Of all the major powers fighting in WWII, the one that did the least with its armored force was the Japanese. Mired in the early to mid 1930s in terms of the quality and effectiveness of their tanks, what worked for them in China against basically no armored opposition, was not effective when it came up against modern, Allied armor.

When one combines this with a distinct lack of modern armor, then you can see that whenever they met US tanks, they came out on the losing end of things.

What is strange about this is that they did not lack intelligence when it came to what the latest and greatest thing was. It was just that they apparently did not see a need to upgrade and by the time it became apparent, the lengthy development time of Japanese weapons meant that their most effective tanks were never used in battle!

Yet despite this, the Japanese did use their tanks quite effectively against the Chinese, decimating their opposition with what were basically modernized WWI tanks. Apparently they did not believe in combined operations of tanks and infantry, despite the one time it was used, it was a huge success.

Where there was not a lot of room to maneuver, such as on the many islands occupied by Japan, their tanks were used hull down as mobile pill boxes able to retreat or advance if need be. During attacks, tanks would be most often used at night, and this was practiced a great deal. Tank commanders learned to close their eyes when firing so that the muzzle flash would not blind them and they could see shot fall.

Author Rottmann and Takizawa cover the full range of units, tactics and equipment used by the Japanese during the war. Some of the results you may find quite surprising, while others are more as expected. Superbly illustrated by Peter Dennis in showing tactical movements and combined with what few period photographs are still extant on the subject, the reader gets a better idea of what these men and their equipment were like.

I found the book to be particularly interesting as so little has been written on the subject for Western readers. It is a book I know you'll find of interest and is highly recommended.

November 2008.

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