“At the beginning of hostilities, when her territorial army is not completely organized, out of her 13 field divisions, she will only be able to put 9 divisions of a strength of 120 infantry battalions, 46 squadrons of cavalry, 10 engineer battalions, and 1 siege battalion—a total of 125,000 combatants—in the field.”
This calculation agrees with the reports furnished in 1903 by our military attaché in Japan, Lieutenant-Colonel Samoiloff, of the General Staff, who informed me, when I was in Japan, that they could only put in the field 10 divisions out of 13; of the reserve troops he knew nothing. Again, in a memorandum written in the Operations Branch of the Headquarter Staff, and submitted to me by the Chief of the General Staff on February 12, 1904, it was stated that, according to available information, the Japanese could put 11 of their 13 divisions in the field, leaving 2 in Japan. In this memorandum, again, no mention was made of the reserve units.
The readiness of their army for mobilization, owing to their adoption of a territorial system, and the consequent short distances the depôt troops had to travel, was known to be very complete. We knew that the troops could complete their mobilization in three or four days, while the supply and other departments would require seven to ten. Information as to transports available showed that even in 1902 they could have collected in seven days 86 ships with an aggregate displacement of 224,000 tons, and in fourteen days 97 ships with a displacement of 268,000. For a mobilized division about 40,000 tons are required for a journey of more than forty-eight hours, while 20,000 tons would suffice for a journey of less than forty-eight hours. Thus the tonnage available was sufficient to allow embarkation to be commenced at once on completion of mobilization of six divisions for a journey of not more than forty-eight hours, or of almost the whole army for a lesser distance.
As regards the tactical readiness of the Japanese before the war, our people in Manchuria did receive certain information. The operations of large bodies of their troops of all arms had been commented upon by our Headquarter Staff as follows:
“The most noticeable points in the operations of bodies consisting of all three arms as seen at the manœuvres were—
“1. The inclination to take up too extended defensive positions.
“2. A hard-and-fast, inelastic form of attack independent of local conditions.
“3. The absence of proper flank protection both on the march and in action.
“4. The tendency, when on the move, to keep the main body too far from the advance guard, which would in consequence have to fight unsupported for a long time.
“5. The absence of a definite objective in the attack.