Remembering the war in New Guinea
Japanese Medical Corps–nutritional disorders (General page)
Module name: Operations (Japanese perspective)
This page was contributed by Mr Alan Hawk (National Museum of Health and Medicine)
Nutritional disorders weakened the ability of the Japanese soldiers to take and hold New Guinea. Soldiers soon came down with beriberi, whose symptoms include fatigue, irritation, and poor memory. Beriberi affects the peripheral nervous system (dry beriberi) causing a prickling, burning or tingling sensation of the feet, muscle cramps and pain in the legs – painful for Japanese soldiers who relied on their feet to get to their objective. As food supplies ran out, malnutrition followed by starvation weakened soldiers as their bodies destroyed muscle and organ tissue in an attempt to stay alive. Malnutrition and beriberi hampered a patient’s ability to recover from wounds and increased the severity of malaria.
Cause: The Imperial Japanese Army’s reliance on polished white rice to feed its troops deprived them of Vitamin B1 (thiamine) resulting in beriberi. Starvation followed because of the army's inability to supply food to its soldiers, either through poor planning or the increasingly successful interdiction of the sea lines of communication by allied navies and air forces.
Prevention: Since the Japanese Army prided itself of having a small number of support troops, units were expected to supplement their rations by establishing small farms and foraging. However, the crops did not mature when needed. Foraging in New Guinea turned out to be more difficult than expected, as was noted by Medical 1st Lieutenant OKUBO Funkunbo in September 1942, "We have been quite unable to obtain any wild animal or vegetable products, and apart from a few wild potatoes we have to depend entirely upon dried vegetables for substitute food." [1] As a result, soldiers depended on the shipments of rice, pickled vegetables and salted fish. Experience from the Russo-Japanese War proved that adding barley to rice prevented beriberi [2] and food shipments to New Guinea included barley. [3] However, the high incidence of beriberi and Japanese distaste for "black rice" raises the question whether the barley actually made it into the Japanese soldier’s diet.
Epidemiology: Nutritional disorders were universal among Japanese troops. During the Kokoda Campaign, Major General HORII Tomitaro’s plans for his soldiers being able to live off the land turned out to be unrealistic as his troops expended considerable effort to search the jungle in a vain search for food. Within five weeks, over half of his soldiers were stricken with beriberi. As supplies of rice ran out, most of the 3,000 soldiers of the Horii task force starved to death trying to scale the Owen Stanley mountain range and the survivors were too weak to mount an effective attack on Port Moresby.
Allied attacks on merchant shipping forced the Japanese to supply their troops with destroyers which had a smaller cargo capacity. As food supplies dwindled, soldiers faced starvation. They ate trees, dirt and a number resorted to cannibalism of local natives along with corpses of allied and Japanese soldiers. One Japanese private, fearing being killed and eaten, defected to Australian forces after being ordered to report to the field kitchen without his mess kit. [4] While front-line troops struggled to find food, soldiers in the rear echelon were better fed. In 1944 just before the fall of Hollandia, an American internee reported, "Contrary to what might be thought, dietary precautions were good. Meat allowance was a half a pound per day per man, and in Hollandia they got it. There was a variety of meats or fish, dehydrated vegetables, salted fruits, candy and biscuits." [5]
Treatment: Patients with beriberi were treated with 1 to 2 grams of vitamin B injected into the arm one or two times a day. [6] However, it is not clear that all patients suffering from beriberi were correctly diagnosed. Okubo, apparently not recognising one of the classic symptoms of dry beriberi, noted in his monthly report, "Also, continuous rain and the high jungle humidity causes ulcers and prickly heat on the feet and legs as men have to have dry clothes." [7]
Notes
1. Enemy publication 24: 8.
2. Louis Seaman, The real triumph of Japan: The conquest of the silent foe, (London: Sidney Appleton, 1905): 242–43.
3. Enemy publication 24: 9, 51–52.
4. Maieron and Susie Harries, Soldiers of the sun: The rise and fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, (New York: Random House, 1991): 405.
5. SWPA-1: 3.
6. Interrogation report 139: 8.
7. Enemy publication 24: 47.