Banzai charges

They did not fight to the death, because they were not ordered to do so. They were ordered to assault a known enemy position, which they did. The assault failed, and the remaining soldiers tried to escape and regroup. But, the order to attack had been carried out. Now they just avoided being captured or killed. This was a night bayonet charge, which they specialized in...It was not a do-or-die Banzai Charge. Remember what I said earlier.

Your confusing a Japanese attack, with later Japanese island defense, where the Japanese soldiers would be ordered to fight to the bitter end.

 

Night charge---coooorect.
There are stories where the Japanese would try to unsettle the Australians in the barmy nights sitting piquet with taunts. Mate...they took on the wrong people if sledging is the game...Australians are champions of the sledge...so we would put on a deliberately bad Japanese accent and lay down some eye watering sledges back to them. (would have been difficult for the group to not laugh and give away their position) Plus we would send out a man to find this little miscreant whilst he prattled away...and made his stupid little scarey man laughs...

 

..I'm not confusing it.--yes they tried to get away and not fight to the end--they did not assault the enemy-this is exactly what I said ...-as I stated--not all make it to the MLR for various reasons---and/or want to attack when they know they will die--this is a good example
...I thought there were many captured on Okinawa....
...I'm saying they didn't all want to or did fight to the end....just like not all Allied soldiers were brave enough to rush an MG/etc

 

Yes, you are.

Here is why...

The assaulted twice, first at 1:30AM, and again at 2:30AM. Before trying to flank the position at 5:00AM. All three attacks are repulsed with heavy Japanese losses. After the flanking attack fails, the Ichiki and his remaining troops fall back to regroup.

Perhaps, you are thinking of the Marine counterattack against Ichiki's position in the morning...Very few Japanese, maybe 30 survived by retreating.

Huh? The narrowness of the sand spit makes it impossible for all 900 some men to assault the Marine position at one go. Hence, the three waves, each of some 150-200 Japanese troops.

No, it is not, after the battle, General Vandegrift noted that he had never heard of war being fought this way. Japanese troops not surrendering. Wounded Japanese troops blowing up themselves and the Marine who are trying to give them medical help.

No one is saying ALL Japanese troops fight to the death. If they did, we would never have captured any prisoners.

We just did not take anywhere near the amount of Japanese prisoners compared to Germans and Italians.

 

Related: Banzai attack on Australian soil...

The Cowra Breakout remembered 75 years on




This series showed that not all the Japanese wanted to "die honourably" - especially the young ones...the older soldiers pressured them into it.

 

please prove that every one of Ichikis Japanese soldiers assaulted/attacked....
..I'm saying not every Japanese soldier directly assaulted
..it's been proven in many wars that many soldiers do not even fire their weapon and/or attack
..you can indoctrinate and train humans for years, but human nature wants to survive--not die--plain and simple
..and it's not just that, other problems arise: terrain problems/lost in the jungle/no field of fire/etc...

..the Japanese were not stupid--if they saw a situation was hopeless, not all of them blindly and stupidly followed orders/assaulted an MG/etc

..same in many wars
Men Against Fire: How Many Soldiers Actually Fired Their Weapons at the Enemy During the Vietnam War

 

..the Japanese were not superhuman.....their males were just like anyone else---they have alpha and beta males...
etc

 

When I used to play board wargames, the designers of Avalon Hill's "Squad Leader" also left copious designer notes for nearly every rules section that the game introduced you to.
Some of the most interesting were to do with morale.

Squad Leader was based around the concept of the "morale check". The player had to "check morale" with a dice roll that was modified, up or down, according to the nationality, and the situation. When a squad failed a mopale check, it was either rendered incapable ("Broken"), and flipped over to it's broken side, or the failed morale check caused it to not undertake the course of action that you were attempting.

Also, if a broken squad was in open terrain, it had to have a valid route to covering terrain, like woods or entrenchmentsa or a building. If your squad had only open terrain to run into to reach cover, it was declared 'destroyed" and taken off the board. Also, a broken squad that had reached cover, and was then fired on resulting in a morale check had its base morale reduced to something called "desperation morale", that was three dice pips below its regular, unmodified morale level.

Your total force for the scenario could even be defeated if you lost a certain percentage of people from the total you began the scenario with.

But what made this interesting was the notes that the original designer, John Hill, had left in the rulebook associated with morale.

John Hill claimed, and this was backed up by the games "in house" developer, Don Greenwood, that of the average ten man squad in ww2, only THREE out of every ten men actually contributed to doing something that put the squad in a position to achieve its objective. The other seven men in the squad would not fire their weapons at all, and would spend the time seeking cover, until roused into action by an NCO, or another member of the squad.

Different nationalities had differing base morale level. The Germans had a base morale of "7", same as the Russians, but the Germans had more and better "Leaders", who would "rally" squads, operate radios for "offboard artillery", or use their "leadership modifier" to make tasks easier, like fire groups, or "pre AFV attack morale checks", stuff like that.

The Americans only had a base morale of "6", with their elite units one higher. Russian and German elite units had a base morale of "8'. Some leaders would not modify the die roll at all, some would by minus 1, or minus 2 and in rare cases, minus 3.

Early war German scenarios gave the Germans a definite edge in the number of leaders allocated in a particular scenario. Russian OBs tended to have large bodies of troops, with fewer support weapons, and less leaders per numbers of squad.

The American base squads with a morale of 6, were tricky to play. They were often lavishly supported with support weapons, and their base firepower for each squad was half again as much as the average German or Russian squad. But US troops did not suffer from the effects of desperation morale either, and their leadership was not as good as the Germans, but better than the Russians.

But the fact remained, that if you wanted to do something risky in "Squad Leader", like tryig to rush a machine gun position, the morale system meant that you had to be very good at rolling low dice for the morale checks, to avoid one broken squad after another being caught in the open with no "rout route" to get them back to cover once they were "broken".

Squad Leader was a INTENCE gaming experience, probably the only wargame I ever played where you actually got ANGRY when your brilliant tactical plan that should have worked on paper was pulled apart by the vagaries of morale. You could only push your squads so far before this aspect of the game caught up with you. I remember reading a review of the original game, where one player actually refused to send his troops into the open to take the building that was the scenario objective, and gave up on the spot, saying that nothing in the world was going to make him send his squads out into that fire swept road.


But the designers notes were unique, for they challenged the "nitpickers" to not be able to question exactly why the varioous aspects of the rules were made to be so.

I never got to play the Japanese side, but I imagined that they would be masses of troops, with just a few support weapons, and with the same ability to go "battle mad" or "berserk" called, werein if you rolled a "snake-eyes' for a given squad morale check caused by eney fire, you would lose control of that squad, as they charged across any ground, ignoring everything except a "KIA" result, until they closed for "close combat". "Berserk" squad could only be eliminated with a KIA result, and I imagine that Japanes "Banzai" charges would have been exactly the same circumstances....unstoppable except by lareg amounts of firepower, or having to bash in the heads of each soldier as he closed with you to do the same....

Anyhow, I miss those days of "Squad Leader". Modern computer games don't stetch your mind, or your emotions for that matter, as the old board wargames used to.

Chris

 

Do you even read my posts?

At most 600 of the 900 troops of the Ichiki Detachment assaulted Marine lines...Leaving about 300 or more that never assaulted Marine lines.

No one said that all Japanese troops continued an assault until they were all killed.

 

Of course...There would be no armies at all if there were only leaders or only followers.

 

You never got to play the Japanese, because they were not in Squad Leader. The Japanese first appeared in Advanced Squad Leader. IIRC, they used step-reduction if they broke, ie. They became an unbroken squad of the next smaller size down. Been 20+ years since I looked at the rules though.
They had their deficiencies, and a learning curve to play them successfully, but were fun to play.

 

this is what I said long ago:
''''2. in my readings, it was a ''disorganized'' assault---not a ''total'' assault at one time with all or even complete units.....especially night ''banzais'' = disorganized/faulty/not ''en masse'' [ not hundreds or thousands ]
..you still had the ''banzai'' yells at times.....taunting/etc'''
'''complete units''' did not assault ---
you said:
'''They assaulted twice''''
so, you were disagreeing with me when I said not all assaulted
blah blah blah
so you, you were agreeing with me?!?

 

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy....Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

 

It was not a "disorganized" assault, but a poorly planned one. The terrain limited the number of Japanese troops that could be effectively used on an assault. Had Ichiki done any sort of reconnaisance, he would have found that he could have crossed with his whole unit, and assaulted the Marine position with his whole unit and from the rear.

As to "disorganized", your thinking of Kawaguchi's assault on Edson's Ridge, where one of his three battalions never engaged the enemy.

 

They haven’t met Australians then...

 

Aren't they the ones that contact the enemy first and then concoct the battle plan.

 

Depends where and when you are talking... : )
The game Aussie rules footy teaches children to assess and think for themselves, on the run, with imminent danger close...a skill that lends itself to life, and especially battle...
Fluidity in battle is today essential...read the play, know the action and reaction and, make a quick decision...Australian soldiers are taught to follow orders, but also to be able to think for themselves (important for a small army with minimal support)...stay a step ahead of the enemy by knowing what they are going to do before they do.

 

I know a little bit about Australian methods...right from people I used to know that trained Australian soldiers at Kapuka….

They have something called a "bottom up"command structure for battlefield decisions. Instead of an officer making all the decisions, the officer will only act when his NCO's feel it is the 'right' decision to make under the circumstance. In turn, the NCO will derive his information, not from talking to the officer, but by consulting the men to begin with.

What this produces is on the spot decisions that are taken by NCOs with a lot of initiative, and the men themselves are the key to it.

When I mentioned to them the ww2 statistic of "three men in a ten man squad actually doing all the shooting, while the other seven either take cover or do nothing", the guy I was talking to claimed that our rwecruitment officers had "already weeded out" anyone unmotivated. The job of this particular NCO at Kapuka was something called "sleep deprivation training", where he would keep soldiers awake for days, sometimes by squirting very cold water on them with a hose. He was described by his friend also at the party as "probably the most unpopular man in the Australian Army.
This same NCO, the one that deprived people of sleep, had also been highly decorated in action, pulling two soldiers out of a burning APC. When I asked him about it, he went all shy, saying, "The people around me know exactly what I've done...." and that was as far as he got.
The friend whose party I was at was also a Kapuka instructor, but had to leave the Army. He had trodden on a mine in action and had miraculously survived, but had a bad case of PTSD and could not function at his old level of excellence.
His first born son, Adrian, had died of Sudden Infant Death syndrome, and he described walking into Adriian's room and finding that he had stopped breathing ""worse than anything I ever did in the army, including getting blown up."

The Australian Army chooses its soldiers very carefully. We spend a lot of money on them for the size of our country.

I have even heard a rumour from one of my nurses who has a father and two brothers all with Army service, that they have seen Tactical Nuclear weapons that we have, although Ashl;iegh would not comment any further to me; she said "I SAW them, and I've said to much already....

But I can trust you guys....

 

That reminds me of something else....

When I used to drive cabs, I picked up a nurse one night on a regular run home from her work. She was in a house for the disabled.

When got talking, and she mentioned something that she had noticed, namely, that the parents of diabled children, from what she had seen over the years, seemed to have a VERY high rate of people from the Police force and the military.

She said that the number of disabled that she had worked with whose parents were Policeman or soldiers was "off the scale", and we both wondered why this was so, and why Doctors in research do not follow this line of investigation when trying to solve problems like Down Syndrome, Autism, and other neuro-psychological disorders. Certainly there are no drugs that treat Autism or for "Downies", but this line of thinking seems to be ignored when looking for a cure or even a drug which will wipe away symptomatic behaviours.

It seems to be an open secret amongst servicemen and policemen, something they just don't talk about, and you only hear of by chance like I did when insiders in the Care field start to gossip.

Christopher