Banzai charge

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Imperial Japanese Army soldiers lie dead on the sandbar at the mouth of Alligator Creek on Guadalcanal after being killed by US Marines during the Battle of the Tenaru, August 21, 1942

A banzai charge is the term used by the Allied forces to refer to Japanese human wave attacks and swarming mounted by infantry units.^[1][2] This term came from the Japanese cry "Tennōheika Banzai" (天皇陛下万歳, "Long live His Majesty the Emperor"), shortened to banzai, specifically referring to a tactic used by Japanese soldiers during the Pacific War.

Origin[edit]

The banzai charge is considered to be one method of gyokusai (玉砕, "shattered jewel"; honorable suicide), a suicide attack, or suicide before being captured by the enemy such as seppuku.^{[citation needed]} The origin of the term is a classical Chinese phrase in the 7th-century Book of Northern Qi, which states "丈夫玉碎恥甎全", "A true man would [rather] be the shattered jewel, ashamed to be the intact tile." Among the rules there existed a code of honor that was later used by Japanese military governments.^{[citation needed]}

The charge of Saigō Takamori inspired the government that the charge was their final, honorable action.

With the revolutionary change in the Meiji Restoration and frequent wars against China and Russia, the militarist government of Japan adopted the concepts of Bushido to condition the country's population to be ideologically obedient to the emperor. Impressed with how samurai were trained to commit suicide when a great humiliation was about to befall them, the government educated troops that it was a greater humiliation to surrender to the enemy than to die.^{[citation needed]} The suicide of Saigō Takamori, the leader of old samurai during the Meiji Restoration, also inspired the nation to idealize and romanticize death in battle and to consider suicide an honorable final action.^{[citation needed]}

During the Siege of Port Arthur human wave attacks were conducted on Russian artillery and machine guns by the Japanese which ended up becoming suicidal.^[3] Since the Japanese suffered massive casualties in the attacks,^[4] one description of the aftermath was that "[a] thick, unbroken mass of corpses covered the cold earth like a coverlet".^[5]

In the 1930s, the Japanese found this type of attack to be effective in China, it became an accepted military tactic in the Japanese army where numerically weaker Japanese forces, using their superior training and bayonets, were able to defeat larger Chinese forces. The Japanese here did not face massed automatic weapons but rather the bolt action rifle of the Chinese, which were slow to cycle the action.^[6]

Banzai charges were forbidden by Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander during the Battle of Iwo Jima. He regarded banzai charges as a waste of his soldiers' lives.

In World War II[edit]

During the war period, the Japanese militarist government disseminated propaganda that romanticized suicide attacks, using one of the virtues of Bushido as the basis for the campaign; the Japanese government presented war as purifying, with death defined as a duty.^[7] By the end of 1944, the government announced the last protocol, unofficially named ichioku gyokusai (一億玉砕, literally "100 million shattered jewels"), implying the will of sacrificing the entire Japanese population of 100 million, if necessary, for the purpose of resisting opposition forces.

During the U.S. raid on Makin Island, on August 17, 1942, the U.S. Marine Raiders attacking the island initially spotted and then killed Japanese machine gunners. The Japanese defenders then launched a banzai charge with rifles and swords but were stopped by American firepower; the pattern was repeated in further attacks, with similar results.^[8]

During the Guadalcanal campaign, on August 21, 1942, Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki led 800 soldiers in a direct attack on the American line guarding Henderson Field in the Battle of the Tenaru. After small-scale combat engagement in the jungle, Ichiki's army mounted a banzai charge on the enemy; however, against an organized American defense line, most of the Japanese soldiers were killed and Ichiki subsequently committed suicide.^[9]

On May 29, 1943, during the Battle of Attu (the only World War II land battle fought on American soil), the beleaguered Japanese soldiers led by Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki in Attu Island, Alaska launched a massive banzai charge through American lines near Massacre Bay and were quickly wiped out all night despite intense fighting. At the end of the battle, only 29 remained of the Japanese force that had numbered roughly 2,600, while the Americans lost 549 combatants out of the 15,000.

Dead Japanese soldiers on the Matanikau River, October 1942

The largest banzai charge of the war took place during the Battle of Saipan. General Yoshitsugu Saitō gathered almost 4,300 Japanese soldiers, walking wounded and some civilians, many unarmed and ordered the charge. On June 7, 1944 it slammed directly into the Army's 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment (United States), who would lose almost 650 men ^[10] in the 15 hour pitched battle. In the end U.S. Army and Marine lines would hold, almost all the Japanese soldiers taking part in the charge would be killed.

Banzai charges were always of dubious effectiveness. In the early stages of the Pacific War, a sudden banzai charge might overwhelm small groups of enemy soldiers unprepared for such an attack. However, by the end of the war, a banzai charge's participants suffered horrendous losses while inflicting little damage in return, particularly if launched against an organized defense with strong firepower, such as automatic weapons, machine guns and semi-automatic rifles. At best, they were conducted by groups of the last surviving soldiers when the main battle was already lost, as a last resort or as an alternative to surrender. At worst they threw away valuable resources in men and arms in suicidal attacks which only hastened defeat.

Some Japanese commanders, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, recognized the futility and waste of such attacks and expressly forbade their men from carrying them out. Indeed, the Americans were surprised that the Japanese did not employ banzai charges at the Battle of Iwo Jima.^[11][12]

See also[edit]

• Wansui, Banzai
• Kamikaze – Aerial suicide attacks used by the Japanese in WWII
• Running amok
• Suicide by cop
• Juramentados
• Human wave attack

References[edit]