McPherson
Banned
Gozen (onna bugeisha). Not exactly the kind of shield maidens, Hirohito's admirals would have believed existed.
Last edited:
Keynes' Cruisers Volume 2
- Thread starter fester
- Start date
- Status
The Philippines should remain a sideshow. Start setting up for the killing blow. Iwo Jima a year ahead of time might make it a bit easier. Although there still needs to be one last major sea battle, since we haven't had a Leyte Gulf.
Driftless
Donor
I've been reading the "Guardians of Empire" about the US Army in the Pacific 1903-1940. One of the innumerable debates the Army brass had about the best/least bad plan for defending the archipelago was the defense of Manila. Interestingly, I believe it was General J. F. Bell who was in favor of moving the defense away from Manila to avoid the inevitable destruction of the city and the high civilian casualty rates - and that's early 1900's.
The early 1900 Army's consistent take was the islands were indefensible if the Navy planned to bug out - which made sense from their point-of-view. One of the detailed tactical analyses done(1914) by General H. Liggett predicted a big Japanese landing at Lingayen Gulf, followed by an attack down towards Manila, but also with a swing onto Bataan to take the heights overlooking Subic Bay and Manila Bay. Field exercises even showed that if an invader took the Mariveles Heights then Subic was untenable, and Corregidor and the other forts in Manila Bay would eventually be bombarded out of usefulness. (BTW, Lieutenant George Marshall was Liggetts ADC for the tactical rides and following analyses).
Do the Japanese still run amok as they did historically if Manila/Leyte at large are by-passed?
The early 1900 Army's consistent take was the islands were indefensible if the Navy planned to bug out - which made sense from their point-of-view. One of the detailed tactical analyses done(1914) by General H. Liggett predicted a big Japanese landing at Lingayen Gulf, followed by an attack down towards Manila, but also with a swing onto Bataan to take the heights overlooking Subic Bay and Manila Bay. Field exercises even showed that if an invader took the Mariveles Heights then Subic was untenable, and Corregidor and the other forts in Manila Bay would eventually be bombarded out of usefulness. (BTW, Lieutenant George Marshall was Liggetts ADC for the tactical rides and following analyses).
Do the Japanese still run amok as they did historically if Manila/Leyte at large are by-passed?
Last edited:
Do you mean if the American and Filipino forces bypass Manila in TTL in the hope the Japanese declare Manila an open city and withdraw? The Allies must take Manila so as to use its ports and it's also a transportation hub. And giving up and withdrawing doesn't seem very plausible for the Imperial Japanese armed forces of 1944 OTL or TTL.
@Driftless Did I misunderstand your question?
Driftless
Donor
That's exactly the question. I don't know enough of the 1944 Japanese leadership/rank and file mindset to calculate what they would have done under different circumstances. If the US and Allies functionally bypass the remainder of Leyte, does that imply that the Japanese garrison is left to wither away? I don't know how nicely they'd go along with that idea Similarly, would Mac have followed the same path if he knew the extreme destruction and atrocities that came with the Battle of Manila? I don't know that one either.
To be fair, those early analyses were done with the idea that the US forces were there on-site, and that they might be the ones being ousted. Basically, putting the shoe on the other foot.
This made be the dilemma - both choices are presumed to be bad.
McPherson
Banned
These are good questions. There is some sketchy evidence that Mister Corncob Pipe thought that leaving the IJA sitting around with ammunition and hostages was not a good idea in the Filipino people context. This might explain all those landings on every island in the Archipelago. Shrug. Manila seems to have been the actual test case where MacArthur was correct.
Would the Japanese have 'run amok' if General Yamashita was still able to command the forces in Manila? When the atrocities in Manila tool place he was out of touch with his forces in there. I don't know the details of what happened except that his defense at his trial was that he was cut off from Manila and had no control over what the forces there did. I believe that was true, though it didn't do him any good.
McPherson
Banned
Yes. It was a Japanese army-navy deal. If you do not understand... try my gang versus your gang and never mind the American cops. That exact kind of territorial turf kind of gangster deal. Yamashita was powerless to do anything about Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi.
Bastard. He was also a coward.
Most of the troops in Manila were Navy forces. Yamashita had no authority over them. Yamashita's real crime was embarrassing the British. McArthur ran a kangaroo court with a preordained outcome.
Thank you, gentlemen. That was what I thought..both that Yamashita didn't have any control and that he got screwed. There were enough real war criminals to punish, we didn't need to go hang people for crimes they didn't commit.
McPherson
Banned
Not quite.
The history summary from the DUTCH point of view is rather interesting on this one. It turns out that the Japanese defense counsels and their American advisors were clever. For example... Tojo was going to be hanged, there was no doubt that he was going to die for his crimes. The question was what to do with the emperor and HIS crimes. Well, MacArthur needed the emperor. So... Tojo was told to take all of the criminal responsibility on himself as the honorable thing to do. Tojo confessed that he was the responsible one for the crimes that were clearly Hirohito's. The emperor skated.
Yamashita was hanged for his complicity in crimes against the Filipino people as much as for embarrassing the British. The Filipino judge at the Tokyo trials insisted on it. This was a trade. He wanted to see the emperor hanged, too. But as with Tojo, the deal was made. Yamashita, guilty as hell for his crimes against the Filipino people, was hanged quite justifiably. Japanese efforts to rehab him as their "Rommel" was tolerated for the same reasons the Americans and British squelched the true facts surrounding Rommel's close association and support of the Berlin Maniac. Japan needed a "hero" and some honorableness in their losing war against the Americans as they reconstituted their Self Defense Force as an American ally; for much the same reason Rommel was used as a model of a "clean" German general for the new West German army.
The truth is that Yamashita was somewhere just north of being a total rat bastard. But he was still an enthusiastic practitioner of Japanese army "colonial rule"; so he was quite responsible for the atrocities his men carried out under his command everywhere else on Luzon, despite Manila being outside his immediate control.
This is absolutely untrue, Yamashita was not tried at The International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He was tried by a U S Army tribunal of five judges appointed by General Wilhelm Styer, Mc Arthur's supply chief. There was no Filipino involvement. The matter was appealed to the US Supreme Court APPLICATION OF YAMASHITA 327 US 1 (1946) which involved the power of the military tribunal not the guilt or innocence of Yamashita. I find it interesting that Styer was awarded the "Order of the British Empire". Draw your own conclusions.
McPherson
Banned
I stand corrected about the court in question.
But not about the crimes Yamashita committed in the Philippine Islands.
The judgement was fair.
Let me summarize... The United States tried General Yamashita under the prevailing articles of war whereby enemy combatants had been court martialed and adjudged either innocent or guilty, loosely under General Order 100 which was incorporated into those articles of war since promulgated during the American Civil War. For similar cases...
Page 76-85 of the citation applies especially.
I note that claiming the British were responsible for making sure Yamashita was hanged, ignores that the jurisdiction and politics of the time was SWPOA. And it was Filipino American politics, not the British who were at the heart of it.
History from the citation.
Last edited:
Well I am not convinced. Let me start by saying I don’t have a high opinion of the World War II Tribunals.. They were victors justice. I agree with US Chief Justice Harlan Stone’s characterization “Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.” Curtis LeMay said “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” No matter how you want to slice it modern warfare is brutal with quaint medieval notions of non-combatants having little place in a world of carpet bombing interpersonal explosives. There can be no doubt that civilians were victims during occupation of the Philippines. If you want to end your analysis of General Yamashita there, peace. As to the British influence there was a sea change in US foreign policy as Truman abandoned Roosevelt’s anticolonialism with a commitment to rebuild the European empires. Under Truman reestablishing British prestige was an important policy objective, I am not saying Britain even asked about Yamashita, I am saying his execution advanced U S policy.
Well I am not convinced. Let me start by saying I don’t have a high opinion of the World War II Tribunals.. They were victors justice. I agree with US Chief Justice Harlan Stone’s characterization “Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.” Curtis LeMay said “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” No matter how you want to slice it modern warfare is brutal with quaint medieval notions of non-combatants having little place in a world of carpet bombing interpersonal explosives. There can be no doubt that civilians were victims during occupation of the Philippines. If you want to end your analysis of General Yamashita there, peace. As to the British influence there was a sea change in US foreign policy as Truman abandoned Roosevelt’s anticolonialism with a commitment to rebuild the European empires. Under Truman reestablishing British prestige was an important policy objective. As to US Philippine relations I am no expert but my understanding is that economic reconstruction aid and tariffs post independence were the main issues.
Last edited:
McPherson
Banned
Shrug. I know the politics. I know why the Filipino people deserved justice. I know that shortcuts happened much like in more recent US wars where people needed to be killed or jailed quickly and "justice" would have been cheated if the scribblers had their way as to dotting i's and crossing t's. I've provided the documentation so that those who are interested in the processes can read the record.
I savagely disagree that Truman was pro-colonialist. He was more interested in making sure another world war did not erupt with the one remaining madman in the field. His policy choices, while I find some reprehensible, were built on that "containment" of both the possibility of war and the spread of the last remaining criminal ideology extant. His decisions to temporarily "prop up" the British, Dutch and French" post war were inevitably doomed to failure and I think he understood the event chains in progress, with national wars of liberation erupting. He was buying time, in other words.
Story 2411
Batan, Philippines February 1, 1944
Patrick could barely spare a moment to see an entire squadron of Thunderbolts take to the sky. He was too busy chivying his platoon onto the landing ship. The battalion was being redeployed from the small island that they had conquered weeks ago. Once the island was secured after a liberal application of flame throwers and satchel charges to clear a few diehard hold-outs from coconut log bunkers, the infantry men became construction troops until the engineers, both Army and Navy, could arrive in force. They had performed miracles. Within the first three days, an army pursuit squadron was already flying out of the old-pre-war airfield. Bulldozers, dynamite, steam rollers, steam shovels and enough steel matting to cover a dozen football fields had transformed the small island into an airfield with a post-exchange, a movie theatre and three palm trees as the remnants of the forest.
Two battalions of reformed Filipino Scouts who had fought as guerillas on Palawan had landed three days ago. They, and a battalion from the 31st Infantry Regiment backed by a single company of working Stuart tanks in the archipelago would garrison the ever growing airbase. This was light duty as the fighter bombers flying from their newly built airfields and the medium bombers now operating from Clark and Iba had effectively shut down shipping traffic in the Strait of Luzon. Any counter-invasion would have to go through the aeriel screen, then submarines, and then destroyers before they had to negotiate a dense set of mine belts covered by heavy artillery. The garrison needed to be big enough to force an honest attempt instead of offering the opportunity of an audacious enemy re-taking the island on the bounce. But those were the concerns of colonels and generals. The Lt just had to worry about his men showing up to the transports in good health, in good order and without souvenirs that could go boom unexpectedly.
Patrick could barely spare a moment to see an entire squadron of Thunderbolts take to the sky. He was too busy chivying his platoon onto the landing ship. The battalion was being redeployed from the small island that they had conquered weeks ago. Once the island was secured after a liberal application of flame throwers and satchel charges to clear a few diehard hold-outs from coconut log bunkers, the infantry men became construction troops until the engineers, both Army and Navy, could arrive in force. They had performed miracles. Within the first three days, an army pursuit squadron was already flying out of the old-pre-war airfield. Bulldozers, dynamite, steam rollers, steam shovels and enough steel matting to cover a dozen football fields had transformed the small island into an airfield with a post-exchange, a movie theatre and three palm trees as the remnants of the forest.
Two battalions of reformed Filipino Scouts who had fought as guerillas on Palawan had landed three days ago. They, and a battalion from the 31st Infantry Regiment backed by a single company of working Stuart tanks in the archipelago would garrison the ever growing airbase. This was light duty as the fighter bombers flying from their newly built airfields and the medium bombers now operating from Clark and Iba had effectively shut down shipping traffic in the Strait of Luzon. Any counter-invasion would have to go through the aeriel screen, then submarines, and then destroyers before they had to negotiate a dense set of mine belts covered by heavy artillery. The garrison needed to be big enough to force an honest attempt instead of offering the opportunity of an audacious enemy re-taking the island on the bounce. But those were the concerns of colonels and generals. The Lt just had to worry about his men showing up to the transports in good health, in good order and without souvenirs that could go boom unexpectedly.
Story 2412
Estonian-Russian border, February 2, 1944
The scout paused. He sniffed the frigid air. He moved his head ever so slightly to the right. He waited. There was no movement until a fox exploded out of the snow and dove down for a rodent that had been making too much noise. The scout lowered his hand. The patrol continued onwards.
Six hours later, warm tea was being poured into metal cups and thick stew ladled into bowls to warm hands and bodies. Another patrol with no action. Another night where everyone in the company survived.
The scout paused. He sniffed the frigid air. He moved his head ever so slightly to the right. He waited. There was no movement until a fox exploded out of the snow and dove down for a rodent that had been making too much noise. The scout lowered his hand. The patrol continued onwards.
Six hours later, warm tea was being poured into metal cups and thick stew ladled into bowls to warm hands and bodies. Another patrol with no action. Another night where everyone in the company survived.
Story 2413
Singapore, February 3, 1944
HMS Ark Royal had been pushed into the large dry dock ever so carefully by half a dozen tugs and a very cautious pilot. She would be in for eleven days of work to clean her hull, fix a temperamental screw and do the thousand and three other tasks needed to keep a warship in fighting trim. As soon as possible, she would be out of the drydock, and her place would be taken by HMS Illustrious for the same type of work. The armored carrier, tied up in Johor Channel, had a work gang upgrading her pom-poms and radars. Ark Royal's batteries would start to be upgraded while she was in the dock, but it would not be completed until she was tied up to a quay.
HMS Ark Royal had been pushed into the large dry dock ever so carefully by half a dozen tugs and a very cautious pilot. She would be in for eleven days of work to clean her hull, fix a temperamental screw and do the thousand and three other tasks needed to keep a warship in fighting trim. As soon as possible, she would be out of the drydock, and her place would be taken by HMS Illustrious for the same type of work. The armored carrier, tied up in Johor Channel, had a work gang upgrading her pom-poms and radars. Ark Royal's batteries would start to be upgraded while she was in the dock, but it would not be completed until she was tied up to a quay.
Last edited:
- Status