banzai attack

Dead Japanese soldiers lie where they fell during the final Banzai charge against American forces on Attu Island, May 29, 1943.

"Banzai charge" (or "banzai attack", from the Japanese Banzai totsugeki) (萬歳突撃^?) was a term applied during World War II by the Allied forces to human wave attacks mounted by infantry forces of the Imperial Japanese Army. The name Gyokusai (Japanese: 玉砕, honorable suicide; literally "jade shards") was however used by the Naikaku Johōkyoku (Cabinet Information Bureau) and the media of the Imperial Japanese regime. These attacks were usually launched as a suicide attack to avoid surrender and dishonor or as a final attempt at maximizing the odds of success in the face of usually numerically superior Allied forces.

Etymology

Gyokusai (玉砕^?), literally "shattered jade", is a Japanese euphemism for suicide attack, or suicide (seppuku) in the face of defeat. It is based on a quote of the 7th century Classical Chinese text Book of Northern Qi, 大丈夫寧可玉砕何能瓦全 "a great man should die as a shattered jewel rather than live as an intact tile." It was applied to a conception of honourable death in defeat by Saigō Takamori (1827–1877), and employed as a slogan ichioku gyokusai (一億玉砕^?) "one hundred million broken jewels" by the Japanese government during the last months of the Pacific War, when Japan faced invasion by the Allies. Some of the precepts for this belief also came from misinterpretations of a key line in Tsunetomo Yamamoto's Hagakure, a well-known 18th-century treatise on bushido.

It is important to note that the terms banzai charge or banzai attack were used by Westerners to describe this type of desperate action. Though banzai is a Japanese term, it was seldom used this way by the Japanese.^[1]

"Banzai" (萬歳^?), which became a Japanese battle cry during the war, is translated literally as "ten thousand years" and is a common exhortation of long life or celebration in Japan, essentially wishing for something or someone to persevere for eternity. Suicide charges and human-wave attacks alike were called "banzai charges" by Allied troops due to the Japanese Army's practice of shouting Tennōheika banzai! (天皇陛下萬歳！^?), meaning "May the Emperor reign for ten thousand years," during such charges.^[2]

History

Against Allied troops armed with M1 Garands, Thompson .45s and Browning M1919 and M2 Machine Guns which could provide enough firepower to stop this kind of attack in its tracks, the banzai charge proved to be costly, despite having a chance of success, and its use was largely discontinued, except as a final suicidal gesture by surrounded Japanese forces.

Colonel Yasugo Yamazaki of the Special Naval Landing Force (Marines), who led troops occupying Attu Island, Alaska, in 1943, was determined to die rather than surrender to US forces attempting to recapture Attu. A medical officer subordinate to him wrote the last entry in his diary shortly before the attack: "only 33 years of living and I am to die here... I have no regrets. Banzai to the Emperor... Goodbye my beloved wife."^[3] On May 29, 1943, Yamazaki gathered the remaining 1,000 Japanese troops and personally led a Banzai charge, ceremonial katana (Japanese long sword) in hand. He and almost all involved in the charge died. The attack penetrated American lines far enough to encounter shocked rear-echelon units of the American force. After furious, brutal, close-quarter, and often hand-to-hand, combat the Japanese force was killed almost to the last man: only 28 prisoners were taken, none of them an officer.

The Cowra breakout, a 1944 mass escape by Japanese prisoners of war in Australia, is often seen in the same context as banzai charges because of its high risk nature and the death rate experienced by the escapees.

The kamikaze tactic may be considered an airborne variant of the banzai charge. However, while banzai charges were generally suicidal, kamikaze attacks were deliberate suicide attacks. The kamikaze attacks cannot have its desired military outcome without the death of the pilot, thus the pilot must commit suicide in order for the attack to be considered a success. With banzai charges, the ideal military outcome is that the enemy would break and run in the face of the attack. Thus the soldiers understand the likelihood of their deaths but can hope for life and success, which are mutually exclusive in a kamikaze attack. This outcome was unlikely against well-armed and trained soldiers, making the distinction somewhat difficult to determine.

During Operation Sho-go the Japanese Southern Force comprising of battleships Fusō and Yamashiro assaulting a line of Allied battleships and cruisers during the Battle of Surigao Strait could be viewed as a seaborne equivalent, although it could also be argued that a closer naval equivalent was the final sortie of the Yamato and her escorts off Okinawa.

See also

• Bushido
• Imperial Japanese Army
• Battle of Attu
• Battle of Saipan
• Battle of Iwo Jima
• Battle of Okinawa
• Kamikaze

References

Books

• Bergerud, Eric M. (1997). Touched with Fire : The Land War in the South Pacific. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-024696-7. 
• Harries, Meirion; Susie Harries (1994). Soldiers of the Sun : The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-75303-6. 
• Stephenson, Neal (1999). Cryptonomicon. Avon. ISBN 0-380-97346-4. 

Web

• (Japanese) Banzai charge in Saipan Gyokusai

Notes