One of the more startling statistics to come out of the Pacific War of 1941-45 is this: of the 1.7 million Japanese soldiers recorded as dying in combat, it's estimated that some 60% of them died of starvation or associated malnutritional diseases. This is a staggering figure, showing (if nothing else) that lack of food could be a far greater killer in the Second World War than enemy firepower - and was certainly so among civilians in some theatres of the conflict, such as China and the Soviet Union, to mention only the two worst examples. One of the reasons why starvation played such a significant role in Japan's defeat was because its shipping failed, dramatically so, to evade the American blockade which, thanks mainly to the efficacy of US submarines, successfully choked off not just much needed imports to the Japanese home population (which was already experiencing serious malnutrition by the end of 1943), but also to their troops strung out across the Pacific on remote archipelagos. Even for an army that prided itself on living off the land as it advanced, Japanese soldiers found these islands impossible environments in which to cultivate enough of their own food, subsisting in places like Papua New Guinea on snails, snakes and sacsac grass. In protracted attritional warfare, troops living in such conditions could not possibly sustain their ability to fight, with dire results for the Japanese: 15,000 of their troops on Guadalcanal died of starvation, only 5000 in combat, while in the Philippines it's estimated that 400,000 of their 498,000 deaths were down to hunger. Combatant countries that had efficient agricultural sectors and adaptable diets before the war (most of them in western Europe) - and which, crucially, still managed to import the essential foodstuffs they required (such as Britain) - they could generally get by during the war without their populations starving. Japan was not one of these.
To learn more about how food and its distribution affected the conduct and outcome of WW2, listen to the episode Food: A Matter of Life and Death in the new series of Unknown Warriors.
If you think you know about WW2, it's time to think again.
An Understanding History Podcast
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