Arthur Swinson, Four Samurai: A Quartet of Japanese Army Commanders in the Second World War (1968) — a Short Book Review

17 April 2016

Excellent, despite lacking decent maps

Arthur Swinson’s Four Samurai: A Quartet of Japanese Army Commanders in the Second World War Two (Hutchinson & Company, 1968) is out of print and difficult to find, especially at a reasonable price. But the book’s writing quality, succinct story-telling, as well as its military and cultural insights make it worth reading.

Four bushido-bound generals

Four Samurai is about Japan’s World War II samurai mythos. The book follows the campaign careers of:

Masaharu Homma (early Philippines, including the Bataan Death March),

Tomoyuki Yamashita (early Malaya, late Philippines),

Renya Mutaguchi (Burma-India Imphal offensive),

and

Masaki Honda (33^rd Army, Burma, 1944).

Swinson — who fought (among other places) against General Honda’s troops in Burma — demonstrates how Japan’s samurai-bushido ethos favorably and unfavorably affected each man:

When Japan went to war in 1941 the samurai caste and the feudal order in which it flourished had been abolished for seventy-four years. But bushido, the code of the samurai, was still preserved intact by the warrior families, and was taught to the officer corps of the Imperial Japanese Army.

With the outbreak of war, [Hideki] Tojo incorporated the samurai ideal in the Senjinkun, or Soldier Code, which laid down that a man should be ashamed of trying to prolong his life by surrendering as a Prisoner of War; his duty was to fight until he was killed or to kill himself.

[N]o Western army has been able to match the Japanese in absolute courage. As General [William] Slim remarked during the Burma War: ‘Everyone talks about fighting to the last man and last round, but only Japanese actually do it.’

Political machinations and command level back-stabbing

Four Samarai documents how difficult it was to get anything intelligently or efficiently done, what with the back-stabbing that went on among and between Japan’s Imperial Command and its generals.

Bushido and its associated face-saving seem to have made Japanese leadership frequently self-destructively obtuse, even stupid. As a result, ferociously courageous troops fought strategically foolish, often poorly coordinated battles in sometimes dumb places.

If Swinson’s perception is accurate, these command conflicts make the Allies’ parallel inter- and intra-command squabbling seem minor:

[General William] Slim has written:

The Japanese were ruthless and bold as ants while their designs went well, but if those plans were disturbed or thrown out — ant-like again — they fell into confusion, were slow to adjust themselves, and invariably clung to their original schemes.

The fundamental fault of their generalship was a lack of moral, as distinct from physical courage. They were not prepared to admit they had made a mistake . . . . The hardest test of generalship is to hold this balance between determination and flexibility. In this the Japanese failed.

Slim, the greatest of modern British soldiers, is undoubtedly right, and he speaks with the authority of a man who destroyed three entire Japanese armies.

As indicated again and again [in Four Samurai], this rigidity was engendered by the samurai code; to admit a mistake was to lose face. But if . . . the Japanese had not possessed balancing virtues, they could not have launched their astonishing offensive in 1942 . . . .

MacArthur has called Homma’s plan for the Philippine invasion . . . ‘a perfect strategic conception’; and Yamashita’s plan against Malaya and Singapore worked, too, against great numerical odds and to the astonishment of the world. Even American historians have conceded that his action on Luzon was one of the greatest delaying operations in military history.

Deep enough into each general’s character to be empathy-provoking

Reflecting the double-edged result of bushido, each of Swinson’s subjects is respect-worthy, especially as each gets individually chewed up in Tojo’s politicized military system.

By the end of the book, I was negatively impressed with how profligate Japan’s High Command had been with the talent available to it. For example, leadership should not send one of its best generals (Yamashita) to sit on his behind in a backwater, just after he has magnificently demonstrated his genius — only to belatedly drag him out again — after all has been hopelessly lost.

A victor’s hypocritical viciousness?

General Douglas MacArthur decided to execute Yamashita on the basis of a kangaroo military trial that Swinson thoroughly demonstrates violated the most fundamental American legal norms.

What was, however, commendable is the diligence with which Yamashita’s American defense team worked in attempting to get the truth out, even though the frequently imperious General MacArthur would not hear it:

Yamashita took the [execution] news calmly. As he had warned his staff before leaving the mountains, once the Americans arrested him, they would never let him go. His only release would be death.

‘Please send my thankful word to Colonel Clarke and Lieutenant Colonel Ferdhous, Lieutenant Colonel Hendrix, Major Guy, and Captain Reel at Manila Court.’

[Pertinent to this, as General Homma “sardonically” asked, just before his own execution:]

What I want to know is:

Who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasake?

MacArthur or Truman?

Hypocrisy is easily detected by those not wearing its rot.

Highly recommended

We often value the admirable personal aspects of bushido. Arthur Swinson did an excellent job of demonstrating its self-destructively rigid inhumanity.

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Arthur Swinson, Four Samurai: A Quartet of Japanese Army Commanders in the Second World War (1968) — a Short Book Review