The British General Staff and Japan, 1918–41

Historians often argue that the Western nations underestimated Japanese military power before Pearl Harbor. According to Alvin Coox, ‘the West was dismally ignorant, in civilian as well as military circles, of Japan's military proficiency on the eve of the Pacific War… The Japanese armed forces were shallowly evaluated; they were underrated at best, despised at worst’. Coox believed that this was due to Japan's secrecy, to the paucity of Western attaches and language officers, to the slovenly appearance of Japanese troops and to racism. ¹ Christopher Thorne quoted Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the British Commander in the Far East, dismissing the idea that the Japanese could field an ‘intelligent fighting force’ after seeing their troops across the frontier from Hong Kong. ² Similarly, Arthur Marder argued that the Royal Navy underestimated the Imperial Japanese Navy and rated it only as efficient as the Italian fleet. The Japanese were wrongly thought to be poor shipbuilders and aviators, slow thinking, badly trained and unable to cope with crises. Ignorance and racial prejudice seem to have been the main causes of such inaccurate assessments. ³