News from Heroes and Leaders mod

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Inadequate training

The inadequate training was also a Japanese feature. Pre-war conscripts normally served for two years (later three), but the deteriorating war situation shortened this training period, after 1942, to three months or less before men left for the front. Even in 1941-42, some formations were raw; the 65th Brigade on Bataan had received less than a month's training, and the Imperial Guards Division in Malaya, while expert at ceremonial drill, had last seen action in 1905. Some officers complained of tilt 65th's low standards and poor training, observing that their men bunched too close together, moved carelessly down roads, gave insufficient attention to tackling Allied defensive works or to constructing their own. In Malaya, similar complaints were made about poor map-reading, inadequate standards of patrolling and bad artillery-infantry cooperation, together with abysmal leadership and a lack of fighting spirit among both officers and men. Early in 1944, the CO of one division in Burma bemoaned his "passive, conservative and thick-headed NCOs and men . . . badly commanded and controlled". All this is a far cry from the stereotyped view of the Japanese soldier as a highly trained warrior.

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Ineptitude of the Imperial Japanese Army's Personnel Bureau

Partly responsible for this inadequate training, was the ineptitude of the Imperial Japanese Army's Personnel Bureau of the Imperial General HQ in placing senior commanders into certain field commands; there was an unfortunate tendency to choose officers who, due to past personal animosities, were incapable of working together harmoniously or effectively-with unfortunate results for Japan. For example, due to such personality clashes, many divisional COs or leaders of lower rank preferred to ignore unpalatable orders. The Imperial Guard went into battle virtually untrained for war not bemuse of a lack of opportunity but because orders to train rigorously had been ignored, and its inferior performance was further matched by its failure to cooperate with other formations in Malaya. Initially this did not prejudice success but did greatly increase the "butcher's bill" for Japan unnecessarily. In Burma, personal rivalries between commanders compounded the already poor liaison between the participants of the 1944 offensive. The abortive attempts to mix elements of two Japanese divisions on Okinawa was a prime example of one formation viewing the other as "weaker", while attempts to launch coordinated attacks with the 44th IMB there also foundered on the rock of organizational arrogance. In Burma, the old Imperial Japanese Army/Japanese Imperial Navy rivalry, so bitter at higher levels, also manifested itself when the 13th Naval Guard Force chose to break out from Rangoon alone (and after the Imperial Japanese Army had gone) to demonstrate its independence, but by then all paths were blocked and only three of 1200 participants survived. Similar examples on a larger scale include the Japaneses commander's decision to turn Manila, declared an open city by the Imperial Japanese Army, into another Stalingrad at the cost of 21000 men (and Lord knows how many Filipino civilians). In some cases, Japanese units even refused the help of neighboring formations for the sake of "honor" (or "soldier's compassion"), particularly if they had suffered heavy losses in trying to secure some elusive military objective, as at Sangshak in Burma. But Japanese commanders alone were not to blame for this situation, for like the British army the HA was something of a tribal organization with regional recruiting further encouraging an excessive spirit of competition. Off the battlefield, too, departing Japanese units had a habit of spoiling or destroying any remaining supplies that had to be left behind rather than leave them for the relieving unit, a senseless policy given Japan's profound logistical weaknesses and the resultant mass-starvation and epidemic among troops. As morale disintegrated in 1945, this also manifested itself in undisciplined foraging that left nothing for following units, and formations would not hesitate to steal from one another when opportunity permitted.

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The "Stealth" advantages of Japanese squads.

The Japanese negative traits were reinforced by the Imperial Japanese Army's enthusiasm for splintering formations and for maintaining a large number of independent units which were thrown together as ad hoc forces for one operation as short-lived kampfgruppen but possessing rather selfish, British-style, loyalties rather than a more professional, German, approach to the good of all. Coupled with often poor liaison, had coverage of unit boundaries and the Japanese habit of throwing reinforcements into battle piece-meal, these characteristics impaired the efficient usage of forces. Armor/artillery/infantry cooperation was not a Japanese strength either. For the foregoing reasons (and perhaps because many Japanese unit were overcome by excitement for the battle at the expense of reason and rationality), the Imperial Japanese Army's tactics were extremely wasteful of manpower, relying on the immense courage and individual skills of the Japanese soldier rather than on any innate intelligence. The "Stealth" advantages of Japanese squads is more a reflection of their ferocity in close combat than for their quiet efficiency on the battlefield; certainly the Japanese could remain silent when they deemed it necessary (e.g. when infiltrating, which they sometimes conducted on a very large scale indeed), and would then take great pains to suppress all noise. This feature reflects also their ability and willingness to move close to enemy positions, as well as their ruthlessness in sending men in ones and twos to deliberately draw enemy fire (in which role they were deemed expendable).

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Japaneses "7" morale factor

The "7" morale factor of Japanese Elite squads (Marine Paratroopers, Naval Landing, Assault Engineers), will doubtless surprise no one, although some friends may wonder why "7" is not more appropriate than "6" like for the First-Line and Second-Line squads. However, the wide gulf in training, competence, leadership, weapons, physical fitness and diet (combat troops naturally got priority in receiving rations and anti-malarial drugs) did have an effect on morale even among the Japanese. There is little need to dwell at length on the stoicism of their soldiers.

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Fanatical resistance and resilience under fire

Briefly, the fanatical resistance and resilience under fire displayed by the Japanese stemmed from a number of factors. In the first place, the bushido spirit demanded that suffering and hardship be borne bravely without complaint, imposing a form of self-discipline. Secondly, many Japanese believed through persistent indoctrination that the greatest personal fulfillment attainable was to die a hero's death in battle and thus be assured a place in Heaven, linked to the old ethos that death was nothing to fear and preferable to dishonor. Thirdly, the brutal discipline of Japanese military life made retreat (let alone surrender) a crime under the Military Penal Code, and demanded suicide even from Japanese POWs who subsequently escaped and regained their own lines. Fourth, the fact that the Japanese would often kill their own comrades if they attempted surrender was a powerful disincentive to be rational and quit. And, fifth, Japanese education and propaganda (the two were almost synonymous) convinced most soldiers that their foes were racial inferiors-or at least barbarians-and should be resisted "tooth and nail". Lastly, regional recruiting fostered strong regimental loyalty and unit cohesion.

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Japanese morale was not unbreakable

But, although a Japanese soldier on Bataan boasted "We are the peepul (sic] who are not afraid to die by boolets (sic]", this was not always, literally, true. The Japanese morale was not unbreakable and as early as 1937 morale in China was low (albeit somewhat localized and quarantined). On Bataan by February 1942-before reinforcements arrived--Japanese morale was so low that troops were reluctant to enter the jungle and face the Allies without air support. In Burma too, morale collapsed after the defeats at Kohima and Imphal in 1944 and many units were difficult to control in the retreat. By January 1945, morale everywhere in Burma began to crack, and was completely destroyed by June, when desertions increased significantly. In China and on Okinawa, the fighting indicated that there were limits to even the Japanese soldier's mental and physical resilience, while in the Philippines elements of the former Kwantung Army suffered a rapid collapse in morale when the futility of their tactics was brutally exposed by the Americans' more rational and professional approach to war. All these instances demonstrated that, given sufficient pounding, particularly by heavy bombing, flamethrowers or (ironically) by the use of bayonet charges, even the Japanese would break. Nonetheless, it should be remembered that this process took longer to work against the Japanese than most other troops, and their morale recovered rapidly (as on Bataan or-however briefly-in Burma in late 1944) given time and opportunity.

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Desertions

The popular view of the Japanese soldier's apparently unbreakable morale has been colored by the durability of a comparatively small number of personnel who refused to surrender until well after Japan's own capitulation. The last man (so far) who has come home from the war gave up as recently as 1974. But this has drawn attention away from the other side of the proverbial coin. For all the military zeal of the Japanese, draft-dodging in wartime was not unknown, and there were also desertions, albeit on a smaller scale than those from Western armies. The statistics are incomplete and not directly comparable with those for other armies in that methods of compilation, criteria and dates do not always coincide, but as a rough guide they are interesting. In 1939, the 669 Japanese defections/desertions represented about 9.71% of British desertions; in 1943, 1043 Japanese desertions/defections equated to about 6.59% those for Britain and 1.55% of Germany's. In the first seven months of 1944 there were 2025 Japanese "losses" from this cause, or about 20.55% of Britain's and 1.71% of Germany's (both the latter percentages calculated pro rata from the year's figures). US Army figures are unavailable, but overall desertion rates tend to be at least as high as those for the British military.

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Brutality within the Imperial Japanese Army

There is some evidence that, in the long term, the ladder of brutality within the Imperial Japanese Army, far from promoting unit cohesion or discipline, actually undermined both. Initially, at least most soldiers accepted this brutal regime and the wanton neglect that many (but not all) senior Japanese officers displayed towards their men, as the rightful prerogative of superior rank. Certainly many NCOs—the main protagonists in the brutalization of Japanese personnel—loved the military life because (in peacetime at least) it offered an escape from the grinding poverty of rural Japan and provided plenty of subordinates to pamper them or act as docile victims on whom they could vent their anger. The latter were conditioned, and expected, to vent theirs on the enemy. But Japan's declining fortunes, the often senseless brutality inflicted on them from above, the fact that when supplies ran low the officers got priority in food while their men starved, and the gradual exposure of Japanese propaganda as a tissue of lies, coupled with the slow realization that Allied military prowess and industrial power had been grossly underestimated, slowly ate away at Japanese morale, breaking down the power of officers and the awe with which their men regarded them. The tense, fragile officer-man relationship gradually changed (also partly due to the decline in officer quality) and fear was often, replaced by contempt and the more pressing concern of finding food. Perhaps the nadir of Japanese officer-man relationships was reached on New Guinea when vessels carrying the top brass to safety (well fed while their men starved) threw starving or wounded men overboard during the evacuation by sea. However atypical and localized, such actions scotch the myths about discipline in the Imperial Japanese Army.

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Sharpshooters

It's known the historical Japanese enthusiasm for deploying snipers (or, more accurately, "sharpshooters" as improvised snipers, for the vast majority were neither trained nor equipped to be true snipers and were merely infantrymen who had infiltrated into or stayed behind in good firing positions to cause trouble). The common "sharpshooter" was often more a nuisance than a danger, as shown by one Japanese soldier at the siege of Kohima in Burma who missed a British battalion CO sitting on a tree-stump in broad daylight from 100 yards, only to be shot with threes round by a British soldier even though his target was hidden up a tree. The real Japanese sniper was better camouflaged, had a telescopic sight on his rifle (which clarified rather than magnified targets by clearing away haze and other distractions to make objects stand out better), concentrated rations and perhaps even binoculars. This far more formidable individual was much harder to deal with; on Okinawa one sniper killed or wounded 22 Americans before being eliminated, and another, in Burma, shot eight officers over a three-week period and eventually escaped despite vigorous countermeasures. The sniper or sharpshooter was a particularly economical and effective ploy for tying down and eroding the strength of enemy units, as demonstrated to perfection on Bataan in 1942, although the placement of snipers there was found to be "repetitious" and thus enabled the Allies to conduct successful sniper-hunts (even dynamite was used to fell the trees concealing them). Such Allied "victories" could be pyrrhic; on Timor in February 1942, all but 78 of 630 Japanese soldiers parachuted in to snipe at the retreating Australians were killed, but they had delayed their foes long enough for other Japanese units to cut off their retreat and force them to surrender. In Burma too, massed "snipers" were encountered, and in February 1945 over 100 were eliminated in one area between the Welaung and Meiktila roads alone.

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Camouflage

The Japanese were excellent at camouflage techniques and became a hallmark of the Imperial Japan Army. Positions were nearly always so well concealed as to be completely undetectable even a few feet away. Once in their positions, the Japanese became "invisible" (as a veteran described them). Apparently they learned their concealment skills from the Chinese prior to 1941, who even tied foliage to the tails of cattle to hide them from air attack. The Japanese still used heavy vehicle camouflage despite enjoying almost total air superiority in 1941-42. This flair for camouflage was all the more dangerous given the formidable nature of Japanese pillboxes and other defensive works-the Japanese had the ability to construct almost invulnerable bunkers with interconnecting tunnels deep underground from whatever materials were locally available, and these taxed to the full the Allies' best efforts in trying to reduce them.

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Prisoners

Because Japanese military personnel (and civilians) were not supposed to let themselves be captured, they received almost no instructions in how to behave if this actually occurred. Consequently they usually revealed, willingly, much useful information and only rarely was torture or other "persuasion" needed. A number of Japanese even became, in turn, interrogators for the Allies or otherwise offered their services (the less subtlehence less effective-Russian methods tended to harden captives into further passive resistance, since they confirmed the perceptions gained by the Japanese from their own anti-Allied propaganda.) This no doubt helped assuage the feelings of guilt that a Japanese soldier may have felt for being taken alive. Given that very few of the 500000 or so Japanese POWs in Soviet hands ever returned to Japan (as late as the 1970s, 300000 of these we still unaccounted for). However, good Allied treatment did not always guarantee meek, submissive Japanese POWs. In New Zealand, 240 Japanese prisoners objected to performing labor duties in February 1943 and attacked their guards with stones, leaving 48 Japanese dead and 74 wounded; at Cowra in Australia, about 1000 Japanese POWs orchestrated a mass breakout in August 1944 which left 234 of them dead (the rest were quickly recaptured).

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No Quarter and Massacre

There was little real incentive to show compassion, despite bushido having also contained a "benevolence" ethic that advocated treating defeated foes chivalrously (this had been conveniently filtered-out of the neo-bushido doctrine of the late 19th and 20th centuries). Various reasons have been suggested to explain Japanese atrocities on and off the battlefield. Suffice to say that the Japanese behaved well towards their POWs in the 1904-05 war against Russia and against the Germans in 1914-18, and that during World War 2 the Allies reciprocated with sometimes equal cruelty once stories of Japanese handiwork got out. For the sake of balance, it must also be stated that some Japanese personnel-either individually or collectively-treated their captives well; those on a large scale included the POW camp in Saigon (where only two of 2000 inmates died, both from natural causes) and the good treatment meted out to the wounded members of the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade left behind at the battle of Sangshak in Burma in 1944, some of whom were even hospitalized-a rare "luxury" for most Japanese, let alone their enemies. Moreover, even if the merits of strategic bombing are left aside, the Western Allies (much less the more unrestrained Soviets) hardly emerged from World War 2 smelling of roses; they too upon occasion took hostages, murdered prisoners and-sometimes-civilians. While the Axis certainly behaved appallingly towards conquered peoples, in an anti-insurgency context at least the Allies did too in various places before, during and after WW2 (be it Aden, Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, China, IndoChina, Ireland, Latin America generally, or Tibet-to name a few). Although 27% of Allied POWs in Japanese captivity died (compared to only 4% in German and Italian hands), recent revelations about the mass-starvation--through willful neglect in at least some of the cases-of Germans in Allied POW camps after the war ended shows that brutality and indifference to suffering among the vanquished was by no means just a Japanese, or Axis, trait. Finally, it should also be borne in mind that the Japanese treated their own soldiers and civilians little better, for the welfare of the individual (especially those of lowly rank) was considered of little consequence in Japanese thinking.

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Hara-Kiri

The Expansion module "Pacific" of Heroes and Leaders mod has tried to facilitate Japanese soldiers behavior similar to traditional hara-kiri (or more politely, seppuku). Wounded troops, especially, were regarded as an impediment to military operations and, just as personnel were often psychologically pressured into joining kamikaze units, so there was a battlefield convention of not becoming a burden to others through sickness or wounds. Traditionally, of course, suicide was synonymous with ritual disembowelment (hara-kiri meaning "belly slit/cut"). Although more modem methods were usu ally used in World War 2, Japanese soldiers had few scruples about killing wounded personnel or themselves to avoid capture.

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Japanese weapons manufacture

The extent of Japan's folly in going to war with the USA (even allowing for the latter's preoccupation with helping to defeat Hitler first) can be gauged by the fact that in 1944 Japan produced but a fraction of the armaments that America, let alone the entire alliance, manufactured, achieving just 4% of US mortar output, 6.5% of her small arms munitions, 8% of AA ammunition and 4.7% of her tank production. When Japanese weapons manufacture peaked earlier in the war, it barely equalled 10% of American output. Even in peace-time, Japan was self-sufficient only in sulphur, copper, zinc and mica, and depended on imports of everything else (including oil and most of her food). Thanks to the Allied war of attrition against Japanese merchant shipping (for which most credit must go to US submarines), by 1945 her industry was grinding to a halt for want of raw materials, most of the armaments that were produced were either stranded in Japan or littering the ocean floor, and the national diet was well below subsistence level. It is ironic that, whereas US destroyer captains escorting Allied convoys in the Mediterranean during the Great War sometimes committed seppuku after "losing" merchantmen to U-boat attacks, for most of the 1941-45 war few naval officers showed serious inclination to play "Mother Hen" to vital and vulnerable cargo ships, preferring instead to try to refight the battle of Tsushima with aircraft carriers. In-fighting between the Imperial Japan Army and Imperial Japan Navy hardly helped matters, and violent arguments over the allocation of Japan's inadequate and steadily shrinking shipping resources even led to fist-fights among the top brass! In desperation, the Imperial Japan Army was forced to build and man its own small supply submarines with no help whatsoever from the Imperial Japan Navy, an appalling waste of scarce resources. These blunders were compounded by the fact that Japan mobilized less than 10% of the civilian scientists available to the Allies and, like the Germans, wasted their talents through poor coordination and unnecessary duplication of effort. The net result was that, while each GI in the PTO was supported by an average of four tons of equipment, each Japanese soldier had just two pounds available. Even in the Bataan campaign, Japanese aircraft bombs were sometimes improvised from iron pipe with fillings of scrap farm machinery, clocks or automobile parts--and even rocks or cans were sometimes dropped instead of bombs. Thus, while Japan mobilized more infantry divisions than the USA, the declining quality of available personnel was aggravated by the growing inability of her industries to equip, clothe, feed and supply them; behind the veneer of numbers stood an increasingly ramshackle war machine.

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Low FP factor

Given their (normatively) large 13 or 15-man infantry squads, the low FP factor of even the best Japanese MMCs in Heroes and Leaders mod "Pacific" appears to be ungenerous, but in reality the Japanese soldier's fearsome reputation concealed considerable handicaps, and the wonder is that he achieved as much as he did against his better-equipped foes. The absence of any squads with SMGs or automatic rifles (justifying a higher firepower factor) tells its own story, for even with captured equipment (and, up to 1940, imported European machine-pistols of various types) the Japanese used such weapons in combat only on a limited scale. Japan's own Type 100 SMG models were not particularly good, and poor quality ammunition hardly helped, with only 17500-23000 ever made (sources vary). This was too little, too late, due to Japan's belated appreciation of the SMGs ease of production and suitability for jungle warfare and other close-combat--which made it a worthy and overdue successor to the bayonet. Japanese development of SMGs only began in 1935 and proceeded so slowly, due to a lack of official enthusiasm, that the only large-scale use of SMGs in Japanese hands appears to have been in the parachute operations against the Javan oilfields in 1942 (where they were used to good effect). For this omission from the arsenal of Japan, her troops paid dearly. In the realm of self-loading (i.e., automatic) rifles, Japan was even more deficient; belated attempts to copy captured US M1 Garands were frustrated by metallurgical problems and only a few dozen successful examples existed before the war ended.

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Japanese rifles

Even with conventional rifles the Japanese soldier had problems, and large numbers of captured types had to be issued to augment indigenous stocks. Although small arms ammunition was not usually in short supply, logistical problems were compounded by the change of calibre from 6.5mm to the more powerful 7.7mm in 1939 (at least on paper), so that there were no less than seven Japanese rifles designs in service, spread between these two calibres, with six different (i.e., non-interchangeable) cartridges required for them all. In addition, localized but fairly common use was made of captured British, Us, Dutch and Chinese small arms. The typical Japanese Meiji '38, aka "Arisaka", rifles were basically copies of the old German 1898 Mauser, heavy and strong but long and awkward weapons to handle in jungle terrain, and endowed with many poor features-especially the difficulty in conducting rapid fire due to the generally smaller stature and reach of Japanese people compared to Caucasians (the Filipinos had similar problems with Enfield and Springfield rifles), while the carbine versions were muzzle-heavy and difficult to aim. The 6.5mm round, moreover, rarely inflicted fatal injuries (according to Allied sources). Later in the war, some less fortunate, lower-quality, squads received much cruder weapons made from poor materials-which were probably more dangerous to the user than the target. Only Japan's surrender prevented the mass-employment of smooth-bore black powder muskets firing steel bars!

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Japanese deficient infantry firepower

Yet, in some ways, those Japanese soldiers possessing any firearms could count themselves lucky, for the 1-2-4-4 MMCs represent the dregs of the manpower available (Conscripts Squads): "pressed" civilians (including females) like the Okinawan Boeitai Home Guard, rear area troops, shipwrecked personnel, and hospital patients in varying states of physical integrity summarily turfed out of their beds, all sent into action with little if any training and brandishing whatever "weapons" were at hand. On Guam in July 1944, some "troops" (for want of a better word) faced American artillery and mortars with just hatchets, baseball bats, broken bottles, pitchforks and grenades; in Burma, grenades gradually predominated as supplies of other weapons and munitions dried up. Some Japanese conscript units had only makeshift bamboo spears; at Shuri on Okinawa, the Imperial Japan Navy's 37th Torpedo Maintenance Unit (wiped out in May 1945) lacked not only combat training but had only enough rifles for one man in three, while on Luzon a company of raw US troops were broken by the banzai charge of just eight men—of whom only two had weapons. The Japanese were, naturally, aware of their deficient infantry firepower. On Bataan in 1942 the men of the 65th Brigade felt that it was the job of the MGs, not the riflemen, to fire on the enemy—resulting in a rather poor volume of fire.

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Samurai' sword

In view of deficient infantry firepower, the Japanese obsession with close combat was a necessity as much as a tradition, but even here the Arisaka's weight and great length (with a particularly long bayonet, too) made it unwieldy in a confined space. Nor was the sword an ideal replacement. More than anything else, use of the sword betrayed the medieval origins of, and legacies within, the Imperial Japan Army, for it was still their primary weapon as late as 1853 and it is difficult to overstate the reverence and mystique that this weapon evoked among the Japaneses. Some swords were centuries old and had been passed down through successive generations. They were the very soul of the samurai and virtually worshipped-illustrating the "uneasy mix of bamboo spear and modern technology" and the "peculiar amalgam of medieval attitudes and modern materiel" that was so characteristic of the Imperial Japan Army. (The retention of regimental colors and the Japanese soldiers' perception of the regiment's flag-staff as the equivalent of a Roman legion's sacred eagle are further examples of this reluctance to discard the old ways.) The swords wielded with so much relish by Japanese officers and NCOs were, alas, two-edged weapons in more than the literal sense. There are accounts of the victims of sword wounds, albeit mortal, disarming their assailants and using the swords against their former owners. But the bankruptcy of using swords in conjunction with not very effective nor reliable pistols, particularly against seasoned Allied troops, can best be illustrated by an incident in Burma when a berserk Japanese officer climbed onto a British tank, killed the commander and got inside. After a lengthy struggle, during which another crewman died, the unwelcome guest was finally dispatched with nine bullets. Had that officer matched his bravery with good sense, he would have carried explosives, hand grenades or even a decent firearm with which to secure a more favorable outcome; the exchange rate of one officer for two (albeit highly trained specialists) was not a good one given that Japanese leaders were an increasingly rare commodity.

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Japanese grenades

Japanese hand grenades, too, were less than ideal and contained poor explosive, thus adversely affecting fragmentation and relying more on noise and blast for effect (except for the "stick" grenade, a cruder but more lethal version of the German "potato-masher" type). Many rifle grenades on Bataan were, moreover, duds, and all Japan's grenades had erratic fuzes, and poor storage hardly improved reliability. Tests by the Allies on captured stick grenades revealed that the fuzes were so erratic due to the age of the components that they often exploded as soon as the fuze was ignited. After 1943 a pottery grenade, similar to the German wooden or concrete ersatz late-war types, was introduced by the Imperial Japan Navy to alleviate metal shortages. Others were improvised from woven bamboo or old artillery shells (obviously, little-used). But for one grim purpose Japanese grenades sufficed; they were the preferred method of committing suicide, and. Japanese personnel normally kept the last one for themselves and even "shared" one between a few individuals when necessary.

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Japan's machine guns

Pride of place among Japan's poorest weapons must go to her machine guns. If Adolf Hitler has been described as the Allies' greatest general, then Colonel—later General—Kirijo Narnbu and his colleagues can be regarded as the Allies' greatest armorers, since their adoption of the already deficient French Hotchkiss mechanism, coupled with their inexplicable refusal to consider better foreign designs, left the Imperial Japan Army and Imperial Japan Navy (like their Italian allies) with a range of MGs collectively referred to as an "unpre-possessing collection of antiques" and as "some of the most abysmal designs ever to see daylight". Considering that Japan was among the first to use MGs in action with sound tactics, this was rather ironic. To make matters worse, the Japanese used no less than eight different MG cartridges throughout the war, all of which suffered from imperfect machining (by Western standards) during production—"an unwelcome by-product of industrial laxity", since Japan's weapons industry traditionally relied on extensive sub-contracting (with, at the lowest level, use of back-street workshops). Another cause of the high incidence of misfires was the damp of the PTO's mate affecting the powder (which could also cause smoke candles to fail to ignite). Poor packaging and storage was the rule, hermetically sealed boxes were non-existent, and waterproof paper rarely used. Furthermore, many of the components in Japanese munitions, as with the grenades, were simply inferior to their Western equivalents, and in the main were obsolete materials.