Britain’s Secret War Against Japan, 1937–1945 (review)

The official history of British intelligence during the Second World War did not cover the war against Japan because, said the series editor, it was so largely an American affair – thus continuing the Whitehall tradition of ignoring, whenever possible, the Malayan debacle and the long Burma campaign. The story the official historians sidestepped has been slowly unfolded by other researchers, notably Robert Aldrich. Douglas Ford’s monograph continues the process. He has diligently combed the British archives and surveyed a mass of secondary works. The result is an impressive compilation of material that illuminates a number of important points. One of the most significant is the degree to which racial prejudice distorted British perceptions of the Japanese. Ford’s answer is quite a bit – before December 1941. In an impressive example of rapid institutional change, British intelligence agencies became much more clear-sighted after the fall of Singapore, perhaps thereafter overrating the Japanese in some respects. (Ford laid out some of this argument in an article in the April 2005 JMH.)

There is, however, a problem with Ford’s approach, based as it is on the files of the elaborate network of ministries and committees that ran the British war effort. In the last analysis intelligence is provided to, and acted on (or not) by, individual political leaders and military commanders. While Churchill, of course, can never be reduced to anonymity, the other senior figures in Ford’s account are rather colorless. In an episode Ford does not discuss, Wavell, setting in notion the disastrous 1942–43 Arakan campaign, shared a “hunch” with his chief of staff: “the Jap has never fought defensively and may not be much good at it.” Against such a mindset, waves of nuanced committee reports beat in vain. Britain’s war against Japan suffered from many shortages, but not of colorful, dominating figures. As the Wavell story shows, much depended on whether such senior officers were influenced by what intelligence told them – or what gut instinct counseled. More might have been made of this important dimension of the story.

Unfortunately, some of the impact of Ford’s work is blunted by the opaqueness of much of the writing. Originally a doctoral thesis, it seems to have received far less reworking and editing than needed to make it fully accessible to all but the most patient reader. Take, to choose but one example, this sentence on prewar misreadings of Japan: “The misperception resulted largely from the ethnocentric prejudices regarding non-Western forces; however, the extreme secrecy with which Japan conducted its rearmament program was largely to blame” (p. 177). What exactly is meant here is not entirely clear. (Surely it is not too much to expect a publisher attaching a mind-boggling price tag to a slim monograph to see that it is properly edited?) Specialists will certainly need to look at this book. Sadly it will, however, be a bit of a slog.