Japanese off board Artillery Guadalcanal, the war

[warstudent]

I remember years ago reading that US arty in WW2 was more plentiful and available than what the Germans had. It's only in the last couple of years I've been interested in studying the Pacific in WW2 and I've only recently discovered how badly the Japanese were prepared for land war.

I didn't really notice until recently that the Japanese in Guadalcanal basically have no off board artillery vs USA. Was that typical for the other battles in the Pacific campaign?

Compared to the other countries were the Japanese really inferior with artillery? I'm assuming in China the Japanese were greatly outnumbered because of population. Did the Japanese use extra arty in China?

[plloyd1010]

The short answer to your main question is yes. Artillery sucked, infantry weaponry & support sucked, tanks & armor doctrine sucked.

Japanese war planners recognized these deficiencies and came up with what they considered the appropriate response. Namely they emphasized the spiritual/morale side of war over the material. This resulted in very courageous, determined soldiers of high initiative. One of the problems is that such a doctrine is self-reinforcing. The result being that since high moral determined soldiers will over the enemy opposition, weapon development is less important, and so the cycle begins. In the end, Japan has little modern artillery, and the infantryman with a bayonet can do the job just fine.

That worked fine against the Chinese (equipped troops supplied by corrupt warlords) and Russian militia (poorly equipped, poor leadership, only partly trained). Against the Americans (and other Westerners) 20+ year old artillery just wasn't up to snuff. Closing with troops, lavishly supported by machine-guns, and having reasonable fire support doctrine, brought the whole idea crashing down.

[JayTownsend]

Some of the exceptions being some of the Pacific Island battles where the Japanese were well supplied with entrenched Naval Guns and Army Artillery Units some of which the American units said; they were never shelled so heavily before or after.