Fuchs,
I suspect that the Japanese counterinsurgency action in occupied China is one of those forgotten wars for SWC. It is slightly puzzling initially as the USA had a "love affair" with China in WW2, plus the small scale presence of US citizens, then US military after Pearl Harbour and as mentioned on another thread the US role post-VJ Day in North-East China.
There is a SWJ article on Japanese COIN in the Phillipines, in 2009:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...ppines-1942-45
Having looked through the History section there are no threads on Japanese COIN.
Google found a few sources, from RAND:in 1967 'Counterinsurgency in Manchuria: The Japanese Experience, 1931-1940' http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM5012.html and a Japanese MoD think tank paper 'Japanese Intelligence and Counterinsurgency during the Sino-Japanese War: North China in the 1940s' http://www.nids.go.jp/publication/se.../201103/10.pdf
The last paragraph in the Japanese paper, cited in part:Above all it is the documented savagery of the Japanese operations explains why the issue has lain dormantthe support of the local population is essential for successfully conducting guerrilla
warfare. If military forces need to achieve popular support, appeasing the locals is not enough. The military should seize and attract the minds of the locals through the local governments, and it is highly critical to use locals for administration and give them free hands. Moreover, the military should keep their behavior above reproach. The IJA had failed in this respect. We have to keep in mind that one of the most reliable sources of information was always locals who supported the military from the heart, as Col. Sadashige Orita had noticed. Nevertheless, the IJA only considered military results important, and had no interest in the concerns of locals in general.
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