Banzai charge
Banzai charge (from the Japanese battle cry "banzai") 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 in the face of defeat (seppuku). 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 honorable 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 Tsunetomo Yamamoto's Hagakure, a well-known 18th-century treatise on bushido.
Allied troops during World War II called massed infantry attacks by the Imperial Japanese Army, "banzai charges" or "banzai attacks" because the assaulting Japanese infantrymen yelled "Banzai!" as they charged the Allied soldiers. The "banzai," a battle cry to the fighting unit making the charge, was a gesture of esprit de corps and courage to follow the attack through. In the Japanese language "Banzai" (万歳), literally "ten thousand years", is a common exhortation of long life or celebration in Japan, essentially wishing for something or someone to persevere for eternity. During World War II, Tennōheika banzai! (天皇陛下万歳！), literally "Ten thousand years to the Emperor" became a Japanese battle cry during charges, and was thus taken up by their Allied opponents.[1] The term was seldom used in this way by the Japanese.[2]
History
At the start of World War II, the Japanese Army still relied on the mass infantry assault tactics that were widely used during World War I.[citation needed] Many of the Allied troops were armed with semi-automatic or even automatic firearms, capable of delivering higher firepower than had been available to World War I infantry, and this firepower often stopped mass attacks in their tracks. Mass infantry charges quickly proved to be too costly for the Japanese and were abandoned during the competitive days of the war. Late in the war, however, when defeat was recognizably approaching for Imperial Japan, the mass infantry charge returned as an act of defiance when surrender or death were the only options, such as at Attu.
See also
Notes
- ^ Tennōheika banzai! p.3, The Cambridge history of Japan, by John Whitney Hall, 1988 Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521223520
- ^ John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945, Random House, 1970, p. 513
References
- Bergerud, Eric M. (1997). Touched with Fire : The Land War in the South Pacific. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-024696-7.
- Harries, Meirion (1994). Soldiers of the Sun : The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-75303-6.
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