Not really... I know what you're talking about but the marines always had enough food and water to keep them from starvation, and always enough ammo that they could always use their weapons. The Japanese on the other hand, often runs out of ammo and would turn to desperate bayonet charges, and on multiple occasions the Japanese would rely on cannibalism to survive.
So you want balance, eh?
- Thread starter NeuroticFool
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Not really... I know what you're talking about but the marines always had enough food and water to keep them from starvation, and always enough ammo that they could always use their weapons. The Japanese on the other hand, often runs out of ammo and would turn to desperate bayonet charges, and on multiple occasions the Japanese would rely on cannibalism to survive.
It was a problem, obviously, for the US army soldiers that were trapped on Bataan, however. And they still held out for months... Not sure how relevent this is to the game, though, unless we have a Bataan map.
That's actually pretty interesting.
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Rising Sun
Rising Sun is one of EA's MOH games. Last year EA did unplug the central server for that game. Personally I don't have any problems if you boycott that retired EA game
It's not the first time I made that Freudian slip... and I'm sure it won't be the last.
The idea that the IJA is not well trained doesn't sound right to me I've seen videos of Japanese children stood in rows doing exercise and war games much as hitler did with the hitler youth.
Also it takes a lot of discipline to stay and die rather than surrender which was the option many IJA solidiers did.
As for marines being bigger well that may be but surely a nation that practices Judo Kendo and other marial arts would train their soliders in this just as the marines did.
plus juding by the losses and mistakes made in some of the early landings the marines were learning as they went along
Also it takes a lot of discipline to stay and die rather than surrender which was the option many IJA solidiers did.
As for marines being bigger well that may be but surely a nation that practices Judo Kendo and other marial arts would train their soliders in this just as the marines did.
plus juding by the losses and mistakes made in some of the early landings the marines were learning as they went along
They wouldn't get 1 division back in 1940's Japan. I think there's an off-chance that you might be mistaking for the Waffen-SS, which had a 6ft minimum.
The average IJA soldier was something like 5' 4". 6' 4" is giant even by modern western standards, let alone asians with a low protien and calcium diet.
There were supposedly tall Japanese SNLF at Milne Bay.
From the Clowes Report: "...we had always thought of Japanese as skinny little fellows with big buck teeth.These were big strapping blokes,and I suuppose their average height would have been around five foot eight inches--a lot bigger than we had thought.They were all husky fellows in new uniforms,new boots and new equipment.There was nothing second-rate about the look of them and we were in for quite a torrid time."
Taken from this post: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=966014#p966014
5'8'' is slightly above the average height of the 20-something urban Japanese man today, so for the 1940s that would have been significant.
From the Clowes Report: "...we had always thought of Japanese as skinny little fellows with big buck teeth.These were big strapping blokes,and I suuppose their average height would have been around five foot eight inches--a lot bigger than we had thought.They were all husky fellows in new uniforms,new boots and new equipment.There was nothing second-rate about the look of them and we were in for quite a torrid time."
Taken from this post: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=966014#p966014
5'8'' is slightly above the average height of the 20-something urban Japanese man today, so for the 1940s that would have been significant.
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Islanders are usually always shorter on average than continentals... as least for horses and dogs. Maybe it applies too to humans.
Whoa, one data point you say? The claim that no Chinese are 5' 8" is proven false.
By Chinese, do you mean ethnic Chinese living in the west or actually living in China? The beleif that Asians are smaller purely through genetics is false; genetics do play a part, but the main factor of human size is diet. Asians historically had little or no access to high protien and calcium diets, and so were shorter. Ethnic asians (I'm half Japanese and am 6 ft) living in the US, for example, will usually only be slightly shorter than caucasians, at least from my experience.
5'9" and Chinese, and all my male cousins are taller. Quite right--modern medicine and the agricultural revolution have had a significant impact.
To address the original topic: the Japanese may have been physically smaller, but they took bayonet drill and swordsmanship seriously as a matter of martial pride. Their prowess with bayonet and blade was well known among the Marines. In addition, they showed a stoic ability to endure incredible injuries and continue fighting in battle throughout the Pacific War. There are stories, however, of single Marines overpowering entire groups of Japanese soldiers in hand-to-hand combat.
Marines also had plenty of artillery. On Peleliu, the Eleventh Marine Regiment was predominantly artillery-focused and equipped with howitzers up to 105mm (the quite iconic M101). Of course you don't bring the artillery ashore with the assault troops. You move it up onto the beach under cover of night, once a beachead has been established. By dawn, those 105s will be pounding away at Mount Suribachi.
Japanese grenades also failed to explode just as American grenades did. In fact, dud grenades were an unsettlingly common occurence during firefights across all the theaters of World War Two.
In addition, the game does not appear to be limited whatsoever to Marines versus IJA/IJN. Nhpum Ga, confirmed to be in the game, will pit Merril's Marauders, a US Army unit, against the IJA. So the Philippenes are absolutely fair game.
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Well, it's impossible to doubt the fact that marines would on average indeed be taller and stronger (that's just a straight up fact), marines would for the most part past the first battles of the pacific war be better equipped. Now it's fair to debate the 'better trained' point, but your counter-argument isn't terribly effective. First off- there's veterans in every army and there's fresh recruits in every army. Not every single soldier in the IJA was serving in China for the past 10 years, now where they?
Also add in the atrocious casualty rates caused by a refusal to surrender doesn't bode well for the creation of veterans. By the end of the war, American pilots were racking up a ridiculous 12 - to - 1 kill ratio in the air due to the fact that the Japanese air force kept it's aces and veterans in the front line until they died, often threw them into suicidal attacks, and refused to withdraw them when was prudent, while the Americans had more armored fighters with self-sealing fuel tanks, better rescue, and rotated out aces to train the younger recruits, causing a massive disparity in relative experience.
Do remember that the pacific islands are a completely different turf than Japan itself- most soldier would definitely NOT be familiar with "the terrain, weather, and other local conditions". Also, those are not terribly important factors in determining a firefight. Having a hunch that it might rain soon won't help you dodge hot lead any better.
A muscle mass distinction likely existed for some Marines, but on average most people back then didn't pay much attention to building their bodies in any meaningful way, then like others have said, it's not as if the Pacific War was largely a conflict of bare knuckle boxing.
Any muscle mass superiority of the Americans would have been rendered useless as soon as they found themselves on a pacific island with little food and being plagued by malaria anyway. The muscle mass just dropped off after a few weeks of being there.
Here's some US marines on Guadalcanal...
...not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger bodies on them are there?
Well apparently you do, judging by this quote from yourself.
Perhaps at first, but a lot of the Japanese troops had been fighting in wars before many of the US Marines had even been born, so I imagine, even with the worst starting training, those years of prior experience would have turned even the most ill-trained Japanese soldier into a force to be reckoned with.
I don't really see how that's the case? I'm 100% English, but I can't tell you much about the English Civil War. I'm also 100% European, but don't ask me to explain the Swedish-Novgorodian Wars or the Friso-Hollandic Wars to someone.
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Warfare, however, is still a contest of being able to run faster than a rifleman or machine gun can target you, being able to overpower an opponent in a close quarters fighting, of being able to effectively fight after a long march in 115 degrees, etc. There's a reason why they put recruits through a gargantuan amount of physical training at boot camp- there's more than aiming a gun in war. To imply that strength does not play a significant part of the overall quality of a soldier is ridiculous.
Laughable to suggest that there was any such thing as wide spread food shortages being a problem for the allies in the pacific- further inane to say that these nonexistent food shortages, save for whatever might naturally occur in any war in certain unusual situations, actually caused the entire fighting force of the USMC, which would've been more than a little bit physically active, to lose its muscle mass of its fighting troops.
Let us remember that it was the Japanese who resorted to cannibalism at Kokoda and the Aleuts, whose logistics train was still largely pack animals and pack soldiers, and it was the allies who had a gargantuan fleet of 2 1/2 tons and other trucks? Do you really have any idea of the logistics situations of the Pacific campaign? Sure, exhaustion can be a problem for any unit on the line for too long and reduce their combat effectiveness, but the allies rotated their troops out on a regular basis from the beginning of the war, not only did the Japanese not do so, but they COULD NOT do so, as in ever major decisive land battle of the Pacific campaign when the Marines were on the attack the Japanese were outnumbered by a large margin- which also furthered allowed a greater deal of rest to the USMC forces.
This quote in particular is just plain sad. A lot of the Japanese troops had been fighting before many of the combat marines were even born?
So, an 18 year old marine fighting at Guadacanal, 1942, was born in 1924. Are you seriously suggesting that the IJA mainly consisted of World War 1 veterans? That the Japanese were using 40 year old troops as mainline combat infantry, and that someone consisted of an advantage? The soldiers bones cracking after they get up from their mid-afternoon nap will alert every enemy soldier within five miles!
You also seem to hold to a fallacy that every single soldier- or even a large percentage of the soldiers in the pacific islands- were veterans of the Chinese war (a conflict which only truly erupted into a full scale war in 1937). Japan was conscripting left and right just as every great power was at that time- so do tell how 'the most ill trained Japanese soldier' will somehow be transformed by his nonexistent experience into 'a force to be reckoned with'.
And let's also examine the fact that throughout the entire war, Japanese casualty rates were horrifically high due to constant illogical counterattacks and a steadfast refusal to retreat or surrender. Call it 'Hollywood' or whatever, it simply cannot change the fact that over 99.7% of the Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima were KIA. Peleliu, Saipan, Guam, Guaducanal, Papua New Guniea, same story. Japan did not have any vast reserves of veterans- and there disregard for losses left only armies of unexirienced conscripts the longer the war went on, as entire battles such as those mentioned saw every single Japanese soldier die or become a POW- none returning. All the same while there were more and more allied veterans being created by those same battles the Japanese did not survive in.
Do also take the fact that allied aircraft like the Corsair and Hellcat were scoring K/D rations of a gargantuan 12 to 1! 12 to 1! Let that go through your head for a little bit. There were no easily nameable great allied aces throughout WW2, unlike say, the Germans with Erich Hartmann, who scored over 300 kills, because once any western allied ace started getting into the double digits, that ace was restricted to flight instruction to train the recruits, instead of being thrown into battle again and again. This furthermore created an even larger divide in the expirience levels between Japanese and Allies- and not in the Japanese favor as you seem to believe.
Looks like you can add the Pacific war to your list too.
I never said it didn't play a significant part, I simply said that, contrary to what the OP seems to think are body building super men, many Marines were not overly 'built' in comparison to their Japanese counterparts who could overpower a Japanese soldier with their little finger.
Again, where exactly do I state there were 'wide spread food shortages' in the pacific? I don't. In various battles there are always sitations where soldiers for one reason or another, take Peleliu with lack of water being a problem early on in the assault, supplies don't get through, that in turn has an effect on the individual's strength.
You seem to have this strange idea that every single Japanese soldier that fought in other conflifts somehow magically vanished prior to Marine intervention in the Pacific. By your logic, seeing as the British were conscripting new recruits throughout the war, it means troops already enlisted prior to 1939 never saw service.
Oh look, a little childish remark to round off, how cute.
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