How effective were Japanese banzai charges during WWII?

by zFoxx

Hollywood likes to show waves of Japanese coming from the jungle and getting mowed down by machine gunners. So I'm wondering how effective was it?

DBHT14

For this question to really get answered we need to make an important distinction.

That being between normal doctrine and preferred tactics of the IJA, and desperate last chance, face saving Banzai charges.

/u/ParkSungJun can speak at length about the IJA, more so than I can, but suffice to say the force was built around the rapid movement of light infantry. The idea being to close with the enemy, force him to face you, find his flanks and weak points, infiltrate his lines with your lightly loaded and fast moving infantry to sow confusion and bloody him as he attempts to retreat or shore up his lines. Wash, rinse, repeat. That means a focus on fast advances across terrain by infantry, without always the literal mountains of heavy support of all kinds an American soldier might expect going into an attack.

But that is much different from a Banzai attack, which as we can understand it, was essentially a face saving gambit, mean tot bloody the Americans as much as possible after an island was already lost, or a position was already cut off from the main lines.

However when going up against prepared and entrenched Allied positions the results can essentially appear the same.

For example we can look at the Battle of the Tenaru, in August of 1942 it was one of the early attempts to retake Guadalcanal, a light detachment of the IJA was landed with about 1,000 soldiers, with the intention of storming the beat up, and presumably exhausted and half defeated Marines around the airfield at Lunga Point. Colonel Ichiki the CO was so confident he could storm the defenses he elected to set out before the rest of his force was landed and simply storm the defenses by a rapid assault across both beach and jungle. And after an initial repulse he gathered several hundred of his men for a combined supreme effort to quickly close and pour through US lines to shatter the defense.

It was a wholesale slaughter, and only ended after USMC Stuart tanks had ground the surviving Japanese to literal mincemeat under their treads.

But it was not some desperation play, and had been essentially launched within IJA doctrine.

Fast forward 2 years to the Battle of Saipan and the situation is vastly different. After 3 weeks on July 7th the remaining 4000 or so Japanese soldiers gathered, and including their walking wounded charged the US lines, all the time coming under galling fire from USN ships and aircraft. The result was the 105th Infantry was gutted and badly bloodied, but that the Japanese were wiped out. A similar final crescendo attack concluded the battle to retake Attu in the Aleutians.

Both attacks essentially look the same, but the key distinction was the Tenaru was essentially a charge in accordance with how the Japanese had trained themselves to fight, while Saipan was the result of no recourse left to their honor and seemingly in their best ability to sell their lives dearly.

Both battles are given solid treatments in Ian W. Tolls "The Conquering Tide"