrast, the interest shown at that time by the Army General Staff toward the South is described as limited to proposals concerning a landing operation on Luzon in the case of war with the United States; otherwise, there was “a complete lack of interest” as far as the other regions of the South were concerned. What would cause a complete turnaround in such an attitude was the seemingly unstoppable offensive launched by the German forces and the defeat of France. It was then that a possible Southern Campaign “first officially became a topic of study at Army General Staff” [ibid.: 12–15].

Tanemura here failed to mention the fact that the main purpose of “troop reductions in China” lay in the reorganization of Japan’s national defense system and buildup of military preparedness at home in anticipation of a possible war with the Soviet Union [Bōei Kenkyūjo Senshishitsu, ed. 1973, Vol. 1: 210], giving the impression of the kind of abridgment to be expected from a recent returnee from POW detention camps in Siberia. Nevertheless, Tanemura seems spot on about Japan’s military attention being spun around in the other direction by what was deemed an “excellent opportunity” offered by the sudden turn of events on the European war front. In fact, the term “Nanpō (the South)” first appears in the original Classified War Journal on 19 June 1940, immediately after the German occupation of Paris. Just prior to this entry, on 11 June, the journal records “Lecture on the South Seas” (Nanyō Kōwa) was delivered at the Office of Army General Staff by Ōtani Kōzui (b. 1876), a world traveler and the twenty-second abbot of the Honganji Faction of the Jōdo Shinshū pure land sect of Buddhism, which had been involved in plantation management in such places as Java since 1917. It was around that time, according to the Classified War Journal, that an exchange of ideas had begun among the department heads and section leaders at the Ministry of War and the Office of Army General Staff, producing a “ministerial level decision on various policy measures regarding the South,” followed during August by proposals concerning “Southern operations general planning” (from 15 August), initial “study” of a proposal for “Southern War Planning and Management” (from 19 August) and an “exhibit of clothing best suited to a Southern campaign” (13 August).

The issue of Japanese military presence in northern Indochina

Upon reflection, one cannot help being astounded by the fact that the Japanese Imperial Army, which would play the starring role in Japan’s historic encounter with Southeast Asia during the war, became interested in the region on the General Staff level only a year and a half prior to launching an invasion. Then how was the South perceived within the consciousness of the General Staff during that year and a half? What can be ascertained is that the major issue concerning the South in the eyes of the Army General Staff as of mid-1940 focused on French Indochina, specifically problems surrounding the stationing of Japanese troops in its northern region, which was thought to be one possible strategy for Japan’s exit from the war in China.

Three years had elapsed since the full-scale outbreak of war in China; and Japan was now losing hope of either destroying or forcing the surrender of the Republic of China’s Nationalist Government, known as the “Chungking (Chiang Kai-shek) Government.” While a game of wits was being played at the peace table, including the “Kiri Deal’s” secret negotiations of 1939, the bombardment of Chunking by mainly Japanese Naval Air Service planes, which had continued since 1938 and was being condemned by the international community as indiscriminate bombing, had been escalated between May and July. Finally, at the end of September 1939 the various efforts at peace, which had generated some glimmer of hope, were deemed “virtually hopeless,” as Japan abandoned its plans for a short conclusion to the war with China and prepared for the long haul.

Meanwhile, what was occupying the minds at Army General Staff Headquarters was France’s surrender to Germany in June and the strong possibility of an English defeat in the aerial Battle of Britain, which had begun in July. In sync with such an assessment of the European situation was the sudden emergence of discussions regarding military action against French Indochina and Hong Kong as one means of putting pressure on the Chiang Kai-shek regime. On 23 July 1940, the Southern China Area Army was placed under the direct command of IGHQ and one contingent was ordered to advance to the French Indochina border region in preparation for an invasion. The main objective of the maneuver was to cut off one route in the “Chiang lifeline,” a network of military supply routes to the Chungking Government maintained by the US and Britain connecting Southeast Asia and southern China via an “Indochinese” and “Burmese” route.

However, caution was the keyword even within the Ministry of War, let alone government circles as a whole, concerning the stationing of troops in northern Indochina by the use of armed force against the Vichy France regime, which had formally proclaimed neutrality in the war, despite its formation under German occupation. The Navy also strongly opposed armed intrusion and threatened to interfere with any attempts by the Southern China Area Army to cross the border on its own volition. In spite of the fact that from early on it had shown far more interest than the army in advancing south, the Navy, still not fully prepared for war at this stage, feared more than anything else arousing the ire of Great Britain and the United States by the “southward advance by force.”

Then on 22 September, on the eve of an impending armed incursion across the border, Brigadier General Nishihara Issaku, Japan’s man on the ground as the head of its French Indochina Observer Mission, was successful in signing an agreement with the French General of the Army Maurice-Pierre Auguste Martin, that would permit the “peaceful stationing” of Japanese troops within colonial territory. However, one portion of the Japanese Army unaware of the agreement did attempt an armed intrusion, engaging French troops in battle and causing loss of life. Snafus in Army and Navy communications and coordination caused three battalions of the Nishimura Brigade who had staged a beachhead at Haiphong to be abandoned by their naval escort, which retreated to the base on Hainan Island, and led to the “accidental bombing” of Haiphong by the Army Air Service. As expressed in Nishihara’s scathing telegram to IGHQ, it was a situation of “disorganization at the supreme command losing credibility both within and without” [Bōei Kenkyūjo Senshishitsu, ed. 1973, Vol. 2: 143]. As a result, by the end of the first week of October, the Army Chief of Staff, the heads of his Military Operations Section and detail, the commander of the Southern China Area Army, along with Maj. Gen. Nishihara Issaku, had all been replaced. Tanemura Suketaka later described this incident as “the worst storm to hit General Staff Headquarters during my [six-year] term of duty there” [Tanemura 1952: 33].

The stationing of Japanese troops in northern Indochina, which involved armed aggression caused by “disorganization at the top command,” was widely and loudly reported in the United States as a Japanese invasion of the colony.³ The US reaction to the incident went beyond Japan’s worst fears, as the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration immediately announced on 25 September the extension of credit to China (the Chiang Kai-shek regime) and on the following day an embargo of scrap iron exports to Japan, measures that had already been earmarked for implementation. Meanwhile, immediately following the stationing of troops in northern Indochina, on 27 September, Japan officially joined the Axis Alliance with Germany and Italy under the direction of Minister of Foreign Affairs Matsuoka Yōsuke (b. 1880). While the Army General Staff preoccupied itself with the problems surrounding the Indochina troop deployment, the Classified War Journal treats the “Axis issue” as if it were somebody else’s business, writing on 15 September, “the Cabinet has made all the preparations and it is no great concern of ours.” However, in the international community, the Japanese military presence in northern Indochina and the conclusion of the Axis Alliance were both seen as part of the same course of action, in which Japan had placed itself in the irreversible role of antagonist vis-à-vis the United States and Great Britain. French Indochina, which had started out as the army’s anticipated exit from the war in China, had now become the entrance for Japan’s entanglement in the affairs of Southeast Asia and the World War.

2 “Seize the moment” vs “circumspect” views of Japan’s advance into Southeast Asia

“Draft of a Policy Agenda Dealing with the China Incident”

With the passage of such events as the abandonment of efforts to establish peace with the Chungking (Chiang Kai-shek) Nationalist Chinese regime, the deployment of troops to northern French Indochina, membership of the Axis Alliance, not to mention the personnel shakeup at Army General Staff Headquarters, October 1940 was ushered in with the beginning of “discussions at the top ministerial and General Staff levels” concerning “Draft of a Policy Agenda Dealing with the China Incident.” The Classified War Journal’s 20 October 1940 entry reads, “Arguing that seizing a golden opportunity and taking military action to solve the Southern Question would solve the China Incident was an extraordinary position fraught with difficult problems.” The idea expressed here of plunging Japan into a world war in the search for a conclusion to its war in China foreshadows the actual conditions under which Japan would consequently drive itself into a corner.

The central figure in the drafting of the army’s proposal for the China exit strategy, as the head of the China Detail of the Ministry of War’s Military Affairs Bureau Military Affairs Section, was Lt. Colonel Ishii Akiho (b. 1900), who would direct the startup of military administration in Japanese occupied Southeast Asia. Author Hosaka Masayasu, who conducted an extended interview with Ishii, has stated, “He was a cut above the other former military figures I had met up to that time,” describing Ishii as “an intelligent, dispassionately reasoned soldier” [Hosaka 2004: 68–9]. After the war, Ishii would decline careers in either the Self-Defense Forces, politics or business, preferring to retire to his home prefecture of Yamaguchi, living a secluded life “digging the soil in good weather, reading books in bad,” from where he continued to act as an important source of information on the history of the war.

In 1960 Ishii stated that the army’s “Draft for a Policy Agenda for Dealing with the China Incident,” which he drafted on 22 October 1940, was based on the general assumption that the conflict would turn into a “tremendous battle of endurance” [Bōei Kenkyūjo Senshishitsu, ed. 1973, Vol. 3: 70]. In sum, it was time to give up trying to bend the Chiang Kai-shek regime to Japan’s will and recognize the Nanking Nationalist Government set up by Wang Zhaoming (Jingwei) with Japan’s support, then reorganize the war front to put more military pressure on the Chiang Regime to join the Nanking Government. What is noteworthy for our purpose here is that Ishii’s draft marks the first time that any Japanese policy statement referred to the “southward advance by force.”

In order to cut the Chiang’s lifeline, conduct a great long-term war of endurance and complete the preparations for a self-sustaining and independent defense of the Empire, it is necessary to solve our Southern problems as soon as possible. For that purpose, we must seize the opportunity and take military action.

[Ibid.: 74; JACAR: C14120667900]

What this document implies here is the objective of solving the army’s perceived “Southern problems” as a part of “dealing with the China Incident” does not stop at cutting of the lifeline routes from Southeast Asia to Chungking, but goes on to securing “a self-sustaining, independent defense of the Empire” making possible “a great long-term war of endurance” in China, meaning securing military material resources from the South. The great majority of the necessary resources, like petroleum, iron and rare metals, for Japan to maintain modern military forces depended on imports from the United States and the US-European colonies in the South, i.e., Southeast Asia. Phrases like “complete preparation” for “a self-sustaining and independent defense” replete with hopes of freeing Japan at the earliest possible moment from its dependency for such resources on the West and its colonies.

On the other hand, since such dependence was indeed the present reality, IGHQ and the government had wanted to (and thought they could) avoid unnecessarily angering the US and Great Britain, even in the military occupation of northern Indochina, by explaining it as an operation solely aimed at cutting the Chungking lifeline, while withholding such internal proposals as obtaining rubber and rice taking advantage of the occupation. Despite such precautions, the US reaction to the incident was far stronger than expected, raising fears of Japan-US relations deteriorating beyond repair, in general, and of oil shortages, in particular. Along with such fears, two ways of thinking began to develop: one perceiving there was no way but to form strategies around a southward advance by force aimed specifically at obtaining military material (called here “the circumspect southward advance view”); the other perceiving that the “golden opportunity” provided by the successes of Germany on the European front now made it possible for Japan to advance into Southeast Asia (here “the seize the moment views of southward advance”). Ishii’s draft proposal reflects both “views,” which up until the start of the actual invasion would become inconspicuously confused and intertwined.

While also deeply interested in a southward advance, the Japanese Navy, unable to separate any military advance into the region from aggressive action against the US and Britain, meaning the outbreak of war, strongly opposed the army’s original proposal calling for “an armed southward advance seizing the golden opportunity set before us.” A southward advance must not become national policy until naval preparations for war with the US, including battleship construction, were sufficiently completed; what was needed now, argued the Navy, was preparation (meaning budget allocations). The army took the official position that, to the contrary, unless national policy decisions were made, it would not be able to proceed with the large-scale reorganization of the army which thus far had dealt with the war in China and the possible threat imposed to national defense from the North (Soviet Union). Finally, when it became known in September 1940 that Britain had successfully defended itself in the aerial war with Germany and that Germany had postponed its plans to invade the British Isles, the Japanese Army’s “golden opportunity” proponents were considerably silenced, as the final draft o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of policy documents
• Introduction: the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia as a historical experience
• 1 The “Southern question” and the Imperial General Headquarters Army General Staff
• 2 The occupation of Southeast Asia: assertions and the real world
• 3 The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: ambition and reality
• 4 “Independence” under Japan
• 5 Southeast Asia and the collapse of the empire of Japan
• Glossary
• References
• Index