Category Archives: war

by Joel | 30 July 2023 · 5:54 am

Danish Civil Warriors and Crusaders

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 103-105:

On Christmas Day 1144, the Christian Principality of Edessa was lost to Sultan Zenghi of Mosul. It was the first major defeat in the Latin Middle East, and when the news reached Western Europe, it was met with despair and determination. Something had to be done, and preparations were underway for a new crusade just as large as the first (in general, see Phillips 2007). An absolutely crucial force in this effort was Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot of the wide-reaching Cistercian order. Bernhard was a gifted speaker and traveled throughout northern Europe on a preaching mission, and it was also he who initially allowed Northern German princes to fight the pagan Slavic peoples instead of traveling to Edessa. He rationalized this on the theological grounds that the devil attacked Christianity on all fronts simultaneously, and that it was just as important to defend themselves in the north as it was in the south. This cumulatively led to the so-called Second Crusade in 1147, which was one crusade but executed on many fronts, as it was described by contemporaries. Crusades were led against Damascus, against several places in the Iberian Peninsula, and in the Baltic Sea.

In 1146, Cardinal Ubaldus hosted a church meeting in Odense to preach crusade and drum up support (Bysted et al. 2012; Jensen 2017). The reaction must have amazed him, because King Erik III Lamb of Denmark immediately abdicated and entered a monastery, thus becoming the first and so far the only Danish king to voluntarily surrender the throne. He also died shortly afterwards and presumably resigned due to illness. He was followed by Sweyn III, who was later nicknamed Sweyn Grathe. Grathe was chosen by the Sealanders, but the people of Jutland concurrently chose Canute, the son of Magnus (Nilsson) (who had killed Canute Lavard). The third individual to partake in the battle for the throne was Canute Lavard’s son, Valdemar, who was now about 15 years old. The struggle developed into an eleven year war between Sweyn III, Canute, and Valdemar, and is often portrayed as a civil war. It is probably more accurate to see the conflict as formerly independent countries who now seized the opportunity to choose their own king. Conversely, these kings sought to expand their own power and unite the kingdoms over which their predecessors had ruled. During this same time period, several kings fought for power in Norway and Sweden as well.

The bloody wars in Denmark give a rare insight to the rulers’ paths, both physically and mentally, to power within the empire. Sweyn III began his king’s reign by working with Valdemar to declare Canute Lavard a saint and place his bones as relics upon the high altar in Ringsted. It was not recognized by Archbishop Eskild because it was a private canonization without the pope’s acceptance, but it does show that Valdemar would henceforth use his father’s miracles as an argument to support his own position as king. After that, Keld of Viborg, who had previously sought the pope for permission to mission and become a martyr among the pagan Wends, mediated between Sweyn and Canute by having them participate in a joint crusade against the Wendish Dobin, near present-day Rostock. They participated because the pope promised that if they fell, their souls would be in heaven before their blood cooled on the earth (Knytlingesaga 1919–25, 108). At Dobin, they met with a Saxon cavalry, and succeeded in occupying the city, baptizing the inhabitants and forcing them to free their Christian slaves. Then, according to Saxo, the Danish army withdrew because Sweyn and Canute did not trust each other. According to his contemporary, German historian Helmold of Bosau, retreat was because “the Danes are mighty warriors at home, but completely useless in real battle” (Helmold 1868, 65).

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Filed under Baltics, Germany, Mediterranean, military, religion, Scandinavia, war

by Joel | 28 July 2023 · 6:01 am

Scandinavian Warriors in 9th c.

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 62-64:

Ireland had previously been the target of Norwegian warriors, and in 851 Danes also started raiding the island. In 853 Ivar became king of Dublin and later participated in the conquest of York in 866. In 844 and 846 some of the armies that had fought in France pressed onwards to Galicia in northern Spain, and even to Arabic Lisbon: according to some later Spanish sources, these troops were dispatched by the Danish king Horik. In 854, 70 ships, led by Björn Ironside and Hastings, sailed from England via Spain to Morocco, into the Mediterranean, ultimately reaching Italy. Although it is difficult to measure the scale of these battles compared to earlier periods with fewer sources, it seems clear that the battles from the mid-800s onwards were vaster in scope, earning attention from their contemporaries who became the victims. There are three main reasons for this intensification of warfare.

First, it is clear that the Nordic longship had developed into a maneuverable and efficient war machine: Danish and Scandinavian fleets were famous and desired by other rulers for centuries to come. It probably wasn’t until around 1200 that other countries off the Atlantic coast built equally strong fleets; in the Mediterranean it probably happened in the early 1100s. Until then, the Scandinavians had a significant advantage at sea.

Secondly, the expansion in the 800s shows that Scandinavia was an extremely rich area. There is a very specific reason for that. With the rise of Islam in the 600s and the conquest of large parts of the Mediterranean world until the beginning of the 700s, Europe’s economic center of gravity shifted to the east. The link between East and West in the Mediterranean was left un-interrupted, but the Arab gold mines and new efficient exploitation of the Silk Road and its access to the East’s lucrative trade system provided an economic boost to the Byzantine Empire, particularly to the capital of Constantinople. The Scandinavians had access to this via the Gulf of Finland, Lake Ladoga in northwest Russia, and along the great Russian rivers to the Black Sea (Bjerg et al. 2013). Islam actually brought Scandinavia closer to being Europe’s economic center, becoming bridge and a transit area between the East and West. The vast quantities of gold coins found in Scandinavia clearly illustrate this. So far at least 200,000 Arabic gold coins have been excavated by archeologists, and with the spread of metal detectors more and more are discovered each year. Yet it is still only a small percentage of the many coins that were buried, and they represent only those treasures that were not dug up again by their owner or his heirs. Most of these immense riches were later invested towards war technology and political capital, in ships and men.

Third, most of these raiding expeditions were not random looting. Nor did they reflect a large-scale war between Denmark and other countries or between two cultures, one European and one Scandinavian, or between two religions, one Christian and one pagan. Rather, they were a natural element of an intricate political game between a variety of different rulers, with opponents and allied partners coming together across the political and religious spectrum.

The Danish wars in England were a continuation of old alliances across the North Sea. In northern England, Danish armies were apparently well received by the local population, whose elite probably had ancient Scandinavian roots. Several groups of warriors joined together to form the “great army” in 865, and in the coming years they conquered relatively easily East Anglia and Northumbria, which starting in around 870 came under Danish control. The Great Army threatened the kingdom of Mercia and Wessex in southern England, where it was stopped by King Alfred the Great. The warriors were soon followed by peasants who settled and cultivated the land. Danish had a lasting influence on the English language, and northern England became known as the Danelaw, the area under Danish law and control. We do know the names of several Danish commanders and kings located in England from the 800 and 900s. However, we don’t know if these kings also simultaneously ruled over anything back in Denmark. English sources say that they occasionally returned home to Denmark. This indicates that the relationship would have been close at the time, and the involvement in England clearly had a profound effect on the political hierarchy and power dynamics in Denmark.

The same certainly applies to the Frankish empire. One of the most important defensive strategies of the French king against the attack of the Scandinavian armies was to quickly ally himself with other Scandinavian rulers who were given land to which to defend [like Rollo in Normandy].

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Filed under economics, England, France, Ireland, Mediterranean, migration, military, piracy, Scandinavia, Spain, war

by Joel | 26 July 2023 · 6:18 am

The Danish Empire!

Here’s a book I’ve long been waiting for, after coming across accounts of Danish colonies in Africa and India, Danish intercession with the Barbary pirates, and Denmark’s more familiar (and longer-lasting) Atlantic colonies, let alone the once dominant role of Danes in the Baltic region. This is a new and comprehensive book, so I’ll make an effort not to quote as many passages as I would do if it had been on the market for a longer time.

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 13-14, 16-17:

The Danish Empire: Rise and Fall. This sounds as a pretentious title for the small kingdom of Denmark, but it is inspired by English historian Edward Gibbon’s grande opus, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Released in 1776–88, it has since become a classic, not only serving as an unattainable standard for later historians due to its vivid narrative style, but also as a landmark work. It became an essential source for later generations in their understanding of the Middle Ages as a dark period and became a manifest for enlightened thought and rationality in the face of superstition and sensations.

We have chosen to title this book The Danish Empire: Rise and Fall—to stress the volatile and shifting nature of the political unit that throughout history has been called Denmark. Today, one rarely hears much about the topic of Denmark’s having been a great and politically important power. Denmark is mostly understood as a small country content with its current modest political situation. It is certainly true that Denmark is a country that has become smaller over time. However, modern descriptions of Danish history have cultivated the idea that Denmark has always been a miniscule country and has always been threatened by its powerful southern neighbor, as evident in the traditional general histories of Denmark (Christensen 1977–92; Olsen 1988–91). Images of Denmark as a large country, a substantial political power, something that may even be called an empire, lie beyond the tradition of modern Danish history. This is what we would like to attempt to challenge, and therefore we have emphasized the phraseology of rise and fall in the title.

…

Many Danish historians of the twentieth century tacitly assume that Denmark has always had the same size and political influence that it has today. If asked directly they would agree that it is an incorrect assumption. Yet history continues to be written accordingly: addressing how the territories that lie within the current borders of Denmark have changed over time. The border duchies of Schleswig and Holstein are mentioned due to the political problems they have always caused. Scania in southern Sweden is seldom referred to as a Danish territory as it was during the Middle Ages; other former Danish regions as Halland and Blekinge in Sweden are rarely addressed at all, not to mention the Baltic islands of Gotland, Øsel (Saaremaa), Rügen, and the country of Estonia. The Danish Empire actually stretched from the North Cape in northern Norway to Hamburg in Germany for over three hundred years, roughly equivalent to the distance between Hamburg and Sicily. This book hopes to recognize, include, and allocate these territories within their accurate place time and in history, such as England [Danelaw] in the Viking Period, Norway from the time of the Kalmar Union between 1397–1814, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the West Indies, and Colonies in Africa [Danish Gold Coast] and India. While Denmark’s history should be acknowledged in its collective entirety, it should also remain in its European context. Denmark was at times a relatively large power in Europe, and functioned as a direct threat, particularly to many of the smaller Germanic principalities of the south: it wasn’t until later in history that these power dynamics became inverted.

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Filed under economics, education, Germany, language, migration, military, nationalism, religion, Scandinavia, war

by Joel | 10 July 2023 · 5:19 am

How Long Did the Asian War Last?

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 283-284:

The question of how long the war in the Asia Pacific lasted can also be put to the historian. The conventional answer is that it spanned less than four years, the time that passed between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. A slightly more unconventional reply would argue that it began in 1937 with the onset of all-out conventional hostilities between China and Japan. Recently, the Chinese government and some Chinese historians have asserted that the actual beginning of the war with Japan was in 1931, with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Obviously, the further back in time the start of the war is pushed, the more central becomes the role of China.

There is less controversy about the end of the war, as most agree on 1945 as marking the natural conclusion. Still, the conflicts which harrowed the region for the next three decades could in many ways be seen as consequences of the larger conflagration of the early 1940s. The internecine war that would lay waste to Korea only five years into the future came about partly as a result of the division of the peninsula into a Soviet-backed north and a US-supported south after the end of the Japanese occupation. Likewise, the numerous struggles against the Western colonial masters might be seen as having been kindled by the examples set by the Japanese. It could, therefore, be argued that the Japanese-American war of 1941 to 1945 was part of a much larger half-century-long narrative stretching from the civil wars of China of the 1920s all the way until the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. Perhaps it will take another century of writing about the conflict, and the sobering effect of time passed, to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

Whether now or in the distant future, one of the main objectives of history will be to learn from it. Some of the participants in the vast conflict began learning as soon as the weapons fell silent. On August 14, 1946, the first anniversary of Japan’s decision to accept unconditional surrender, emperor Hirohito met with Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru as well as Suzuki Kantarō, who had headed the government at the end of the war. The emperor expressed regret at the way the war had developed but pointed out this had not been the first time Japan has suffered abject defeat. Events had come full circle. In the battle of the Paekchon River in 663, Japan had met China in battle for the first time in history, and it had been beaten and forced to withdraw to the home islands. “After that, political reforms were pushed forward, and the result was a major turning point in the development of Japanese civilization,” Hirohito said. “If we bear this in mind, we can naturally understand the road that Japan needs to take after this new defeat.”

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Filed under China, Japan, Korea, military, nationalism, U.S., USSR, Vietnam, war

by Joel | 9 July 2023 · 5:06 am

Japan’s Defeat Hits Southeast Asia

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 278-281:

Even many years after the war, Mustapha Hussein remembered his reaction when he heard that Japan had surrendered: “I cried.” A political radical in the former British colony of Malaya, he had hoped that the peninsula’s separatist movement would seize the opportunity and declare independence during the brief period that offered itself while Japan was fatally weak and the Allies had not yet declared victory. Now that Japan had formally capitulated, the reimposition of British rule was just a matter of time. The chance was wasted. “I regretted the matter deeply as Malaya would once again be colonized and gripped by Western power.”

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, some activists did try to exploit the brief interregnum between Japan’s surrender and the arrival of the Western victors. In the East Indies on August 17, two days after the Japanese had accepted their defeat, the head of the separatist movement, Sukarno, declared independence, creating “an electrifying effect on the mass of Indonesians,” according to an observer. In Indochina two weeks later, on September 2, the day of the surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, the US-backed guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh did the same for Vietnam. “Today we are determined to oppose the wicked schemes of the French imperialists, and we call upon the victorious Allies to recognize our freedom and independence,” he told a jubilant crowd in Hanoi.

Both attempts were squashed within weeks as the old imperialists returned, battered but determined to pick up where they had left off. It would seem that it was now back to colonial business as usual, and that the Western empires would be resurrected to their former grandeur. Nothing could be further from the truth. The European colonies, some dating back centuries, only returned for a brief interlude before evaporating forever. This also meant that the peace that was heralded by Hirohito’s speech in August 1945 was not peace at all, but more war by new means. This went for virtually all of Southeast Asia. For every society in the region except Thailand, the first two decades after the war that ended in 1945 brought new mass-scale violence, whether in the form of war, civil war, or revolution, or a combination of the three.

It came as completely unexpected to most Europeans. B. C. de Jonge, governor general of the Dutch East Indies in the 1930s, had confidently signaled that his country’s control of the Southeast Asian archipelago was essentially for eternity. “We have ruled here for 300 years with the whip and the club and we shall still be doing it in another 300 years,” he had said. In fact, counting from the time they returned to the East Indies in 1945 trying to reinstate their authority, the Dutch had only four years left as colonial masters. The Dutch had shown in 1941 that they could be beaten, fast and decisively, and the aura of superiority which had enabled them to control a country many times larger than their own was gone forever.

The genie of independence was out of the bottle, and it could not be put back in. Often it had horrifically violent results. Dirk Bogarde, the future actor, was on the island of Java with British forces and saw how Dutch internees, returning from the camps and trying to start their lives anew in their looted homes, often were murdered by frenzied mobs. In one instance, an elderly Dutch couple had been hacked to death in their small villa: “The woman… had put up a desperate fight, her hands shredded by the knives, her blood sprayed in elegant arcs across the tiled walls. The man lay face downwards in the sitting room, his balding head almost severed from his body.”

The inability of the Western colonial powers to deal efficiently with social problems that the colonized people, left to their own devices, had occasionally proven better at solving further contributed to the Western loss of prestige in the former colonies. An example was the famine in Indochina, which was alleviated after the French authorities had been ousted in the spring of 1945 and replaced with an indigenous regime propped up by the Japanese. Immediately after assuming power, the colony’s new rulers introduced new measures to reduce speculation on the pricing of scarce rice supplies while improving the transportation of grains to the hunger-stricken provinces. “Brutal measures that we ourselves would not have ventured to take bring a momentary abundance,” a French writer reluctantly acknowledged, adding that the people of Indochina “have come to think very seriously that they are ripe to be a great nation.”

This was only reinforced when the Japanese left and handed back Indochina to the Western powers. Despite the improvement made in the spring, the food situation quickly turned desperate again. “Hanoi with a population of 200,000 inhabitants is literally dying of hunger,” a foreign observer wrote. “The worst situation is that of feeding the infants.” This was only partly the result of Western mismanagement. More importantly, Indochina experienced devastating flooding, with river levels in Hanoi reaching a historical record, but the prestige of the colonial authorities suffered yet another blow.

As in the East Indies, a protracted guerrilla campaign followed in Indochina, fueled by the population’s thirst for independence, and French determination to hold onto its prized possession. If France let go of this “admirable balcony on the Pacific,” it would no longer be a great power, a leading French politician said. The result was long years of bloodshed which gradually evolved into a full-scale conventional war, and only ended with the withdrawal of the French colonial rulers and the division of Indochina into two in 1954.

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Filed under Britain, France, Japan, military, nationalism, Netherlands, Southeast Asia, war

by Joel | 8 July 2023 · 5:50 am

Indochina, 1945: Famine & Coup

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 200-202:

The famine lasted for five months in early 1945 but its causes could be traced back to the year before, and similar to the mass starvation that had struck British-ruled India earlier in the war, it was the result of both natural calamities and official policies. Drought and insect attacks caused the spring harvest in 1944 to drop steeply below expectations, and the following autumn devastating typhoons cut down the agricultural output dramatically. The worst effects of the hunger disaster could have been mitigated if rice had been sent to the north from southern regions, where the crops were more plentiful. However, American bombing had destroyed bridges, railroads, and other infrastructure, and anyway both the Japanese army and the French colonial authorities, who were still in charge despite the presence of large Japanese forces, prioritized the transportation of their own military forces over vital food supplies for the civilian population. Between one and two million people died as a result of the 1945 mass starvation in Indochina. This overall figure covered vast regional variations, and in the worst hit areas of northern Indochina, society teetered on the brink of collapse.

…

The food scarcity also affected those inhabitants of Indochina who were not directly pushed to the limit by starvation, but still saw a precipitous drop in the standard of living due to steep prices in rice. The result was that the French colonial authorities became even more unpopular than before. The fact that the French administration had helped prevent the kind of mass conscription of forced labor that had happened in other parts of Japanese-controlled Asia mattered less. To many Indochinese it made a much deeper impression to see sharply dressed Japanese officers walk the streets of the major cities, in humiliating contrast to the often flabby-looking French colonial troops.

Therefore, there was widespread anticipation of better times when on March 9, 1945, the Japanese Army in Indochina took over control from the French colonial authorities in a swift coup. French officers were taken into custody, and their soldiers ordered to lay down their arms. Those who resisted were met with trademark brutality. A few French garrisons opposed the Japanese move, and in some cases extended firefights took place. At the end of the battles, French prisoners were bayoneted or beheaded. Defeated foreign legionnaires were forced to watch as Japanese soldiers hauled down the French flag, tore it to shreds, and stamped it into the ground. Rapes of French women were commonplace. Duong Thieu Chi, the official who had witnessed instances of cannibalism, was shocked to see a senior French colonial official be thrown to the floor by a Japanese captain and then beaten bloody with the hilt of a sword.

The new Japanese rulers took steps to improve the food supply, for example by handing out grain from public granaries under much publicity, and also ensured a fairer distribution of rice where it was needed. However, they were less enthusiastic about nationalistic sentiments in the population, who suddenly believed that colonialism might be a thing of the past, resulting in mass gatherings and strikes. “The defense of Indochina against the enemy outside the country will be completely ineffective if domestic order is not perfectly maintained,” the Japanese military authorities warned in a statement. The people of Indochina gradually came to understand that their new masters were perhaps not all that different from the old ones.

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Filed under Britain, food, France, Japan, Laos, military, U.S., Vietnam, war

by Joel | 7 July 2023 · 6:09 am

Destruction of Manila, 1945

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 189-191:

The 11th Airborne Division also moved towards Manila from the south but still met with determined opposition and some of the most formidable hardware prepared by the Japanese in expectation of the assault. At Nichols Field, a US military airfield established before the war, they were shelled by five-inch naval guns, removed from warships and placed in strategic positions. Being forced to halt, a company commander messaged back to headquarters, “Tell Bill Halsey to stop looking for the Jap fleet. It’s dug in on Nichols Field.”

In parts of the city, the fight proceeded Stalingrad-style, with protracted combat building for building, floor for floor, room for room. When soldiers of the 1st Cavalry entered into Manila Hotel, they were met with a hail of bullets from Japanese positions on the stairs leading to the upper floors. Deadly combat ensued, as the Americans worked their way up, while the Japanese counterattacked from one floor to the next. One group of defenders held on to the mezzanine floor for 24 hours, and it was three days before every Japanese in the building had been killed, leaving it in American hands.

Shortly afterwards, Eichelberger moved into the annex of the hotel, taking in the view of Manila. “I could see the city of Manila gleaming whitely in the sunshine. I could see Corregidor, and the hook of the Cavite peninsula, which curves into Manila Bay. In another direction I could see Balayan and Batangas Bays on the sea, and, inland, Lake Taal in the crater of an extinct volcano and the shimmer of Laguna de Bay,” he wrote in his memoirs. “It was strangely like a homecoming. But soon tall plumes of smoke began to rise in Manila, and at evening the tropical sky was crimsoned by many fires. The Japanese were deliberately destroying the magical town which had been traditionally called ‘the Pearl of the Orient’.”

The almost complete devastation of Manila, including the picturesque Intermuros [sic] district dating back to the 16th century, took place despite MacArthur’s express wishes to spare the city and its people. He had told Kenney, the commander of his air corps, to avoid bombing the city from the air: “You would probably kill off the Japs all right, but there are several thousand Filipino civilians in there who would be killed, too. The world would hold up its hands in horror if we did anything like that.” However, deliberate Japanese arson, a kind of urban scorched-earth tactics, combined with artillery fire on both sides to lay waste to the city. “Every beautiful public building is in ruin, and there is no roof on any building in the Intramuros,” Eichelberger wrote in a letter to his wife. “It is all just graveyard.”

It bore a resemblance to the fate that had befallen Warsaw the year before, and the same could be said of the senseless killing of civilians. Just as the most brutal units of the German SS somehow found time to massacre the population of the Polish capital, the Japanese, too, went on a bloody rampage among defenseless men, women, and children. “Crazed with alcohol, Japanese officers and men raged through the city in an orgy of lust and destruction that brought back memories of their conduct at the capture of Nanking several years before, when their actions had horrified the civilized world,” Kenney wrote later.

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Filed under Japan, military, nationalism, Philippines, U.S., war

by Joel | 6 July 2023 · 5:47 am

Roles of Nadzab and Ulithi in 1944

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 134-136:

If one were to point to one vital factor that tilted the balance against the Axis across the globe, it was, in addition to the Soviet willingness to shed blood, the juggernaut of American industrial might. To be of any use it had to be taken from the assembly lines in the United States to where it was needed, and by 1944, it was reaching the farthest corners of the Pacific. It was a miracle of transportation, but it did not come easy or cheap: for every combat division that was deployed in the war against Japan, twice the number of service troops was needed to ship it to the region and keep it supplied. This was a feat that probably no other power could accomplish but the United States, skilled in the operation of a modern continent-sized economy, with maritime commercial ties spanning across the globe to match. The war in the Pacific was a logistical contest as much as a military conflict, and America was uniquely prepared for it.

The peculiar nature of the war changed the face of the Pacific, and it brought the 20th century, with all its technological prowess and organized violence, to areas that sometimes were just emerging from the Stone Age. At Nadzab in New Guinea, originally a mission station with a tiny airfield for small planes, one of the world’s largest airports and transportation hubs had emerged from practically nothing. It was the western terminus of the Air Transport Command’s trans-Pacific flights, and by 1944, it was a beehive of frantic activity, as Navy airman Charles Furey later recalled: “During the daylight hours, the sky is filled with hovering airplanes, and airplanes taking off and landing. Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a fiery crash on one of the runways. We hear a deep rumble, and then an obelisk of black smoke appears in the sky, a brief monument to some unlucky flight crew.”

Later in the year, Ulithi atoll in the Carolines became for a period the world’s largest fleet base. It was seized against no opposition on September 23, and within weeks, it was home to not only harbor facilities, but also an airstrip and a hospital, and shortly afterwards “Radio Ulithi” began broadcasting. The base even boasted modest facilities for rest and recreation for weary soldiers and sailors, on the small island of Mogmog, ruled by the Micronesian King Ueg, who agreed to move his people to the neighboring island of Fassarai for the duration of the war. At one point when the lagoon was particularly crowded, Mogmog was “so full of bluejackets in shoregoing whites that from a distance it looked like one of those Maine islands where seagulls breed,” according to the official US Navy historian. Still, there was little entertainment: “You would sit around and drink beer and that was about it, and maybe try to go for a swim. But the coral was so sharp that it would cut your legs up and you couldn’t even get in the water,” a serviceman recalled.

Michael Bak, quartermaster on board the destroyer USS Franks, remembered the immense size of Ulithi, which seemed large enough to hold the entire US Navy: “One of the interesting things about Ulithi was that there were so many ships in the fleet coming in that everybody aboard ship had a buddy on another ship. They would come up to the bridge, where the signal gang had a record of the ships in the lagoon. The signalmen always knew, because we had to watch our division commander’s mast for signal messages which were given off on the yardarms. And one of the fellows from our crew would come to the bridge and ask if we could call different ships to see if so-and-so was aboard, and maybe get him to talk,” he said.

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Filed under industry, Japan, Micronesia, military, Papua New Guinea, U.S., war

by Joel | 5 July 2023 · 5:52 am

Labor Unrest in Java, 1944

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 84-88:

In the summer of 1944, the region of Indramayu on the East Indies island of Java exploded in violence. A student at an Islamic boarding school who was known only by the name of Mi’an began distributing holy water among the peasants in the area, telling them it would make them invulnerable to attacks from non-Muslims. They needed it, for they were preparing an uprising against their Japanese-supported rulers over grain levies that made life almost unbearable. A couple of low-ranking Javanese officials in the village of Bugis were the first to feel the wrath of the peasants. Angry mobs attacked them in their homes, beating them up and destroying everything inside. The Japanese military police rushed to the scene and confronted the protesting crowd. After attempting to threaten the peasants to disperse, the soldiers opened fire, mowing down the men and boys, who were carrying only sticks and machetes. About 200 people died on that blood-soaked day.

Many had expected a clash sooner or later. Tensions had been building up in this part of the former Dutch East Indies since the spring, as village after village had protested at the rising grain acquisitions, and some had openly rebelled. “We would rather die in battle than die of hunger,” they shouted when officials tried to convince them to go home. Instead, the desperate villagers went on rampages, hunting down tax collectors and others who acted as the face of the regime at the grassroots level. One was stabbed to death by a crowd wielding sharpened bamboo sticks, another was killed along with his son.

Anger was directed as much at local officials as at the Japanese, but it was the Japanese who had the power to enforce the unpopular decisions on the poverty-stricken people of Java. Few protesters were killed on the spot. Most individuals deemed to be the ringleaders of the riots were simply driven away, never to be heard from again. Still, even the Japanese did not have the power to rein in the escalating chaos following the riots during the summer months, and as roving bandits moved through the unpoliced countryside, attacking ordinary people and looting their homes, everyone suffered.

The unrest in Java reflected larger problems afflicting the Japanese throughout their vast empire by the middle of 1944. In the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese had ostensibly been attempting a policy of unifying the various ethnicities. On Java, this philosophy of a “fraternal order,” bringing together Japanese, Indonesian, Chinese, Arabs, and Eurasians, was propagated, in direct opposition to the “divide and rule” tactics that the former Dutch colonial masters had carried out, with significant success. In most Asian areas, Japan made the pretense of supporting indigenous government of some form, in conformity with its stated objective of ridding the region of western imperialism. The one exception until the end of the war was Indochina, where the French colonial administration remained in place.

In some cases, regular friendships had evolved between Japanese and representatives of the local population. An Indonesian journalist later explained his relationship with one of the Japanese officials, who had a genuine concern for the fate of the East Indies. “He was a frank and sympathetic friend, almost like a brother to us. His Indonesian was excellent… and we had many discussions with him about politics, Japan’s objectives and Indonesian independence. He helped us in a lot of ways; for instance, sometimes if articles we had written did not pass the censor, he would somehow try to get them in print.”

The reality, however, was often the reverse of the rosy images of inter-racial harmony described in the Japanese illustrated magazines. Since the early days of the occupation in 1942, the requirements of the local population had to yield to the demands of the Japanese military. After all, access to the rich natural resources of the East Indies had formed the entire basic rationale for Tokyo’s decision to unleash the Pacific War. “I had only to know how much exploitation the native population could endure,” said Major Miyamoto Shizuo, an officer in charge of logistics planning.

It was highly ironic that by 1944 Japan was reaping extraordinarily little actual gain from its possessions in Southeast Asia. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Japanese planners had calculated with Indonesian oil meeting most of their 7.9-million-ton oil requirement per year, but Allied sinking of Japanese transport shipping had caused the amount actually shipped to other parts of the Japanese empire to gradually dwindle, and for the fiscal year beginning April 1, 1944, no oil at all was transported from the East Indies. The output of other strategic materials such as rubber and coal also dropped to a fraction of their prewar levels, meaning essentially that the entire war had been in vain, insofar as it had started out as a grab for vital resources.

Only one resource was plentiful and could be exploited directly on the spot: labor. Young men known as romusha or “work soldiers” were recruited, often forcibly, and set to work at various large-scale projects under the supervision of Japanese engineers. They were often promised good treatment before their departure, but many never returned. Of 300,000 from Java who were sent off to islands elsewhere in the huge Indonesian archipelago, only 77,000 made it home again. What happened to the others is clear from an eyewitness account of the scene at a remote mountainside, where hundreds of workers hacked out a tunnel with adzes and hammers. “Their bodies were thin and parched—bone wrapped in skin,” the testimony reads. “Corpses were just like rubbish—walking skeletons no longer shocked people.” Another account detailed the abuse they were subject to: “Because of their weakened condition, they almost did not have enough strength to walk, so that they staggered on their feet like drunkards. To rest for a moment meant running the risk of getting abuse and blows.”

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by Joel | 4 July 2023 · 6:23 am

Chinese Troops in Burma, 1944

From Asian Armageddon, 1944–45, by Peter Harmsen (War in the Far East, Book 2; Casemate, 2020), Kindle pp. 51-53:

General Tanaka Shin’ichi, commander of the Japanese Army’s 18th Division, was on a mission in northern Burma in early 1944 directly linked to the attempt at Imphal and Kohima to cut through the British lines and reach the Indian border. With his battle-hardened men, he was to cover the right flank of the Japanese forces engaged in the main offensive and tie down as many Allied forces as possible. At the same time, he was to pursue a separate and arguably more important objective, penetrating as deeply into enemy territory as possible. For him, too, the ultimate objective was to disrupt the supply lines between India and China.

Like the Japanese further south, Tanaka was up against a multinational enemy, but of a different kind. Facing him in the north Burmese hills and jungles were the products of one of the most precarious and unwieldy alliances of the entire war—that between China and America. He was an experienced officer who had taken part in most of Japan’s conflicts since the early 1930s, but he had never before confronted the Chinese in battle. When he finally had the opportunity in the spring of 1944 near the village of Yupang Ga, he was surprised. “The unexpected stubbornness of the Chinese troops in the fighting around Yupang Ga,” he wrote in post-war comments, “led the Japanese to believe the troops that faced them were far superior in both the quality of their fighting and in their equipment to the Chinese troops they had been fighting in China for years.”

The Chinese troops fighting at Yupang Ga were from the New 38th Division, the result of long months of Sino-American cooperation following the US entry into the war. The most visible sign of this cooperation was the trademark M1 helmet worn by the Chinese soldiers, as well as the many examples of state-of-the-art equipment and weaponry they were carrying into battle. More importantly, the soldiers had been through months of US-led training at camps in India and had been instructed in the methods of modern warfare. The hard work was not wasted and the Chinese pushed the Japanese back at Yupang Ga. To the young Chinese soldiers, it was an immense morale boost, and likewise to their officers, who still remembered the first humiliating battles with the technologically superior Japanese during the preceding decade. “The Chinese soldiers talked of it over and over again,” according to the official history. “The first victory is never forgotten.”

The Japanese, under pressure from the Chinese divisions, retreated back south. In this situation, General Joseph Stilwell, the senior US officer on the Asian mainland, decided to bring to bear what American forces were available to him, in the shape of the newly formed 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional). Dubbed “Merrill’s Marauders” after its commander, Brigadier General Frank Merrill, it was the first major US Army unit to go into combat in Stilwell’s area of responsibility. The Marauders represented an attempt to beat the Japanese at their own game, as its members were trained to infiltrate through enemy lines and roam deep inside hostile territory.

The British had pioneered this effort on the Allied side with their Long-Range Penetration Groups, known unofficially as the Chindits, under the command of the unorthodox Major General Orde Charles Wingate. The Chindits had first been placed into battle in 1943, and by 1944 they had built up enough skill and experience to arguably have an impact on the overall conduct of the war. Elements of two Japanese divisions were engaged in fighting the Chindits, and Japanese General Mutaguchi, who led the offensives against Imphal and Kohima, argued that if either division had been able to release just one regiment from these operations, it “would have turned the scales at Kohima.”