Rivalry inbetween army and navy, somewhere even with the air force remains as a bitter chapter in the military history, exists almost in every country. Here is an interesting inside view of the rivalry inbetween IJN and IJF's history for those who are interested : http://www.avalanchepress.com/SNLF.php
There was a class distinction at work in the hostility between the Japanese army and navy. The army recruited from the rural peasantry, which was crude and unschooled, while the navy went for urban types. Army training was very brutal and in some cases worse than combat, with injuries and even death from beatings commonplace. Navy officers, usually from good families, as in England, looked down their noses at their army counterparts (also as in England). This snobbery was resented and contributed to their rivalry. Navy vessels were prepared to fire on army units when things started to go south and they threatened the emperor toward the end of the war. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Liars-T...=1423081927&sr=8-1&keywords=jerry jay carroll
Many Japanese airstrips in PTO that captured by the Allied forces found that the IJNAF and IJAAF aircrafts are kept side by side as a combat setting, as we found in the photos. In several occasions as I read, IJNAAF ground crews were more reluctant to serve for the IJNAF Zeros, Zekes etc. They always lookafter the AAF first, though I've noted that it varies from man to man and the interservice rivalry existed till the last day, but they served under same national flag provided their enemy too, was Common! Three Japanese brothers, the first two serving in IJN and third one being considered 'black sheep' of that family, joined Army. Whenever they met each other, get drunk and started exchanging very harsh words to determind whose marching steps are more perfect, more manly, when the thing is same! All the three brothers served at Rabaul, Clark Field and Guadalcanal before they fall. The second Navy brother died at Guadalcanl, on a supply run for his Army brother's unit. The Army brother once rescued by the navy. What I think that the interservice rivalry mainly observed at the personal level, may be found at unit level too.
Very interesting. If I'm not mistaken, the Japanese cabinet by law had to have a minister from both services and each had veto power over anything the weak civilian leadership proposed. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Liars-T...=1423763166&sr=8-1&keywords=jerry jay carroll
In the Kairikugun Keiritsu (military code for IJN & IJA) stated that surrender, escape etc etc., that might save a soldier's life in situations of unavoidable defeat were 'banned' and punishable to death....one must perform hara-kiri, gyokusai (in mass) to die 'happily'....failing to do so by avoiding such Order, if found, punishment would lead to his Family upto Five Affinal Relationships (Edo period) .. One of the notorious high military officials like V Adm Takijiro alongwith others brought a new Addition, the Tokkotai (special attack force-one way) operation to Kamikaze. Tokkotai operation shall not be a part of any IJN & IJA operation, orders shall be issued in the name of Emperor. Conscription had been started and thousands of young, brilliant students were dragged into the process of killing and without delay sent them to the various Japanese naval training bases in the PTO, of which the Tsuchiura naval base was most notorious! I'm happy to recall here once I read of a student pilot who wrote ' ... let's bite into the ground of Okinawa together rathar than any collision ... ' Regular soldiers in the German army were told to kill, Japanese soldiers were told to Die (HAPPILY ¡!#*¿). So we found gyokusai (mass suicide) that occured in the isls of Okinawa, Attu, Saipan etc etc. The way they were tortured by the officers and NCOs in the name of 'training, for that'll save the country/Emperor bla bla bla, were five times more to any of the Nazi con/lab camps, ten times to any of the Gulags and fifteen times to any type of torture, both the physical and mental, written in any history of the slaves! At the last stage of the battle of Okinawa, none of the boy pilots sang the most popular patriotic song and many of them returned to their bases by reporting 'target not found'. Their whereabouts are still unknown, a silent chapter in military history is to be researched! Kamikaze and Tokkotai pilots had been forced to be photographed with such 'smiling' (with several cuts hidden inside their mouth alongwith atleast two missing teeth) face so that the official propagana and such mechanism would require less lubs to run the process smoothly in the name of patriotism!
It is hard to put oneself in the mind of the Japanese nearly three-quarters of a century ago, particularly in light of the need in the immediate postwar period to find exoneration for Hirohito rather than try him as the war criminal he most certainly was. His voice, bearing for the Japanese the authority of 10,000 generations of divinity, declared the surrender that caused seven million Japanese to lay down their arms, sparing the allies hundreds of thousands of causalities, perhaps as high as a million, that it would have taken to subdue them and the civilian population prepared to fight to the death. Okinawa had given us a foretaste of what it would be like. General MacArthur was told by his military secretary, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, that trying the emperor would mean a resumption of bloody fighting. So in a practical sense there really was no choice even though a former prime minister, Prince Konoe, said when he was interviewed by intelligence officers that Hirohito was "the major war criminal," a claim that one of the emperor's royal brothers agreed with. Konoe had seen as early as August of 1943 that defeat was inevitable. In his memo to MacArthur, Bonner wrote: "The attitude of the Japanese toward their emperor is not generally understood. Unlike Christians, the Japanese have no God with whom to commune. Their emperor is the living symbol of the race in whom lies the virtues of their ancestors. He is the incarnation of national spirit, incapable of wrong or misdeeds. Loyalty to him is absolute. Although no one fears him, all hold their emperor in reverential awe. They would not touch him, look into his face, address him, step on his shadow. Their abject homage to him amounts to self abnegation sustained by religious patriotism the depth of which is incomprehensible to Westerners." Japanese thought the great 1923 earthquake had been caused by the stirrings of a giant catfish far underground. When he got to know them better, MacArthur compared them to a nation of 12-year-olds. The British believed the Japanese possessed a strain of hysteria from what they said were their Malayan origins. Every Japanese recruit carried the Army Handbook which stressed the five principles laid forth by Emperor Meiji Tenno's Imperial Rescript to Soldiers, loyalty, courtesy, courage, truthfulness and frugality. Loyalty was his essential duty. "Bear in mind that duty is weightier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather." Courtesy meant that inferiors should regard the orders of those of higher rank with the same respect as if from the emperor. In Japanese thought society was organized as a pyramid with the emperor and the royal family at the top. Everyone else had his assigned place with women at all levels submissive to their husbands. At the bottom of the Japanese pyramid, were the burakumin (the untouchables). Foreigners, the gaijin, ranked even lower than them and were seen as subhuman and therefore not subject to moral considerations. They were dirt. Japanese were offended by the very smell of Westerners and thought their long noses were hilarious. Admiral Yamamoto spent years as a naval aide in America and admired our industrial might but thought we were a degenerate race weakened by luxury, a viewed that was shared throughout the Japanese military leadership. After Hiroshima many in the Japanese leadership believed America had shot its bolt and international public opinion would prevent a second atomic bombing. Nagasaki proved them wrong and Hirohito bowed to the inevitable. MacArthur said in the postwar period he could would have his uses as something between a figurehead and a stooge. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Liars-They-knew-knew/dp/0989826902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424027386&sr=8-1&keywords=jerry jay carroll
Well, but never mind if I say about this gentleman Fellers, is very ailing to me, as like as the case of CA 35 (USS Indianapolis). Black Codes helped the DAK for pinpoint offensive; Rommel's die gute quelle (Fellers) ... However the IJA was overwhelmingly commited to the Emperor to the primacy of offensive .... the defence to be almost unJAPANESE in spirit and practice ... Higher officers related to IJA always looked for West and the IJN advocated to Emperor but for South. Probably they started disliking westerners since the end of the Great War, as they thought that Japan have been deprived from having 'good food' since the westerners robbed much of 'it'. At the highest levels the Japanese knew they could not win a long war so they decided to attack with surprise, where there had a chance of victory. Probable logic behind this was to negotiate with a frightened and defeated enemy! Since PH attack, the last and the largest naval battle was being fought between the Japanese and the Allides at the north of Mindanao, when the Kamikaze and later on Tokkotai attacks had been introduced. The Imperial Hqs limited Hirohito to blessing plans and strategies formuleted by the IJA or IJN officials with almost no input from Him. As I told earlier that the choice of war against west (USSR & China) or south (Allied/USA) was hashed out from IJA and IJN, Hirohito had been found himself helples in this rivalry, though they were fighting under the same Flag.
