Allison B. Gilmore - You Can't Fight Tanks with Bayonets; Psychological Warfare against the Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific (1998).pdf - World War II - bogg

You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets

A startling omission from the extensive literature on the Pacific events of World War II is an analysis of Allied

psychological operations. In this work Allison B. Gilmore makes a strong case for the importance of psycho-

logical warfare (psywar) in this theater, countering the usual view of the fanatical resistance by Japanese

units. Gilmore marshals evidence that Japanese military indoctrination was not proof against demoralization

and the survival instinct.

The Pacific War was particularly brutal, racist on both sides, and often fought without regard to so-called civi-

lized norms of warfare. Yet Gilmore offers her study as “the story of how psywar personnel attempted to con-

vince Japanese and Americans alike that their assumptions about the other were misleading and counterpro-

ductive.” To do so, she focuses on combat propaganda—activities conducted in support of military operations

and intended to demoralize Japanese combatants—and examines the objectives of the psywar campaign. She

outlines the process by which propaganda was created, evaluates the policies that guided that creation, and

offers criteria for judging the relative success of these efforts. The work also examines the Imperial Army’s

training, the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese morale, and the Allies’ attempts to exploit the Japanese

military structure and ethos.

Allison B. Gilmore is an assistant professor in the Department of History at The Ohio State University at

Lima. This is her first book.

STUDIES IN WAR, SOCIETY, AND THE MILITARY

Editors

Mark Grimsley

Ohio State University

Peter Maslowski

University of Nebraska

Editorial Board

D’Ann Campbell

Austin Peay State University

Mark A. Clodfelter

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Brooks D. Simpson

Arizona State University

Roger J. Spiller

Combat Studies Institute

U.S. Army Command and General Staff

College Fort Leavenworth

Timothy H. E. Travers

University of Calgary

Arthur Waldron

U.S. Naval War College

You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets

Psychological Warfare against the Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific

Allison B. Gilmore

Allison B. Gilmore - You Can't Fight Tanks with Bayonets; Psychological Warfare against the Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific (1998).pdf