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Taking place only a year apart, the battles off Java between 27 February and 1 March, 1942, and the air attacks on a Japanese task force in the Bismarck Sea between 2 and 4 March, 1943, could not have been more different in outcome or in net result. Together, they also show how Japan intended their Pacific War to be conducted: more like a kendo match than a struggle for survival.
ABDA Command: Doomed from the start
The battles around Java took place only weeks after Japan started her Pacific/Dutch East Indies offensive in December 1941. On 27 February 1942, a Japanese escort of two heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and fourteen destroyers under Rear-Admiral Takeo Takagi, met a scratch force of two heavy cruisers, three light cruisers and nine destroyers under Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman, commanding the naval contingent of the ABDA (American-British-Dutch-Australian) Command that was trying to attack a Japanese amphibious tack force approaching Java in the Java Sea.
The result was never in doubt.
Doorman’s ships had never fought or maneuvered together; the largest group with any coherence were the four ships of the US Navy's Destroyer Division 58. The Japanese had trained together for a year and had already fought two successful actions as a unit. During a running battle for some seven hours on 27 February, the Japanese sank half the Allied fleet and killed Doorman with no losses to themselves. In the Sunda Straights next day, two of the surviving Allied surface escorts and two small Japanese ships sank. At the Java Sea again on 28 February, the Japanese sank three more Allied survivors of the earlier battle. The ABDA Command lost ten ships and over two thousand to total Japanese personnel loss of probably less than a hundred. The battle irreparably damaged both the Dutch Asiatic fleet and the US Navy's Asiatic Squadron.
The Netherlands never regained its prewar presence in Indonesia.
A year later, the tables had turned. After abandoning Guadalcanal and losing the Papua peninsula, the Japanese planned to reinforce their lodgement on New Guinea by sending a brigade to Lae on eight troop transports and eight destroyers out of Rabaul. Commanded by Rear Admiral Masatomi Kimura, the convoy was to leave Simpson Harbor on 28 February, skirt the northern coast of New Britain, and round the island on the eastern end, running in to Lae by 4 March before the Americans knew they were there.
The Imperial High Command believed the odds of success were only about 50-50.
The Allies knew where the Japanese were most of the time because of their network of aerial observation, radio intercepts, coast watchers, and submarine patrols, and were determined to stop them. The Japanese convoy's route was out of American aircraft carrier range, but well within range of medium bombers based in both Papua and northern Australia. In two days of free-for-all attacks on the convoy, Australian Beaufighters had strafed with 20 mm cannon and cal. 0.50 guns, PBYs had dropped bombs, and B-24 medium bombers had strafed and skip-bombed their way into the history books as the second sea fight fought primarily by land-based aircraft (the first was when the Japanese sank HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales 8 December 1941). By 4 March, 1,200 of the 6,700 Japanese soldiers that left Rabaul had arrived at Lae. American and Australian aircraft sank five destroyers and eight transports. One destroyer turned back to Rabaul. The Allies lost less than twenty men.
Japan never reinforced New Guinea through Lae again.
The reversal of Japan's fortunes in just a year is striking, and so are the reasons for it. Neither action depended on the fast Japanese carrier forces—the Kido Butai—devastated at the Coral Sea and Midway battles. So, was the Bismarck Sea fight affected by the loss of the Japanese carriers just three months after their decisive win around Java? On the outside, no. But Japan's attitudes towards the war were. At Midway, the Japanese task force turned around and went home after the fourth carrier sank. Why?
In their minds, someone had dis-served the plan.
The answer lies partly in the expectations of the samurai leadership, and in the sport of wooden swords called kendo. Japan earnestly believed that the Western powers, once they had felt the devastating power of Japan's navy and army, would shrink from any further violence and seek peace. This, they believed, would take only a few months, precipitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and peace in Europe. When the Allies kept fighting, even after the fall of Java and the bombing of Australia, Japan pushed harder, planning "final blows" in the Solomons, Alaska and the very end of the Hawaiian archipelago at Midway. When the Americans had the temerity to attack Japan itself with the Dolittle stunt, these plans became reality.
Then came the Coral Sea, and then Midway, and the Bismarck Sea.
To the samurai's mind, their plans failed not because the Americans fought well, but because someone had failed their plans. Worse, their opponent would not recognize the superior skill of Japan's sword masters and bow to their inevitable defeat. The gods, who were judging Japan’s global kendo match, were not calling their death blows correctly. Thus, strategically, the samurai leadership of Japan became confused and went into a defensive stance until…well, the end of the war.
Why the Samurai Lost Japan: A Study in Miscalculation and Folly
Lee and I first saw this shift in Japanese attitudes, and their attitudes towards many battles, when we were studying Guadalcanal with a view towards writing Something Important about the Solomons. We wrote what we think is important about the entire conflict: an analysis of Japan’s many failures.
Why the Samurai Lost Japan tries to put the Japanese war effort into terms the non-historian can understand. Available at your favorite bookseller or from us if you want an autograph.
Coming Up…
Japan 1945 Reconsidered
6 April…Twice
And Finally…
On 23 March:
3952 BC: God created fish, according to the Venerable Bede, in his De Temporibus ("On Time"), completed in 703 AD. This was the day after God made the animals and the day before he made Adam. Bede was one of the first to break away from the standard Septuagint date for the Creation, and was, of course, declared a heretic by some of his peers. The Catholic Church canonized Bede in 1899.
1953: The first of in a series of 1953 battles between Chinese, American, Ethiopian and Columbian troops over Pork Chop Hill (Hill 300) in what is now North Korea began when Chinese troops overran Old Baldy (Hill 266) to the south of Pork Chop just after midnight (the Americans, Chinese, North Koreans and Thais had also fought over both hills in 1951 and 1952). The month-long struggle for both Pork Chop and Old Baldy ended with the Chinese occupation of Pork Chop on 16 April. The 1959 film is a romantic dramatization of the April counterattack that dislodged the Chinese…again.
And today is NATIONAL CHIA DAY, commemorating that little wonder, the chia seed ascribed to be a superfood…and a pet. For those of you with one of those little terra cotta animals you grow chia on…at least they don’t soil the rug.