Podcasts about inada

Last time we spoke about the Soviet-Japanese Border Conflict. The border between Soviet Manchuria and Japanese-occupied territories emerges not as a single line but as a mosaic of contested spaces, marks, and memories. A sequence of incidents, skirmishes along the Chaun and Tumen rivers, reconnaissance sorties, and the complex diplomacy of Moscow, Tokyo, and peripheral actors to trace how risk escalated from routine patrols to calibrated leverage. On the ground, terrain functioned as both obstacle and argument: ridges like Changkufeng Hill shaping sightlines, river valleys shaping decisions, and markers weathered by snow, wind, and drift. In command tents, officers translated terrain into doctrine: contingency plans, supply routes, and the precarious calculus of restraint versus escalation. Both nations sought to establish firmer defensive barriers against the other. Inevitably they were destined to clash, but how large that clash would become, nobody knew.   #176 The Changkufeng Incident Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. In the last episode we broke down a general history of the Soviet-Japanese Border Conflict and how it escalated significantly by 1938. Colonel Inada Masazum serving as chief of the 2nd Operations Section within the Operations Bureau in March of 1938 would play a significant role in this story. When the Japanese command's attention was drawn to the area of Changkufeng, consideration was given to the ownership and importance of the disputed high ground. Inada and his operations section turned to an appraisal of the geography. The officers had been impressed by the strategic importance of the Tumen, which served to cut off the hill country from North Korea. In the Changkufeng area, the river was a muddy 600 to 800 meters wide and three to five meters deep. Japanese engineers had described rowing across the stream as "rather difficult."  Russian roads on the left bank were very good, according to Japanese intelligence. Heavy vehicles moved easily; the Maanshan section comprised the Russians' main line of communications in the rear. To haul up troops and materiel, the Russians were obliged to use trucks and ships, for there were no railways apart from a four-kilometer line between the harbor and town of Novokievsk. Near Changkufeng, hardly any roadways were suitable for vehicular traffic. On the right, or Korean, bank of the Tumen, there were only three roads suitable for vehicular traffic, but even these routes became impassable after a day or two of rain. In the sector between Hill 52 to the south and Shachaofeng to the north, the most pronounced eminences were Chiangchunfeng and the humps of Changkufeng. Rocky peaks were characteristically shaped like inverted T's, which meant many dead angles against the crests. The gentle slopes would allow tanks to move but would restrict their speed, as would the ponds and marshes. In general, the terrain was treeless and afforded little cover against aircraft. Against ground observation or fire, corn fields and tall miscanthus grass could provide some shielding. Between Chiangchunfeng and the Tumen, which would have to serve as the main route of Japanese supply, the terrain was particularly sandy and hilly. This rendered foot movement difficult but would reduce the effectiveness of enemy bombs and shells. The high ground east of Khasan afforded bases for fire support directed against the Changkufeng region. Plains characterized the rest of the area on the Soviet side, but occasional streams and swamps could interfere with movement of tanks and trucks. The only towns or villages were Novokievsk, Posyet, Yangomudy, and Khansi. At Kozando there were a dozen houses; at Paksikori, a few. The right bank was farmed mainly by Koreans, whose scattered cottages might have some value for billeting but offered none for cover. On the left bank, the largest hamlets were Fangchuanting, with a population of 480 dwelling in 73 huts, and Yangkuanping, where there were 39 cottages. Shachaofeng was uninhabited. Japanese occupation of Changkufeng would enable observation of the plain stretching east from Posyet Bay, although intelligence made no mention of Soviet naval bases, submarine pens, or airstrips in the immediate area of Posyet, either in existence or being built in 1938. As Inada knew, the Japanese Navy judged that Posyet Bay might have another use, as a site for Japanese landing operations in the event of war. In Russian hands, the high ground would endanger the Korean railway. This line, which started from Najin in northeastern Korea, linked up with the vital system in Manchuria at the town of Tumen and provided a short cut, if not a lifeline, between Japan and the Kwantung Army and Manchuria from across the Sea of Japan. Even from relatively low Changkufeng, six or seven miles of track were exposed to Soviet observation between Hongui and Shikai stations. The port of Najin, with its fortress zone, lay 11 miles southwest; Unggi lay even nearer. It was not the danger of Japanese shelling of Vladivostok, at an incredible range of 80 miles that was at stake but the more realistic hypothesis of Russian shelling of the rail line, and Russian screening of the Soviet side of the border. Hills and questions were thought to have two sides. It was the consensus of Japanese that Changkufeng Hill's potential value to the Russians far outweighed its possible benefits to them, or at least that the Japanese had more to lose if the Russians took the high ground by the Tumen. Inada nurtured few illusions concerning the intrinsic value of the heights. Despite the fact that the high command always had good reasons for quiescence in the north, Inada believed that the latest border difficulty could not be overlooked. By mid-July 1938 Inada's thoughts crystallized. The Japanese would conduct a limited reconnaissance in force known as iryoku teisatsu in the strategic sense. Whereas, at the tactical schoolbook level, this might mean the dispatch of small forces into enemy territory to seek local combat intelligence, at the Imperial General Headquarters level the concept was far more sweeping. There would also be useful evidence of mobilization and other buildup procedures. The affair at Changkufeng was merely a welcome coincidence, something started by the Russians but liable to Japanese exploration. Inada had no intention of seizing territory, of becoming involved in a war of attrition at a remote and minor spot, or of provoking hostilities against the USSR. The Russians would comprehend the nature of the problem, too. If they were interested in interfering seriously with the Japanese, there were numberless better locations to cause trouble along the Manchurian front; those were the places to watch. The cramped Changkufeng sector, described as "narrow like a cat's brow," could too readily be pinched off from Hunchun to render it of strategic value to either side. The bog land to the north interfered with the use of armored forces, while artillery sited on the heights along the Tumen in Korea could as easily control the area as batteries emplaced east of the lake. It was Inada's professional opinion that the Russians could commit three or four infantry divisions there at most, with no mechanized corps—no heavy tanks, in particular. No decisive battle could be waged, although, once the Russians became involved, they might have to cling to the hill out of a sense of honor. The military action would be meaningless even if the Japanese let the Russians have the heights. For their part, the Japanese would ostensibly be fighting to secure the boundary and to hold Changkufeng peak, beyond which they would not move a step onto Soviet soil. There would be no pursuit operations. Troop commitment would be limited to about one division without tank support. Japanese Air Force intervention would be forbidden. Matters would be directed entirely by Imperial General Headquarters working through the Korea Army chain of command and carried out by the local forces. Calm, clear, and dispassionate overall estimates and instructions would be based on materials available only in Tokyo. The command would not allow the Kwantung Army to touch the affair. Inada foresaw that the Japanese government might also seek a settlement through diplomacy. Although border demarcation was desirable and should be sought, the command would not insist on it, nor would it demand permanent occupation of Changkufeng summit. As soon as reconnaissance objectives had been achieved, the local forces would be withdrawn. As Inada described it "In the process, we would have taught the Russians some respect and given them a lesson concerning their repeated, high-handed provocations and intrusions. If a show of force sufficed to facilitate the negotiations and cause the Russians to back down, so much the better; the affair would be over and my point proved." The instrument for carrying out Inada's strategic design appeared to be ideal, the 19th Division, strenuously trained and high-spirited. It could be expected to perform very well if unleashed within defined limits. Colonel Suetaka was just the commander to direct local operations. Since he had been pleading to fight in China, an operation at Changkufeng might prove to be an excellent "safety valve." His staff was full of experienced, fierce warriors eager for battle. Until recently, the Korea Army commanding general had wisely kept the aggressive division away from Changkufeng Hill, but now Imperial general headquarters had its own overriding ideas and needs. How could the Japanese ensure that any military action would remain limited if the Russians chose to respond with vigor? Naturally, one infantry division, without armor or air support, could not withstand all of the Soviet forces in the maritime province. Inada answered that the mission to be assigned the 19th Division was merely the recapture of Changkufeng crest. If the Japanese side had to break off the operation, evacuation would be effected voluntarily and resolutely on Imperial general headquarters responsibility, without considerations of "face." At worst, the Japanese might lose one division, but the affair would be terminated at the Tumen River without fail. "Even so, we ought to be able to prove our theory as well as demonstrate our true strength to the Russians." In case the Soviets opted for more than limited war, the Japanese were still not so overextended in China that they could not alter their strategic disposition of troops. Although the Kwantung Army's six divisions were outnumbered four to one and the Japanese were not desirous of a war at that moment, the first-class forces in Manchuria could make an excellent showing. In addition, the high command possessed armor, heavy artillery, fighters, and bombers, held in check in Manchuria and Korea, as well as reserves in the homeland. There was also the 104th Division, under tight Imperial general headquarters control, in strategic reserve in southern Manchuria. Inada recalled "How would the Russians react? That was the answer I sought. Victory in China depended on it." By mid-July, the high command, at Inada's urging, had worked out a plan titled, "Imperial General headqaurters Essentials for Dealing with the Changkufeng Incident." Tada's telegram of 14 July to Koiso described succinctly the just-decided policy: the central authorities concurred with the Korea Army's opinion regarding the Changkufeng affair, then in embryo. Considering that Changkufeng Hill posed a direct threat to the frontier of Korea, Imperial General headqaurters would immediately urge the foreign ministry to lodge a stern protest. Next day, Tojo sent a telegram stating the Japanese policy of employing diplomacy; whether the Russians should be evicted by force required cautious deliberation in case the USSR did not withdraw voluntarily. On the basis of the guidance received from Imperial General headqaurters, the Korea Army drew up its own plan, "Essentials for Local Direction of the Changkufeng Incident," on 15 July. Intelligence officer Tsuchiya Sakae was sent promptly to the front from Seoul. At the same time, military authorities allowed the press to release news that Soviet troops were constructing positions inside Manchurian territory in an "obvious provocation." The government of Manchukuo was demanding an immediate withdrawal. Even then, those Japanese most closely connected with the handling of the Changkufeng Incident were not in agreement that everybody at command level was as ardent a proponent of reconnaissance in force as Inada claimed to be. Some thought that most, if not all, of his subordinates, youthful and vigorous, were in favor of the notion; others denied the existence of such an idea. Inada remained clear-cut in his own assertions. Everything done by the local Soviet forces, he insisted, must have been effected with the permission of Moscow; it was customary for the USSR not to abandon what it had once started. The Japanese Army never really thought that the Soviet Union would withdraw just as the result of diplomatic approaches. Therefore, from the outset, preparations were made to deal the Russians one decisive blow. Inada had recommended his plan, with its clear restrictions, to his colleagues and superiors; the scheme, he says, was approved 14 July "all the way up the chain of command, through the Army general staff and the ministry of war, with unexpected ease." The only real opposition, Inada recalled, came from the navy, whose staff advised the army operations staff, in all sincerity, to give up the idea of strategic reconnaissance. Inada adhered to his opinion stubbornly. He never forgot the grave look on the face of Captain Kusaka, the UN operations section chief, as the latter gave in reluctantly. The navy view was that the Changkufeng affair typified the army's aggressive policies as opposed to relative passivity on the part of the navy. Like Kusaka, Japanese Navy interviewees shared the fear that Changkufeng might prove to be the most dangerous military confrontation ever to occur between the USSR and Japan. In view of navy objections, one wonders where Inada could have drawn support for his concept of reconnaissance in force. If one accepts the comments contained in a letter from a navy ministry captain, Takagi Sokichi, to Baron Harada Kumao at the beginning of August, in the army and in a portion of the navy there existed "shallow-minded fellows who are apt to take a firm stand in the blind belief that the USSR would not really rise against us, neglecting the fact that the Russians had foreseen our weak points." Takagi also had violent things to say about "white-livered" Gaimusho elements that were playing up to the army. Although Takagi's remarks, expressed in confidence, were sharp, cautious injunctions were being delivered by the high command to the new Korea Army commander, General Nakamura Kotaro, who was about to leave for Seoul to replace Koiso. Nakamura's attitude was crucial for the course and outcome of the Changkufeng Incident. More of a desk soldier than a warrior, he characteristic ally displayed a wariness that was reinforced by the guidance provided him. This personal quality assumes even greater significance if one believes that the Russians may have initiated the Changkufeng Incident by exploiting the special opportunities afforded them by the routine replacement of the Korea Army commander, the temporary absence from Moscow of Ambassador Shigemitsu Mamoru, and the geographical as well as subjective gap between the Kwantung and Korea armies that was exposed during the Lyushkov affair. At 10:00 on 15 July Nakamura was designated army commander by the Emperor at the palace. Soon afterward, he was briefed by Imperial General headquarters officers. Hashimoto, the operations bureau chief, recalled that when he saw Nakamura off on 17 July, Hashimoto stressed prudence, limitation of any military action, and diplomatic solution of the problem. The new commanding general, Inada asserted, promised full cooperation. There was no mention, at this level, of Inada's concept of reconnaissance in force. When Nakamura reached Seoul, he found an Imperial order from Tokyo dated 16 July awaiting him. This important document stipulated that he could concentrate units under his command in Korea near the border against the trespassing Soviet forces in the Changkufeng area. Resort to force, however, was dependent upon further orders. This message was followed by a wire from Kan'in, the Army general staff chief. The Imperial order, it was explained, had been designed to support diplomatic negotiations. Simultaneous approval was granted for concentrating forces to respond swiftly in case the situation deteriorated. As for implementation of the Imperial order, discretion should be exercised in line with the opinion expressed earlier by Korea Army Headquarters. Negotiations were to be conducted in Moscow and Harbin, the location of a Soviet consulate in Manchukuo. Meanwhile, the command was dispatching two officers for purposes of liaison: Lt. Colonel Arisue Yadoru in Operations and Major Kotani Etsuo a specialist in Soviet intelligence. Inada advised Arisue that, apart from liaison flights inside the frontiers, particular care should be exercised with regard to actions that might lead to air combat. Nevertheless, although Inada stated that the Imperial order called for "a sort of military demonstration," he admitted that it meant preparatory action for an attack. The Korea Army senior staff officer, Iwasaki, recalled hearing nothing about secret intentions. Nakamura briefed his staff about the need for restraint, especially during this key period of the Wuhan operation. Koiso had disposed of speculation that he had issued an order to concentrate the 19th Division before Nakamura arrived, although he and Nakamura did have the opportunity to confer in Seoul before he departed for Japan. The Imperial order of 16 July, in response to Koiso's inquiry received in Tokyo on 14 July, had arrived in Seoul addressed to Nakamura; thereupon, the Korea Army chief of staff, Kitano, had the message conveyed to the division. By 21 July Koiso was back in Tokyo where, the day afterward, he advised the war minister, Itagaki, "to act prudently with respect to the Changkufeng problem." Why did the high command dispatch two field-grade liaison officers to Korea from the outset of the Changkufeng Incident? The Korea Army lacked operations staff. Its commander had been allotted prime responsibility, within the chain of command, for defense of northeastern Korea. At the beginning, the highest-ranking staff officer at the front was a major. Since there were no fundamental differences of opinion between the command and the forces in Korea, it was proper to send experts from Tokyo to assist. Imperial General headqaurters would observe the situation carefully, devise measures on the basis of the overall view, and issue orders which the Korea Army would implement through ordinary channels. It had not been the type of incident which required the army commander to go to the front to direct. This was the Korea Army's first test, and political as well as diplomatic problems were involved that the army in the field should not or could not handle. If Tokyo had left decisions to the division and its regiments, the latter would have been held to account, which was not proper. Imperial General headquarters had to assume responsibility and reassure local commanders of its full support. Imaoka Yutaka explained that operational guidance by Imperial General headquarters and line operations conducted by the 19th Division formed the core of the affair; the Korea Army, placed between, was "shadowy." Koiso had not been enthusiastic; this set the mood among the staff. Nakamura, who arrived with a thorough comprehension of AGS thinking, was basically passive. The Korea Army staff, in general, included no "wild boars."    There was an urgent need to monitor developments. Not only was the Korea Army unfamiliar with handling this type of incident, but many hitches occurred. There had been no practice in emergency transmission of coded wires between the Korea Army and Tokyo. Now telegram after telegram had to be sent; most were deciphered incorrectly and many were not decoded at all. Another problem centered on the lack of knowledge in Tokyo about the situation on the spot, which only visual observation could rectify. As a result, the two Army general staff experts, Arisue and Kotani, arrived in Korea on 16 July. Kotani recalled that he was to collect intelligence and assist the local authorities. One of the first duties that he and Arisue performed was to disseminate the principle that use of force required a prior Imperial order. Also on 16 July, Japanese newspapers reported that the USSR was still concentrating troops, that the Manchukuoan government was watching intently, "decisive punitive measures" were being contemplated by the Japanese-Manchukuoan authorities, and there were signs of a worsening of the crisis. Despite good reasons for this gloomy appraisal, the Japanese press had not yet given the incident page-one treatment. More alarming news was being disseminated abroad. Domei, the official Japanese news agency, reported that the situation would probably become worse unless Soviet troops were withdrawn. The position of the Japanese government impressed foreign correspondents as unusually firm. Informants characterized the Changkufeng Incident as the most serious affair since the clash on the Amur River in 1937. Irked by the Korea Army's timidity and eager for first-hand information, the Kwantung Army dispatched two observers to the front: from Intelligence, Ogoshi Kenji, and from Operations, Tsuji Masanobu. If you listen to my pacific war week by week podcast or echoes of war, you know I highlight Tsuji Masanobu as one of the most evil Japanese officers of WW2. No other way to describe this guy, he was a shithead. In his memoirs, Tsuji asserted that he and Ogoshi climbed Changkufeng Hill, discerned Soviet soldiers digging across the peak in Manchurian territory, and concluded that "probably even Tokyo could not overlook such a clear-cut case of invasion." Although his account aligned with the general thrust, Ogoshi contended that Tsuji could not have accompanied him. According to sources with the 19th Division, when Koiso learned that Tsuji and Ogoshi were disparaging the Korea Army's ability to defend Changkufeng, he ordered "those spies" ousted. Ogoshi replied that the army staff was not angry, but Koiso did become furious and ordered Ogoshi "arrested for trespassing." Ogoshi surmised that Koiso's concern was that emotional outsiders such as Tsuji could provoke trouble, perhaps even war, if they visited Changkufeng. This view was widely shared. Inada stated that he made a practice of keeping away to maintain the degree of detachment and impartiality required of high command authorities. One sidelight to the "fraternal" visit to the Changkufeng area by observers from Hsinking was provided by Lt. Colonel Katakura Tadashi, chief of the Kwantung Army's 4th Section, which handled Manchukuo affairs, primarily political direction. When Katakura visited the Operations Section, Tsuji and Ogoshi told him that an intrusion had been confirmed and that the Kwantung Army staff was studying ways to evict the Soviets. Katakura consulted Maj. General Ishiwara Kanji, acting chief of staff, who was already in possession of the draft of an operations order calling for offensive preparations by the Kwantung Army against the Russians at Changkufeng. Katakura asked for reconsideration of the order. This was not a matter to be handled solely by the operations staff. Borders and international affairs were involved; hence the 4th Section, along with the Manchukuoan government, the Gaimusho, and other agencies, were concerned. Field observers were expressing exaggerated personal opinions based on having seen Soviet sentries on a hilltop. If the matter fell within the Korea Army's defensive prerogative, that army ought to handle it. Apparently the Kwantung Army commander and Ishiwara agreed with Katakura, for the draft order was not approved. The so-called private message dispatched by a Kwantung Army staff officer just before Koiso's departure may have been provoked by this rejection of direct participation by forces under Kwantung Army command. Staff officers in Tokyo believed that Hsinking could not see the forest for the trees. In the high command's view, the Kwantung Army's deliberate escalation of a negligible frontier incident undoubtedly stemmed from a failure to grasp the strategic requirements of national defense—pursuit of the campaign in China, the nurturance of Manchukuo, and the buildup of operational readiness for the ultimate solution of the Soviet problem. The high command felt obliged to remind the Kwantung Army that, in dealing with the Changkufeng Incident, the central authorities pressed for a Russian pullback through diplomacy. Consequently, the Korea Army had been instructed to be ready to concentrate troops near Changkufeng as a "background." Meanwhile, it remained the Imperial will that utmost prudence be exercised. The Kwantung Army commander accordingly issued cautious instructions to subordinate units, especially those on the eastern border. The high command's injunctions did not end the discontent and recrimination at the lower levels of Kwantung Army Headquarters, nor did they quiet the concern felt in Tokyo. A former war minister told Baron Harada repeatedly in late July that the Kwantung Army was "no good," while the superintendent of police added that the Kwantung Army was embarrassing Foreign Minister Ugaki. Nevertheless, the Kwantung Army did exert self-restraint. For its part, the Korea Army naïvely sought to achieve entente with an antagonist who considered the case nonnegotiable. First, the government of Manchukuo was asked to lodge a formal protest with the USSR. The commissioner for foreign affairs at Harbin phoned V. V. Kuznetzov, the acting consul, on the night of 14 July and saw him on the 18th. Basing its contentions on maps, the Haensing regime demanded Soviet withdrawal from Changkufeng. The Japanese government was lodging similar protests within the framework of Japanese-Manchukuoan joint defense agreements. On the spot, the situation inflamed. During the afternoon of 15 July, a Japanese military police patrol from Korea reconnoitered at the foot of Hill 52, southeast of Changkufeng. The party came under Soviet gunfire and was driven back, abandoning the body of Corp. Matsushima Shakuni. Japanese sources claimed that a Russian ambush had been set inside Manchuria. The Russian side insisted that it was the Soviet frontier that had been violated by thirty meters. Kuzma Grebennik, the colonel commanding the 59th BGU, which covered the Posyet sector, asserted that Matsushima's effects included a notebook containing reconnaissance results and a camera with film of Soviet-claimed terrain, particularly Changkufeng Hill. According to Maj. Gilfan Batarshin, a subordinate of Grebennik, two Russian border guards from Podgornaya opened fire when the Japanese fled after being challenged. Japanese protests to the USSR about the death of Matsushima and the taking of his body were added to the negotiations concerning the disputed border and the alleged trespassing. Charge Nishi Haruhiko lodged a vigorous complaint in Moscow on 15 July but was answered by a counterprotest. Ambassador Shigemitsu underwent an identical experience during a conversation with Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov on 20 July. Shigemitsu retorted that the murder tended to exacerbate the negotiations. In his memoirs, he stated that the killing of Matsushima provoked the local Japanese border garrison unit. The shooting occurred as the Soviet military buildup continued, according to Japanese sources. Mechanized units were reported moving in the direction of Kyonghun from Barabash and Posyet Bay. Biplanes were reconnoitering the Hunchun Valley, within Manchurian territory, from the afternoon of 16 July. To the local Japanese authorities, it seemed that the Russians were adopting a challenging attitude. Although the Japanese-Manchukuoan side remained willing to negotiate—that is, to take no forceful actions if the Russians would withdraw, the latter appeared not to share such an intention. The Soviets were not only misinterpreting the Hunchun treaty to their advantage but were encroaching beyond what they claimed to be the line; they "lacked sincerity." Decisive use of force might have been imperative to secure the Manchurian border, which was Japan's legal responsibility. As far north as Tungning on the eastern Manchurian frontier, two Soviet ground divisions and considerable numbers of tanks and aircraft were reported massed in full view. At Changkufeng, Russian soldiers fortified the crest. Mountain guns were now seen with muzzles pointed toward Manchuria, and Japanese intelligence estimated that Soviet troop strength near Changkufeng had grown to 120 or 130 by the evening of 18 July. As Sawamoto Rikichiro, an Imperial aide, noted in his diary, "It would seem that settlement of the affair had become increasingly difficult." Korea Army staff officer Tsuchiya sent two emissaries bearing the notice to the Soviet border. The pair, "blazing with patriotic ardor,"set out on 18 July, carrying a message in one hand and a white flag in the other. From Kyonghun came the report the next day that there had been an urgent, well-attended Soviet staff meeting at BGU Headquarters in Novokievsk all night, and that the Russian side had been discomfited by the Japanese request, which had been transmitted to higher authorities. Still, the emissaries did not return, while a stream of reports indicated a Soviet buildup along a dozen frontier sectors. Russian authorities had reportedly forced the natives to evacuate an area twenty miles behind their borders. From Japanese observation posts, Soviet convoys of men, guns, and horses could be sighted moving toward Novokievsk after being unloaded from transports originating at Vladivostok. Japanese Army Intelligence reported that on 18 July a regimental-size force had arrived at Novokievsk; artillery displacements forward were particularly visible by night east of Khasan. A confidential Gaimusho message indicated that Soviet truck movements between Posyet, Novokievsk, and the front had increased since the 20th. Russian intrusions, kidnappings, and sniping incidents were reported along the Manchurian borders, from Manchouli on the west to Suifenho on the east, between 18 and 25 July. Aircraft on daytime reconnaissance were detected as far as three miles inside Manchurian territory in the Hunchun area. Although the Japanese asserted that their forbearance was being tested, Izvestiya charged "Japanese militarists" with manufacturing an affair at Ussuri as well as at Changkufeng. The Japanese themselves received reports from the Changkufeng front that by 20 July the Soviets had 250 soldiers, armed with field pieces, trench mortars, howitzers, and light and heavy machine guns, on the southern slopes. The Russians were putting up tents capable of holding 40 men each; officers could be observed for the first time. On the evening of the 20th, the Soviets lobbed illuminating shells toward Manchurian territory. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Inada Masazum, studying maps and mud, saw Changkufeng Hill as a prize with peril, a test of nerve rather than a conquest. Tokyo's orders pulsed through Seoul and Harbin: guard, probe, and deter, but avoid full-scale war. Across the border, Soviet units pressed closer, lights and tents flickering on the hillside. The sea within sight whispered of strategy, diplomacy, and a warning: a single misstep could redraw Asia. And so the standoff waited, patient as winter.

Last time we spoke about the Changsha fire. Chiang Kai-shek faced a brutal choice: defend Wuhan to the last man or flood the land to slow the invaders. He chose both, pushing rivers and rallying a fractured army as Japanese forces pressed along the Yangtze. Fortresses at Madang held long, but the cost was high—troops lost, civilians displaced, a city's heart burning in the night. Wuhan fell after months of brutal fighting, yet the battle did not break China's will. Mao Zedong urged strategy over martyrdom, preferring to drain the enemy and buy time for a broader struggle. The Japanese, though victorious tactically, found their strength ebbing, resource strains, supply gaps, and a war that felt endless. In the wake of Wuhan, Changsha stood next in the Japanese crosshairs, its evacuation and a devastating fire leaving ash and memory in its wake. Behind these prices, political currents swirled. Wang Jingwei defected again, seeking power beyond Chiang's grasp, while Chongqing rose as a western bastion of resistance. The war hardened into a protracted stalemate, turning Japan from an aggressive assailant into a wary occupier, and leaving China to endure, persist, and fight on.   #175  The Soviet-Japanese Border Conflicts Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So based on the title of this one, you probably can see we are taking a bit of a detour. For quite some time we have focused on the Japanese campaigns into China proper 1937-1938. Now the way the second sino-japanese war is traditionally broken down is in phases. 1937-1938, 1939-1942 and 1942-1945. However there is actually even more going on in China aside from the war with Japan. In Xinjiang province a large full blown Islamic revolution breaks out in 1937. We will be covering that story at a later date, but another significant event is escalating border skirmishes in Manchukuo. Now these border skirmishes had been raging ever since the USSR consolidated its hold over the far east. We talked about some of those skirmishes prior to the Sino-Soviet war in 1929. However when Japan created the puppet government of Manchukuo, this was a significant escalation in tensions with the reds. Today we are going to talk about the escalating border conflicts between the Soviets and Japan. A tongue of poorly demarcated land extends southeast from Hunchun, hugging the east bank of the Tumen River between Lake Khasan to the east and Korea to the west. Within this tongue stands Changkufeng Hill, one of a long chain of highlands sweeping from upstream along the rivers and moors toward the sea. The twin-peaked hill sits at the confluence area several miles northwest of the point where Manchuria, Korea, and the Russian Far East meet. The hill's shape reminded Koreans of their changgo, which is a long snare drum constricted at the center and tapped with the hands at each end. When the Manchus came to the Tumen, they rendered the phonetic sounds into three ideographic characters meaning "taut drum peaks" or Chang-ku-feng. The Japanese admired the imagery and preserved the Chinese readings, which they pronounce Cho-ko-ho. From their eastern vantage, the Russians called it Zaozernaya, "hill behind the lake." Soviet troops referred to it as a sugar-loaf hill. For many years, natives and a handful of officials in the region cultivated a relaxed attitude toward borders and sovereignty. Even after the Japanese seized Manchuria in 1931, the issue did not immediately come to a head. With the expansion of Manchukuo and the Soviet Far East under Stalin's Five-Year plans, both sides began to attend more closely to frontier delimitation. Whenever either party acted aggressively, force majeure was invoked to justify the unexpected and disruptive events recognized in international law. Most often, these incidents erupted along the eastern Manchurian borders with the USSR or along the 350-mile frontier south of Lake Khanka, each skirmish carrying the seeds of all-out warfare. Now we need to talk a little bit about border history. The borders in question essentially dated to pacts concluded by the Qing dynasty and the Tsardom. Between the first Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 and the Mukden Agreement of 1924, there were over a dozen accords governing the borders. Relevant to Changkufeng were the basic 15-article Convention of Peking, supplementing the Tientsin Treaties of November 1860, some maps made in 1861, and the eight-article Hunchun Border Protocol of 1886. By the 1860 treaty, the Qing ceded to Tsarist Russia the entire maritime province of Siberia, but the meaning of "lands south of Lake Khanka" remained rather vague. Consequently, a further border agreement was negotiated in June 1861 known as "the Lake Khanka Border Pact", by which demarcations were drawn on maps and eight wooden markers erected. The border was to run from Khanka along ridgelines between the Hunchun River and the sea, past Suifenho and Tungning, terminating about 6 miles from the mouth of the Tumen. Then a Russo-Chinese commission established in 1886 drew up the Hunchun Border Pact, proposing new or modified markers along the 1860–1861 lines and arranging a Russian resurvey. However, for the Japanese, in 1938, the Chinese or Manchu texts of the 1886 Hunchun agreement were considered controlling. The Soviets argued the border ran along every summit west of Khasan, thereby granting them jurisdiction over at least the eastern slopes of all elevations, including Changkufeng and Shachaofeng.  Since the Qing dynasty and the house of Romanov were already defunct, the new sovereignties publicly appealed to opposing texts, and the Soviet side would not concede that the Russian-language version had never been deemed binding by the Qing commissioners. Yet, even in 1938, the Japanese knew that only the Chinese text had survived or could be located.    Now both the Chinese and Russian military maps generally drew the frontier along the watershed east of Khasan; this aligned with the 1861 readings based on the Khanka agreement. The Chinese Republican Army conducted new surveys sometime between 1915 and 1920. The latest Chinese military map of the Changkufeng area drew the border considerably closer to the old "red line" of 1886, running west of Khasan but near the shore rather than traversing the highland crests. None of the military delimitations of the border was sanctified by an official agreement. Hence, the Hunchun Protocol, whether well known or not, invaluable or worthless, remained the only government-to-government pact dealing with the frontiers.  Before we jump into it, how about a little summary of what became known as the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts. The first major conflict would obviously be the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. Following years of conflict between the Russian Empire and Japan culminating in the costly Battle of Tsushima, Tsar Nicholas II's government sought peace, recognizing Japan's claims to Korea and agreeing to evacuate Manchuria.  From 1918 to 1920, the Imperial Japanese Army, under Emperor Taishō after the death of Meiji, assisted the White Army and Alexander Kerensky against the Bolshevik Red Army. They also aided the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia to facilitate its return to Europe after an Austrian-Hungarian armoured train purportedly went astray. By 1920, with Austria-Hungary dissolved and Czechoslovakia established two years earlier, the Czechoslovak Legion reached Europe. Japan withdrew from the Russian Revolution and the Civil War in 1922. Following Japan's 1919-1920 occupations and the Soviet intervention in Mongolia in 1921, the Republic of China also withdrew from Outer Mongolia in 1921. In 1922, after capturing Vladivostok in 1918 to halt Bolshevik advances, Japanese forces retreated to Japan as Bolshevik power grew and the postwar fatigue among combatants increased. After Hirohito's invasion of Manchuria in 1931–1932, following Taishō's death in 1926, border disputes between Manchukuo, the Mongolian People's Republic, and the Soviet Union increased. Many clashes stemmed from poorly defined borders, though some involved espionage. Between 1932 and 1934, the Imperial Japanese Army reported 152 border disputes, largely tied to Soviet intelligence activity in Manchuria, while the Soviets accused Japan of 15 border violations, six air intrusions, and 20 cases of "spy smuggling" in 1933 alone. Numerous additional violations followed in the ensuing years. By the mid-1930s, Soviet-Japanese diplomacy and trust had deteriorated further, with the Japanese being openly labeled "fascist enemies" at the Seventh Comintern Congress in July 1935. Beginning in 1935, conflicts significantly escalated. On 8 January 1935, the first armed clash, known as the Halhamiao incident, took place on the border between Mongolia and Manchukuo. Several dozen cavalrymen of the Mongolian People's Army crossed into Manchuria near disputed fishing grounds and engaged an 11‑man Manchukuo Imperial Army patrol near the Buddhist temple at Halhamiao, led by a Japanese military advisor. The Manchukuo Army sustained 6 wounded and 2 dead, including the Japanese officer; the Mongols suffered no casualties and withdrew after the Japanese sent a punitive expedition to reclaim the area. Two motorized cavalry companies, a machine‑gun company, and a tankette platoon occupied the position for three weeks without resistance. In June 1935, the first direct exchange of fire between the Japanese and Soviets occurred when an 11‑man Japanese patrol west of Lake Khanka was attacked by six Soviet horsemen, reportedly inside Manchukuo territory. In the firefight, one Soviet soldier was killed and two horses were captured. The Japanese requested a joint investigation, but the Soviets rejected the proposal. In October 1935, nine Japanese and 32 Manchukuoan border guards were establishing a post about 20 kilometers north of Suifenho when they were attacked by 50 Soviet soldiers. The Soviets opened fire with rifles and five heavy machine guns. Two Japanese and four Manchukuoan soldiers were killed, and another five were wounded. The Manchukuoan foreign affairs representative lodged a verbal protest with the Soviet consul at Suifenho. The Kwantung Army of Japan also sent an intelligence officer to investigate the clash. On 19 December 1935, a Manchukuoan unit reconnoitering southwest of Buir Lake clashed with a Mongolian party, reportedly capturing 10 soldiers. Five days later, 60 truck‑borne Mongolian troops assaulted the Manchukuoans and were repulsed, at the cost of three Manchukuoan dead. On the same day, at Brunders, Mongolian forces attempted three times to drive out Manchukuoan outposts, and again at night, but all attempts failed. Further small attempts occurred in January, with Mongolians using airplanes for reconnaissance. The arrival of a small Japanese force in three trucks helped foil these attempts; casualties occurred on both sides, though Mongolian casualties are unknown aside from 10 prisoners taken. In February 1936, Lieutenant-Colonel Sugimoto Yasuo was ordered to form a detachment from the 14th Cavalry Regiment to "drive the Outer Mongol intruders from the Olankhuduk region," a directive attributed to Lieutenant-General Kasai Heijuro. Sugimoto's detachment included cavalry guns, heavy machine guns, and tankettes. They faced a force of about 140 Mongolians equipped with heavy machine guns and light artillery. On February 12, Sugimoto's men drove the Mongolians south, at the cost of eight Japanese killed, four wounded, and one tankette destroyed. The Japanese began to withdraw, but were attacked by 5–6 Mongolian armored cars and two bombers, which briefly disrupted the column. The situation was stabilized when the Japanese unit received artillery support, allowing them to destroy or repel the armored cars. In March 1936, the Tauran incident occurred. In this clash, both the Japanese Army and the Mongolian Army deployed a small number of armored fighting vehicles and aircraft. The incident began when 100 Mongolian and six Soviet troops attacked and occupied the disputed village of Tauran, Mongolia, driving off the small Manchurian garrison. They were supported by light bombers and armored cars, though the bombing sorties failed to inflict damage on the Japanese, and three bombers were shot down by Japanese heavy machine guns. Local Japanese forces counter-attacked, conducting dozens of bombing sorties and finally assaulting Tauran with 400 men and 10 tankettes. The result was a Mongolian rout, with 56 Mongolian soldiers killed, including three Soviet advisors, and an unknown number wounded. Japanese losses were 27 killed and 9 wounded. Later in March 1936, another border clash occurred between Japanese and Soviet forces. Reports of border violations prompted the Japanese Korean Army to send ten men by truck to investigate, but the patrol was ambushed by 20 Soviet NKVD soldiers deployed about 300 meters inside territory claimed by Japan. After suffering several casualties, the Japanese patrol withdrew and was reinforced with 100 men, who then drove off the Soviets. Fighting resumed later that day when the NKVD brought reinforcements. By nightfall, the fighting had ceased and both sides had pulled back. The Soviets agreed to return the bodies of two Japanese soldiers who had died in the fighting, a development viewed by the Japanese government as encouraging. In early April 1936, three Japanese soldiers were killed near Suifenho in another minor affray. This incident was notable because the Soviets again returned the bodies of the fallen servicemen. In June 1937, the Kanchazu Island incident occurred on the Amur River along the Soviet–Manchukuo border. Three Soviet gunboats crossed the river's center line, disembarked troops, and occupied Kanchazu Island. Japanese forces from the IJA 1st Division, equipped with two horse-drawn 37 mm artillery pieces, quickly established improvised firing positions and loaded their guns with both high-explosive and armor-piercing shells. They shelled the Soviet vessels, sinking the lead gunboat, crippling the second, and driving off the third. Japanese troops subsequently fired on the swimming crewmen from the sunken ships using machine guns. Thirty-seven Soviet soldiers were killed, while Japanese casualties were zero. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested and demanded the Soviet forces withdraw from the island. The Soviet leadership, apparently shocked by the incident and reluctant to escalate, agreed to evacuate their troops. By 1938 the border situation had deteriorated. The tangled terrain features, mountain, bog, stream, forest, and valley, would have complicated even careful observers' discernment of the old red line drawn in 1886. Fifty years later, the markers themselves had undergone a metamorphosis. Japanese investigators could find, at most, only 14 to 17 markers standing fairly intact between the Tumen estuary and Khanka—roughly one every 25 miles at best. The remainder were missing or ruined; five were found in new locations. Marker "K," for example, was 40 meters deeper inside Manchuria, away from Khanka. Japanese military experts noted that of the 20 markers originally set along the boundaries of Hunchun Prefecture alone, only four could be found by the summer of 1938. The rest had either been wrecked or arbitrarily moved and discarded by Russian or Chinese officials and inhabitants. It is even said that one missing marker could be seen on display in Khabarovsk. The Chinese had generally interpreted the boundary as the road line just west of Khasan, at least in practice. Free road movement, however, had become a problem even 20 years before the Japanese overran Manchuria in 1931–1932 during the so-called Manchurian Incident. The Japanese adopted, or inherited, the Chinese interpretation, which was based on the 1886 agreement on border roads; the key clause held that the frontier west of Khasan would be the road along the lake. Japanese sources emphasize that local residents' anger toward gradual Soviet oppression and penetrations westward into Manchurian territory fueled the conflict. Many natives believed the original boundaries lay east of the lake, but the Soviets adjusted the situation to suit their own convenience. In practice, the Russians were restricting road use just west of Khasan by Manchurian and Korean residents. There was speculation that this was a prelude to taking over the ridgelines, depending on the reaction of the Manchukuoan–Japanese side. Villagers who went to streams or the lake to launder clothing found themselves subjected to sniper fire. Along a 25-mile stretch of road near Shachaofeng, farmers reported coming under fire from new Soviet positions as early as November 1935. Nevertheless, Japanese and Koreans familiar with the Tumen area noted agrarian, seasonal Korean religious rites atop Changkufeng Hill, including fattened pigs sacrificed and changgo drums beaten. Village elders told Japanese visitors in 1938 that, until early the preceding year, no Russians had come as far as Changkufeng Hill. Looking only at the border sector around Changkufeng, the easy days were clearly behind us. In the summer of 1938, Gaimusho "Foreign Ministry" observers described the explosive situation along the Korea–Manchuria–USSR borders as a matter of de facto frontiers. Both sides pressed against each other, and their trigger-happy posture was summed up in the colloquial refrain: "Take another step and we'll let you have it." Near dawn on 13 June 1938, a Manchurian patrol detected a suspicious figure in the fog swirling over Changlingtzu Hill on the Siberian–Manchurian frontier. Challenged at 15 feet, the suspect hurled two pistols to the ground and raised his hands in surrender. At headquarters, the police soon realized this was no routine border-trespassing case. The man was a defector and he was a Russian general, in fact he was the director of all NKVD forces in the Soviet Far East. Beneath a mufti of spring coat and hunting cap, he wore a full uniform with medals. His identification card No. 83 designated him as G. S. Lyushkov, Commissar 3rd Class, countersigned by Nikolai Yezhov, NKVD head in Moscow. Lyushkov was promptly turned over to the Japanese military authorities, who transferred him to Seoul and then to Tokyo under close escort. On 1 July, the Japanese press was permitted to disclose that Lyushkov had sought refuge in Japan. Ten days later, to capitalize on the commissar's notoriety and to confound skeptics, the Japanese produced Lyushkov at a press conference in Tokyo. For the Japanese and foreign correspondents, who met separately with him, Lyushkov described Soviet Far East strength and the turmoil wracking the USSR, because for those of you unfamiliar this was during the Stalinist purges. Clearly, the Japanese had gained a unique reservoir of high-level intelligence and a wealth of materials, including notes scratched in blood by suspects incarcerated at Khabarovsk. A general tightening of Russian frontier security had recently been reported. Natives of Fangchuanting asserted that a Soviet cavalry patrol appeared in June, seemingly for the first time. Contact with Yangkuanping, northwest of Khasan, was severed. More importantly, Japanese Army Signal Corps intelligence detected a surge of Soviet message traffic from the Posyet Bay district. After Lyushkov's defection, a drastic reshuffle in the local Russian command apparently occurred, and responsibility for border surveillance seems to have been reallocated. Japanese records indicate that the Novokievsk security force commander was relieved and the sector garrison replaced by troops from Vladivostok. Gaimusho intelligence also received reports that a border garrison unit had been transferred from Khabarovsk or Chita to the Tumen sector. The Kwantung Army signal monitors also intercepted two significant frontline messages on 6 July from the new Russian local commander in the Posyet region, addressed to Lieutenant General Sokolov in Khabarovsk. Decoded, the messages suggested (1) that ammunition for infantry mortars amounted to less than half the required supply; and  (2) a recommendation that higher headquarters authorize Russian elements to secure certain unoccupied high ground west of Khasan.  The commander noted terrain advantages and the contemplated construction of emplacements that would command Najin and the Korean railway. As a start, at least one Russian platoon should be authorized to dig in on the highest ground (presumably Changkufeng) and deploy four tons of entanglements to stake out the Soviet claim. Korea Army Headquarters received a telegram from the Kwantung Army on 7 July conveying the deciphered messages. On the same day, the 19th Division in North Korea telephoned Seoul that, on 6 July, three or four Soviet horsemen had been observed reconnoitering Manchurian territory from atop a hill called Changkufeng. The alarming intelligence from the Kwantung Army and the front warranted immediate attention by the Korea Army. Some Kwantung Army officers doubted the significance of the developments, with one intelligence official even suggesting the Russian messages might be a deliberate ploy designed to entrap the Japanese at Changkufeng. On 7–8 July, all staff officers in Seoul convened at army headquarters. The name of Changkufeng Hill was not well known, but maps and other data suggested that neither the Japanese nor the Russians had previously stationed border units in the ridge complex west of Khasan. As early as March 1936, Army Commander Koiso Kuniaki had distributed maps to subordinate units, indicating which sectors were in dispute. No patrol was to enter zones lacking definitive demarcation. Until then, the only Japanese element east of the Tumen was a Manchurian policeman at Fangchuanting. Ownership of the high ground emerged as an early issue. A number of other points were raised by  the Kwantung Army: At present, Soviet elements in the area were negligible. The intrusion must not be overlooked. The Russians could be expected to exploit any weakness, and half-measures would not suffice, especially regarding the Japanese defense mission along a 125-mile frontier. In Japanese hands, Changkufeng Hill would be useful, but two excellent observation posts already existed in the neighboring sector of the Manchurian tongue. With dissidence and purges underway, the Russians may have judged it necessary to seal border gaps, particularly after Lyushkov's defection. They may also have sought to control Changkufeng to offset Japanese dominance of the high ground to the north. Soviet seizure of Changkufeng would upset the delicate status quo and could provoke a contest for equivalent observation posts. In broader terms, it mattered little whether the Russians sought a permanent observation post on Changkufeng Hill, which was of relatively minor strategic value. Japan's primary concern lay in the China theater; Changkufeng was peripheral. The Japanese should not expend limited resources or become distracted. The matter required consultation with the high command in Tokyo. In the absence of more comprehensive intelligence, the assembled staff officers concluded that the Korea Army should, at a minimum, ignore or disregard Soviet actions for the time being, while maintaining vigilant observation of the area. The consensus was communicated to Major General Kitano Kenzo, the Korea Army chief of staff, who concurred, and to Koiso. Upon learning that the recommendation advocated a low posture, Koiso inquired only whether the opinion reflected the unanimous view of the staff. Having been assured that it did, he approved the policy. Koiso, then 58, was at the threshold of the routine personnel changes occurring around 15 July. He had just been informed that he would retire and that General Nakamura Kotaro would succeed him. Those acquainted with Koiso perceived him as treating the border difficulties as a minor anticlimax in the course of his command tour. He appeared unemphatic or relaxed as he prepared to depart from a post he had held for twenty-one years. Although neither Koiso nor his staff welcomed the Soviet activities that appeared under way, his reaction likely reflected a reluctance to make decisions that could constrain his soon-to-arrive successor. On 8 July Koiso authorized the dispatch of warnings to the 19th Division at Nanam, to the Hunchun garrison, and to the intelligence branch at Hunchun. These units were instructed to exercise maximum precautions and to tighten frontier security north of Shuiliufeng. In response to the initial appearance of Soviet horsemen at Changkufeng, the Kucheng Border Garrison Unit of the 76th Infantry Regiment maintained close surveillance across the Tumen. By about noon on 9 July, patrols detected approximately a dozen Russian troops commencing construction atop Changkufeng. Between 11 and 13 July, the number of soldiers on the slopes increased to forty; there were also thirty horses and eleven camouflaged tents. Operating in shifts on the western side, thirty meters from the crest, the Russians erected barbed wire and firing trenches; fifty meters forward, they excavated observation trenches. In addition to existing telephone lines between Changkufeng, Lake Khasan, and Kozando, the Russians installed a portable telephone net. Logistical support was provided by three boats on the lake. Approximately twenty kilometers to the east, well within Soviet territory, large forces were being mobilized, and steamship traffic into Posyet Bay intensified. Upon learning of the "intrusion" at Changkufeng on 9 July, Lt. General Suetaka Kamezo, the commander of the 19th Division, dispatched staff officers to the front and prepared to send elements to reinforce border units.  The special significance of Suetaka and his division stemmed from a series of unusual circumstances. Chientao Province, the same zone into which Lyushkov had fled and the sector where Soviet horsemen had appeared, fell within Manchukuo geographically and administratively. Yet, in terms of defense, the configuration of the frontier, the terrain, and the transportation network more closely connected the region with North Korea than with southeastern Manchuria. Approximately 80% of the population was of Korean origin, which implied Japanese rather than Manchukuoan allegiance. Consequently, the Korea Army had been made operationally responsible for the defense of Chientao and controlled not only the three-battalion garrison at Hunchun but also the intelligence detachment located there. In the event of war, the Korea Army's mission was defined as mobilization and execution of subsidiary operational tasks against the USSR, under the control and in support of the Kwantung Army.  The Korea Army ordinarily possessed two infantry divisions, the 19th in North Korea and the 20th stationed at Seoul, but the 20th Division had already departed for China, leaving only the 20th Depot Division in the capital. Beyond sparse ground units, devoid of armor and with weak heavy artillery, there were only two air regiments in Korea, the nearest being the unit at Hoeryong. The Korea Army was designed to maintain public security within Korea as well as fulfill minimal defensive responsibilities. Such an army did not require a full-time operations officer, and none was maintained. When needed, as in mid-1938, the task fell to the senior staff officer, in this case Colonel Iwasaki Tamio. In peacetime, training constituted the primary focus.  Thus, the 19th Division was entrusted with defending northeastern Korea. Its commander, Suetaka, a seasoned infantryman, resented the fact that his elite force had never engaged in combat in China. He intensified training with zeal, emphasizing strict discipline, bravery, aggressiveness, and thorough preparation. Japanese veterans characterized him as severe, bullish, short-tempered, hot-blooded, highly strung, unbending, and stubborn. Nonetheless, there was widespread respect for his realistic training program, maintained under firm, even violent, personal supervision. His men regarded Suetaka as a professional, a modern samurai who forged the division into superb condition. Privately, he was reputed for sensitivity and warmth; a Japanese phrase "yakamashii oyaji" captures the dual sense of stern father and martinet in his character. At the outset, however, Suetaka displayed little aggression. Although not widely known, he did not welcome the orders from army headquarters to deploy to the Tumen. Until late July, he remained somewhat opposed to the notion of dislodging the Soviets from the crest, a proposition arising from neither the division staff nor, initially, Suetaka himself. Colonel Sato noted that, for a week after reports of Soviet excavation at Changkufeng, the division's response was limited to preparations for a possible emergency, as they perceived the matter as a local issue best settled through diplomacy. Korea Army officers acknowledged that, around the time the Soviets consolidated their outpost strength at Changkufeng, an informal and personal telegram arrived in Seoul from a Kwantung Army Intelligence field-grade officer who specialized in Soviet affairs. If the Korea Army hesitated, the Kwantung Army would be obliged to eject the Russians; the matter could not be ignored. While the telegram did not demand a reply and struck several officers as presumptuous and implausible, the message was promptly shown to Koiso. Koiso was driven to immediate action, he wired Tokyo asserting that only the Korea Army could and would handle the incident. One staff officer recalled "We felt we had to act, out of a sense of responsibility. But we resented the Kwantung Army's interference." The Korea Army staff convened shortly after receipt of the unofficial telegram from Hsinking. Based on the latest intelligence from the division dated 13 July, the officers prepared an assessment for submission to the army commander. The hypotheses were distilled into three scenarios: The USSR, or the Far East authorities, desires hostilities. Conclusion: Slightly possible. The USSR seeks to restrain Japan on the eve of the pivotal operations in China: the major Japanese offensive to seize Hankow. Conclusion: Highly probable. The Posyet district commander is new in his post; by occupying the Changkufeng ridges, he would demonstrate loyalty, impress superiors, and seek glory. Conclusion: Possible. Late on 13 July or early on 14 July, Koiso approved the dispatch of a message to the vice minister of war, and the Kwantung Army chief of staff:  "Lake Khasan area lies in troublesome sector USSR has been claiming . . . in accordance with treaties [said Secret Message No. 913], but we interpret it to be Manchukuoan territory, evident even from maps published by Soviet side. Russian actions are patently illegal, but, considering that area does not exert major or immediate influence on operations [Japan] is intending and that China Incident is in full swing, we are not going to conduct counterattack measures immediately. This army is thinking of reasoning with Soviets and requesting pullback, directly on spot. . . . In case Russians do not accede in long run, we have intention to drive Soviet soldiers out of area east of Khasan firmly by use of force."  The message concluded with a request that the Tokyo authorities lodge a formal protest with the USSR, on behalf of Manchukuo and Japan, and guide matters so that the Russians would withdraw quickly. Dominant in Japanese high command thinking in 1938 was the China theater; the Changkufeng episode constituted a mere digression. A sequence of Japanese tactical victories had preceded the summer: Tsingtao fell in January; the Yellow River was reached in March; a "reformed government of the Republic of China" was installed at Nanking several weeks later; Amoy fell in early May; Suchow fell on the 20th. With these gains, northern and central fronts could be linked by the Japanese. Yet Chinese resistance persisted, and while public statements anticipated imminent Chinese dissension, private admissions acknowledged that the partial effects of Suchow's fall were ominous: control might pass from Chiang Kai-shek to the Communists, Chinese defiance might intensify, and Soviet involvement could ensue. A Hankow drive appeared desirable to symbolize the conclusion of the military phase of hostilities. The Japanese and their adversaries were in accord regarding the importance of the summer and autumn campaigns. Even after Suchow's fall, the government discouraged public insinuations that enemy resistance was collapsing; when Chiang addressed the nation on the first anniversary of hostilities, Premier Konoe prophetically proclaimed, "The war has just begun." Colonel Inada Masazum served as the Army General Staff's principal figure for the Changkufeng affair, occupying the position of chief of the 2nd Operations Section within the Operations Bureau in March 1938. A distinguished graduate of the Military Academy, Inada completed the War College program and held a combination of line, instructional, and staff assignments at the War College, the Army General Staff, and the War Ministry. He was recognized as a sharp, highly capable, and driveful personality, though some regarded him as enigmatic. Following the capture of Suchow, Imperial General Headquarters on 18 June ordered field forces to undertake operational preparations for a drive to seize the Wuhan complex. Inada favored a decisive move aimed at achieving a rapid political settlement. He acknowledged that Soviet intervention in 1938, during Japan's involvement in China, would have been critical. Although Japanese forces could still defeat the Chinese, an overextended Japanese Army might be fatally compromised against the Russians. Soviet assistance to China was already pronouncedly unwelcome. The Soviets were reported to possess roughly 20 rifle divisions, four to five cavalry divisions, 1,500 tanks, and 1,560 aircraft, including 300 bombers with a range of approximately 3,000 kilometers, enabling reach from Vladivostok to Tokyo. Soviet manpower in Siberia was likely near 370,000. In response, Japanese central authorities stressed a no-trouble policy toward the USSR while seeking to "wall off" the border and bolster the Kwantung Army as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, the envisaged correction of the strategic imbalance could not occur before 1943, given shortages in ammunition, manpower, and materiel across existing theaters in China. By the end of 1937 Japan had committed 16 of its 24 divisions to China, bringing the standing force to roughly 700,000. Army General Staff planners reallocated three ground divisions, intended for a northern contingency, from north to central China, even as the Kwantung Army operated from a less favorable posture. Attitudes toward the northern problem varied within senior military circles. While concern persisted, it was not universal. As campaigns in China widened, planning at the high command level deteriorated, propagating confusion and anxiety to field armies in China. The Japanese Navy suspected that the Army general staff was invoking the USSR as a pretext for broader strategic aims—namely, to provoke a more consequential confrontation with the USSR while the Navy contended with its own strategic rivalries with the Army, centered on the United States and Britain. Army leaders, however, denied aggressive intent against the USSR at that time. The Hankow plan encountered substantial internal opposition at high levels. Private assessments among army planners suggested that a two-front war would be premature given operational readiness and troop strength. Not only were new War Ministry officials cautious, but many high-ranking Army general staff officers and court circles shared doubts.  Aggressive tendencies, influenced by subordinates and the Kwantung Army, were evident in Inada, who repeatedly pressed Tada Shun, the deputy army chief of staff, to endorse the Wuhan drive as both necessary and feasible, arguing that the USSR would gain from Japan's weakening without incurring substantial losses. Inada contended that Stalin was rational and that time favored the USSR in the Far East, where industrial buildup and military modernization were ongoing. He argued that the Soviet purges impeded opportunistic ventures with Japan. He posited that Nazi Germany posed a growing threat on the western front, and thus the USSR should be avoided by both Japan, due to China and Russia, due to Germany. While most of the army remained engaged in China, Tada did not initially share Inada's views; only after inspecting the Manchurian borders in April 1938 did he finally align with Inada's broader vision, which encompassed both northern and Chinese considerations. During this period, Inada studied daily intelligence from the Kwantung Army, and after Lyushkov's defection in June, reports suggested the Soviets were following their sector commander's recommendations. Russian troops appeared at Changkufeng, seemingly prepared to dig in. Inada recollects his reaction: "That's nice, my chance has come." I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The simmering Soviet–Japanese border clashes centered on Changkufeng Hill near Lake Khanka, set within a broader history of contested frontiers dating to Qing and Tsarist treaties. Japan, prioritizing China, considered Changkufeng peripheral but ready to confront Soviet encroachment; Moscow aimed to consolidate border gains, with high-level war planning overlaying regional skirmishes. Conflict loomed over Manchuria.

Unlike Dylan, I'm skeptical we'll get any sort of Pharact variants in the Witch from Mercury manga. In its own story, it's born of such specific circumstances that it's hard to imagine why there'd be a Pharact Ground Type, or a Pharact Full Armor, or what have you. But heaven knows I've been wrong before, and I'd love to see more iteration on this design... whether it's done by Inaba, Inata, or Inada. Here are tweets we discuss on this episode: https://x.com/inaba_koh/status/1586638106375045120/photo/1 https://x.com/inaba_koh/status/1647518875683258368/photo/1 https://x.com/inaba_koh/status/1675422624632172544/photo/1 https://x.com/GundamBro/status/1717686186876059962?lang=en https://x.com/inaba_koh/status/1104410594738753536/photo/1 https://x.com/inaba_koh/status/967803391467388930/photo/1 https://x.com/inaba_koh/status/1304124205957435392/photo/1 https://x.com/inaba_koh/status/1219320730636013568/photo/1 You can find a video version of this podcast for free on Scanline Media's Patreon! If you want to find us on Twitter, Dylan is @lowpolyrobot and Six is @sixdettmar. The Scanline Media Discord can be found here! Our opening theme is the Hangar Theme from Gundam Breaker 3, and our ending theme for this episode is Kimi yo Kedakaku Are by Shiyui from Mobile Suit Gundam the Witch from Mercury. Our podcast art is a fantastic piece of work from Twitter artist @fenfelt. Want to see a list of every unit we've covered from every episode, including variants and tangents? It's right here. Units discussed: FP/A-77 Gundam Pharact

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Lawson Fusao Inada. A third-generation Japanese American, his collections of poetry are Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971); Legends from Camp (1992), winner of the American Book Award; Just Into/Nations (1996); and Drawing the Line (1997). Both jazz and the experience of internment are influences in Inada's writing. The section titles of his Legends from Camp reveal these ongoing concerns: Camp, Fresno, Jazz, Oregon, and Performance. Inada edited the anthology Only What We Carry: The Japanese Internment Experience (2000), a major contribution to the record of the Japanese American experience. He narrated the PBS documentaries Children of the Camps and Conscience and Constitution and is featured in the video What It Means to Be Free: A Video About Poetry and Japanese American Internment and the animated film Legends from Camp, made with his son Miles Inada. One of his poems is inscribed on a stone at the Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland, Oregon. SourceThis episode includes a reading of his poem, “Healing Gila”.  You can find more poems like this in our Get Lit Anthology at www.getlitanthology.org .“Healing Gila”     for The PeopleThe people don't mention it much.It goes without saying,it stays without saying—that concentration campon their reservation.And they avoid that massive siteas they avoid contamination—that massive voidpunctuated by crusted nails,punctured pipes, crumbledfailings of foundations . . .What else is there to say?This was a lush land once,graced by a gifted peoplegifted with the wisdomof rivers, seasons, irrigation.The waters went flowingthrough a network of canalsin the delicate workingsof balances and health . . .What else is there to say?Then came the nation.Then came the death.Then came the desert.Then came the camp.But the desert is not deserted.It goes without saying,it stays without saying—wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.Support the Show.Support the show

Last time we spoke about the beginning of Operation Ichi-Go, the war in the Burma front and the war in New Guinea. Hundreds of thousands of IJA troops stormed countless areas in China. Chiang Kai-Shek was caught somewhat with his pants down, his best men were in Burma, there was little his defenders could do against such raw power. Xuchang fell and soon the Japanese were marching upon Luoyang. Over in Burma the British, Indian, American and Chinese alliance was continuing to both attack and defend. In the north Stilwell led the offensive, while Slim led the defensive in the south. The Chindits fought like lions to defend White City, but ultimately would give up strongholds to seek out new ones. Over in New Guinea the Japanese continued their frantic retreat under heavy pressure from the Australians. As bad as the situation was, the Japanese were in for another nasty surprise in Green Hell. This episode is the invasion of Western New Guinea Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  Last week we saw the effective conclusion of the Eastern New Guinea Campaign. It was a colossal campaign beginning with the Australian defense along the Kokoda Track, then the blood battle of Buna-Gona, the drive upon Lae-Salamaua, the march north upon the Huon Peninsula and Finisterres, and after taking Madang it was finally over. Yet while the book was closing upon Eastern New Guinea, the book on Western New Guinea was just about to be opened.  The pace of the offensive against the Japanese in New Guinea accelerated greatly in the first half of 1944. This was primarily because General MacArthur feared unless he made quick progress he would lose the reins over where the allies would drive upon the Japanese home islands. MacArthur of course sought to advance upon the Philippines, while the Joint Chiefs favored the Navy's central thrust more so. Despite MacArthur's continuous war against his colleagues and superiors and his continuous complaining he lacked support, he had been provided the means to carry out numerous amphibious assaults that could lead to his ultimate goal. MacArthur's operations against New Britain, Saidor, Los Negros and Manus clearly indicated allied superiority over the Japanese in terms of men, ships and airpower. By April of 1944, MacArthur had nearly 750,000 men under his command. His major components were 6 US infantry divisions, one cavalry division, 3 separate regiment combat teams and 3 special brigades. The Australians were gradually being relegated into a secondary role, but could still provide 5 additional divisions and enough separate brigades to form another 2 divisions. General Kenney's air force had grown so large, they could now mount 200 aircraft raids against a variety of targets with little fear of Japanese retaliation. What MacArthur needed was more and more forward airfields so he could hurl fighters and bombers deeper into the Japanese inner perimeter. In a lot of respects, the Japanese position in New Guinea was all but hopeless. Although they still had more than 350,000 troops in the Southwest Pacific area, many were isolated with little chance of receiving reinforcements or supplies. There was also an enormous amount of confusion amongst the various commands, made difficult by enormous distance and the lack of effective naval power. Overall command of Japanese forces as far as Wewak was technically under Lt General Fusataro Tshima, whose HQ was at Manokwari on the Vogelkop Peninsula. It was Tshima who ordered General Adachi to withdraw his 18th Army over to the Hollandia area. Fortunately for MacArthur, Adachi procrastinated heavily, believing a landing would be made at Hansa Bay. All of the heavy bombing by the 5th air force against the coast near Wewak supported his beliefs. Not too long ago we spoke about Operations Reckless and Persecution, the invasion of Hollandia and Aitape. Admiral Barbey had already departed the staging points and rendezvous northwest of Manus Island by April 20th. The large convoys sailed west from the Admiralty Islands until dusk, whence they turned southwest towards Hollandia. Admiral Mitscher's Task Force 58 was providing escort while also launching strikes against Wakde, Sarmi and Sentani airfields on April 21st. Over the next three days the carrier aircraft neutralized the remaining airpower in the Wakde-Sarmi area. Early on the 22nd, the two task forces separated, with the Persecution Task Force heading southeast towards Aitape and the rest, designated Reckless Task Force, proceeded to a point 20 miles offshore between Humboldt and Tanahmerah Bay. Now the allied troops were ready to hit the beaches, but awaiting them was a large concentration of Japanese…however it was mostly a concentration of Japanese personnel rather than combat troops. While initial attention was focussed on the Geelvink Bay area, the 2nd Area Army command was also concerned over the weak condition of the defenses of Hollandia, which lay just east of the 140th meridian in the 8th Area Army zone of responsibility. An order to dispatch an element of the 36th Division to that sector was issued but was quickly revoked on the ground that it would weaken the defenses of Geelvink Bay without appreciably strengthening Hollandia. A large section of the New Guinea coast between Wewak and Sarmi thus remained practically undefended. General Anami promptly dispatched a staff mission to 8th Area Army headquarters at Rabaul to press for reinforcement of the Hollandia area, and a similar recommendation was communicated to Imperial General Headquarters during December. Two battalions of the 6th South Seas Detachment, temporarily stationed on Palau, were dispatched by the High Command. This force arrived in Hollandia on March 4, but numbered only 240 men, since approximately 1000 men, including the detachment commander, had been lost en route to submarine attacks. No other action was taken, however, since both 8th Area Army and 18th Army, after the loss of Finschhafen, were more immediately concerned with checking further enemy penetration of the Dampier Strait region. Thus roughly 10,000 IJA and 1000 IJN personnel were at Hollandia, most support units led by Major-General Kitazono Toyozo and aviation units from General Inada's 6th air division. When Tsihima ordered Adachi over to the Hollandia area and he procrastinated, this prompted the leader of the 2nd Area Army, General Korechika Anami over at Davao to become concerned. Anami sent his chief of staff over to Wewak to convince Adachi to pull out, but when Adachi finally began withdrawing, he only had two regiment on the trail by the time of the American landings against Hollandia and Aitape. Major General Toyozo Kitazono only arrived in the area 10 days before the invasion and for an unexplained reason never officially took command. This is why Tshima's appointed air officers, Inada ended up being thrown the command. Inada only really had 500 effective combat troops, mostly from the 6th South Seas Detachment. These units belonged to General Anami Korechika's 2nd Area Army, which had been transferred recently from Manchuria to oversee the defense of the eastern Dutch East Indies and western New Guinea, and for the projected and later canceled invasion of northern Australia. Random note, I recently made a Youtube short mocking that canceled australian invasion on my youtube channel, it was a wild idea. Thus Anami's command was now formally around the 2nd, 18th and 19th armies. Lt General Kitano Kenzo's 19th Army had been garrisoning Timor, the Lesser Sunda Islands, Sumbawa, the Banda Sea Islands and some key points in Northwestern New Guinea with their HQ located at Ambon. Lt General Tshima Fusutaro's 2nd Army as I had mentioned was assigned overall defense of Western New Guinea, with Lt General Tagami Hachiro's 36th Division landing at Sarmi and Biak in early March and Lt General Ikeda Shunkichi's 35th Division preparing to come to Manokwari. The 14th Division originally part of the 2nd Army was diverted to defender Palau. Furthermore, to further support  the 2nd Area Army was Vice-Admiral Endo Yoshikazu's 9th Fleet, three southern expeditionary fleets, and the 7th Air Division of Lt General Sudo Einosuke. At Hollandia, the headquarters of Admiral Endo and Generals Kitazono and Inada had arrived at the same time by mid April. Though General Adachi had placed Kitazono in formal command of all units there, the transport commander had no time, as to develop a comprehensive defense plan for Hollandia, thus as I previously mentioned, command really fell onto Inada and Endo. The Japanese would be woefully unprepared for what was to come.  Over at Aitape, meanwhile, there were only a handful of replacements from the 20th Division, along with some naval and support personnel, so the situation looked even wrose for the 1000-man garrison. Preceding the amphibious assaults, Admiral Crutchley's surface fleet was going shell the Tanahmerah Bay area while Admiral Mitscher's carrier planes bombed the waters off the Tanahmerah beaches to explode possible mines, also finishing off the Hollandia airstrips and the remaining aircraft there.  Crutchley's warships picked up their landmarks through the mist as best they could, and at 6sm the roar of 8-inch guns from the heavy cruisers HMAS Australia and HMAS Shropshire shattered the silence of the steaming tropical morning. To this din was added the sharper crack of 5-inch and 4.7-inch weapons from American and Australian destroyers. The fire continued until 6:45, by which time 600 rounds of 8-inch and 1,500 rounds of 5-inch and 4.7-inch ammunition had been expended. As for the aerial strikes, despite the unfavorable weather, Task Force 58 managed to maintain planes on air alert over the Hollandia area since dawn. No enemy aircraft flew up from the Hollandia fields, and the few apparently operational planes sighted on those strips were strafed. In general there were no indications that Japanese defenses or defenders existed in the Tanahmerah Bay area. Task Force 58's scheduled bombing and strafing missions for that region were therefore canceled. Meeting little opposition, LCVP's carrying the first wave of the 19th and 21st Regiment approached Red Beach 2. As the leading wave of LCVP's, approached RED Beach 2, which was obscured by smoke from the naval bombardment, a rocket barrage was laid on the landing area by one Seventh Fleet LCI and two landing craft,, of the 542nd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment. Machine guns mounted aboard the leading LCVP's kept up a steady fire against the beach. There was no answer from the Japanese, and the only opposition to the landing was scattered small arms and light automatic weapons fire from points far on the flanks of the beach and from a small island in Tanahmerah Bay. This fire was so quickly silenced by supporting destroyers that the assault waves suffered no casualties before reaching shore. Thus tactical surprise was achieved in Tanahmerah Bay, as the Japanese had only a few lookouts in the sector. General Irving's 24th Division successfully landed and the 3rd Battalion, 19th Infantry, quickly secured the northern portion of the beachhead and immediately dispatched patrols east and north to probe suspected enemy positions. The 1st Battalion, following the 3rd ashore, went into an assembly area to act as local reserve and to make ready to aid in unloading supplies at the water's edge if that proved necessary. The 2nd Battalion, 21st Infantry, took the southern half of Red Beach 2 with similar ease. The 3rd Battalion of that regiment quickly followed the 2nd ashore and sent Company I south to look for the trail expected to connect with Red Beach 1 at Dépapré. Simultaneously, LVT's carrying Lt Colonel Thomas Cliffords 1st battalion, 21st Regiment crossed coral barrier reefs on their way to Red Beach 1. Cliffords men landed completely unopposed and would spend an hour trying to locate the road leading to Lake Sentani and her airfields. Clifford left A Company at the beach while the rest trekked it over the  Dépapré-Lake Sentani trail at 8:37am, still encountering no enemy opposition whatsoever.Moving through fire lanes down which no bullets flew and past pillboxes in early stages of construction, the battalion column reached the village of Mariboe at 1047 hours. Only a few scattered enemy rifle shots had been encountered during this march and the village was secured without opposition. Over three miles by trail inland from Dépapré, Mariboe was the 24th Division's first inland objective. It was evident from scattered Japanese equipment in and around Mariboe that the Japanese had recently evacuated the village not long before the 1st Battalion's arrival. Colonel Clifford  halted his men. Since radio communication with the division command post on Red Beach 2 had been lost, he sent messengers back over the tortuous trail to report progress to General Irving. At the same time patrols were sent toward Kantomé, nearly two miles southeast of Mariboe. They reported few signs of enemy activity along the trail beyond Mariboe. Colonel Clifford apparently did not wait to re-establish contact with higher headquarters but, acting on his patrols' reports, ordered the battalion to push on. Encountering little opposition along the main trail, the unit reached Kantomé about noon. When Irving arrived to Red Beach 2 at 9;30am, he found a major logistical problem had formed at his main beachhead. Behind the narrow beach, a wide, impassable swamp was discover, it covered most of the area that the men had planned to use for the bivouac and supply dump area. Thus supplies soon began to pile up on the beach. This was an especially serious circumstance, for the landing plans had called for moving almost all troops and supplies overland from Red Beach 2 to the road inland. Construction of a road between the two beaches was soon found impracticable and when, after a day and a half of hard work, engineers had succeeded in driving a few yards of road into the hills south toward Red Beach 1, the project was discontinued. The small completed stretch did serve some useful purpose. On D-Day two batteries of 105-mm. howitzers were dragged along the road as far as possible to a cramped position on a little ridge immediately south of Red Beach 2. From this site the howitzers could deliver some fire support for troops advancing inland from Red Beach 1, but the direction of this fire was limited by a number of hills nearby. The same stretch of road also provided dispersal space for a few of the many vehicles which had been unloaded at Red Beach 2 on D-Day. Additionally, a limited dispersal area, rendered inaccessible by a small stream and by an arm of the swamp, was discovered at the northern edge of the beach, and ultimately the 542nd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment constructed a road into this space. Artillery, ashore within an hour after the initial landing, was emplaced there to deliver fire on inland targets. But the fill used to build this road stopped the flow of the little stream which had drained the swamp into Tanahmerah Bay. To prevent a rise in the swamp's water level, a drainage canal was cut directly through the center of the beach. This procedure speeded the outward flow of swamp water, lowered the water level a little, and created a small additional dry area behind the beach, but it did not provide sufficient dry land for dispersal of all the troops and supplies scheduled to land on Red Beach 2. Eventually Irvings men found some dry flat dispersal areas behind the beach, allowing the supply shuttles to continue their work uncongested. Colonel Cliffords battalion would make the main thrust for the division while the remainder of Colonel Charles Lyman's 21st Regiment moved over to Red Beach 1. Colonel Clifford possessed little or no knowledge of the situation to the rear other than the difficulties presented by terrain. Ahead, 10,000 Japanese were thought to be concentrated around the airfields. Jangkena was on flat, swampy ground and was not an easily defensible position. Should the 1st Battalion push on to Dazai, also on flat ground, Japanese troops might outflank the unit, cut its line of communications to Dépapré, and destroy it at leisure. If the Japanese bypassed the battalion they could cut off the advance of the rest of the 21st Infantry at any one of the many defiles over the first two or three miles of the trail inland from Dépapré. Colonel Clifford therefore decided to pull his men back to Kantomé for the night, leaving only outposts along the trail east of that village. Kantomé was located near the foot of the Takari Hills, which he thought would present a serious obstacle to any Japanese flanking maneuvers. It was a fortunate decision, as around midnight elements of the 22nd Airfield Battalion had advanced overland around his 1st battalions outposts, striking at their left flank. Meanwhile, General Heavey's landing craft carrying the leading waves of the 162nd and 186th Regiments, supported by rocket fire and by Rear-Admiral Russell Berkey's cruisers, likewise met no Japanese resistance as they landed General Fuller's troops on the White Beaches. Company A of Colonel Harold Haney's 162nd Regiment rapidly secured Cape Pie while Company I of Colonel Oliver Newman's 186th Regiment secured Cape Tjeweri. With Jautefa Bay in hand, Newman's 3rd Battalion was then landed on White Beach 4 in preparation for an advance towards Leimok Hill and Pim. The first objective, Leimok Hill, lay 1,800 yards northwest of Pim. Part of the battalion secured the hill by 1000, and other elements advanced southward toward Pim. That village and its usable jetty were secured, against light opposition, by 1645, while Suikerbrood Hill, on Jautefa Bay south of Pim, was cleared by 1800. The danger that enemy troops atop dominating heights near Pim might make White Beach 4 untenable was over. The 3rd Battalion then established a night perimeter at Pim, extending its defenses along a trail leading west from that village to the point at which the Pim-Hollandia track joined the main road inland to Lake Sentani, thus securing the roadhead from which movements to inland objectives had to begin. Over at White Beach 1, Haney's 3rd Battalion advanced quickly to take Pancake Hill at around 8am, only meeting sporadic rifle fire. After taking the hill, they began pushing up the shores of Humboldt Bay, encountering no resistance as they advanced upon Jarremoh Hill. It seemed clear to the Americans, the Japanese had been taken by complete surprise, not expecting an amphibious assault against Hollandia so quickly, so they had pulled back to the Sentani Lake Airfield sector. Now further south, Haney's 2nd Battalion were advancing to a track that connected Hollandia with Pim, trying to make contact with the 3rd Battalion over at Jarremoh Hill. Meanwhile Newman's 1st Batallion was advancing upon Leimok Hill. Though the men wanted to keep pushing towards Hollandia during the late afternoon, Fuller decided to dig in for the night while warships and artillery softened up the city. When General Anami over at his HQ in Manado heard of the invasion he immediately ordered the 23rd Air Flotilla of Rear-Admiral Ito Yoshiaki to toss whatever he could against the allied surface ships and force along the beaches. He also ordered the 18th army to break through Aitape to rush over and help the Hollandia garrison and for General Tshima to dispatch a regiment force as well to Hollandia. Thus General Tagami got his 224th regiment together for the advance to Hollandia, expecting to get there for early May, while General Nakai's 20th Division continued to close in on Aitape. Anami also wanted to send the main part of the 36th Division to perform a counterattack in Hollandia's direction as he thought it vitally important to delay the enemy as much as possible so a better defense of Western New Guinea could be organized. Yet General Terauchi Hisaichi of the Southern Army declined his request to do so on the basis a counteroffensive would simply denude the already weakened defenses of Western New Guinea. Meanwhile General Doe's Persecution Task Force was carrying out their landing against Aitape. The landings would be preceded by naval gunfire from Captain Albert Noble's Destroyer force, aerial bombardment from escort carriers of Rear Admiral Ralph Davisons Task Force 78 and from General Kenney's air force. Meeting zero resistance and under the cover of a rocket barrage, the LCPR's landed the men of Colonel Francis Mason's 163rd Regiment by 6:45. Despite the lack of resistance, an immense amount of smoke and poor visibility prevented the troops from landing at Beach Blue, and instead they came ashore at Wapil. Just like at Hollandia, they had achieved tactical surprise at Aitape as the Japanese fled in a panic under naval gunfire. Mason's got his 2nd Battalion to swing west and quickly seize the Waitanan Creek while the 1st battalion was being landed. Then the 2nd Battalion formed a defensive position at the Pro Mission while the 3rd Battalion sent patrols east to establish an outpost near the mouth of the Nigia River. Back over at the beaches, General Doe landed some Australian engineers who began repairing the Tadji Fighter airstrip. The No. 62 Works Wing, Royal Australian Air Force, had come ashore at Blue Beach during the morning and had been able to start work on Tadji Fighter Strip at 1:00pm. Repairs continued throughout the night under floodlights, the lack of Japanese opposition and the urgency of the task prompting General Doe to push the work. Although it had been hoped that the strip would be ready for use on D+1, terrain conditions were such that necessary repairs were not completed on schedule. Thus it was 9:00 on April 24th before the Australian engineers, who had worked without break for almost forty-eight hours, could announce that the airstrip was ready. At 4:30pm, 25 P-40s of No. 78 Wing, RAAF, landed on the field, and the balance of the wing arrived the next day. The ground on which the fighter strip was located was so poorly drained that it was not until April 28th, after steel matting had been placed on the field, that it could be used continuously. The works wing then moved to Tadji Bomber Strip to aid the 872nd and 875th Engineer Aviation Battalions. The latter two units passed to the operational control of Wing Commander William A. C. Dale of the RAAF, who, besides commanding the works wing, was Persecution Task Force Engineer. Extensive repairs were necessary at the bomber strip and that field was not ready for use by fighter and transport planes until May 27th and for bombers until early July. While the engineers worked, Colonel Merle Howe's 127th Regiment also landed, while Mason's man expanded the perimeter further west, securing the incomplete Tadji west airstrip and the mouth of the Raihu River by the end of the day. Simultaneously, Colonel Cliffords men continued their advance from Kantomé to Sabron, whereupon, Fuller finally decided to launch his assault on Hollandia, with Colonel Haney's 2nd and 3rd Battalions rapidly moving down the ridge to seize the abandoned town by 11:15am. To the south, Colonel Newman had his 1st Battalion pursue the fleeing enemy, and in the process rapidly secured Brinkman's Plantation and then repelled a very uncoordinated Japanese counterattackby the 6th South Seas Detachment and General Kitazono's 42nd independent motor car battalion. At 8:00am on the23rd the 1st Battalion left its night positions on Leimok Hill and started out over the main track, passing through the 3rd Battalion. The movement was supported by the 205th and 218th Field Artillery Battalions, set up near Cape Pie, and by aircraft from the carriers of Task Force 58. By 9am the 1st Battalion had reached Brinkman's Plantation, about 2,200 yards by trail southwest of Pim. So far, there had been no opposition. Now Companies A and C parted from the main body to patrol northwest up the Borgonjie River. Proceeding to a fork about 2,000 yards upstream, the two companies repulsed a series of unco-ordinated attacks which were launched against the right flank of the 186th Infantry during the afternoon by a Japanese force estimated at 150. The two companies remained at the stream-branching during the night of 23-24 of April, and on the latter day they moved overland southwest to rejoin the main force on the Pim-Lake Sentani trail. Meanwhile General Inada's aviation personnel already at the Sentani airfield alongside those currently retreating there were cut off from their ration and ammunition supplies which happened to be stored near the coast. Facing the hopeless situation of having to conduct a proper defense of the airfields with less than a week's worth of rations, little small arms and machine gun ammunition, no artillery at all and with two different enemy forces converging upon them, General Inada seized full command and led the weak garrison to retreat towards Genjem. Their rear guard was proved by General Kitazono's troops. During that same afternoon, two platoons of Cliffords Company B, leading the advance from Sabron, safely crossed a small stream but soon found themselves in the middle of a well-concealed Japanese ambush on the east bank. Rifle and heavy machine gun fire made the stream's steep banks untenable, and the forward platoons hurriedly withdrew to the west, leaving four dead men behind. In response to this, Irvings artillery and Admiral Mitscher's carrier aircraft began to bomb and strafe the area, but Cliffords B Company was nonetheless unable to break through. An artillery duel emerged during the night keeping the men of the 1st Battalion wide awake. They were also being supplies with great difficulty via hand-carry over the Dépapré-Lake Sentani trail. Fortunately the 24th Division's plans for the Hollandia operation had taken into consideration many of the potential logistic problems that might be encountered in the Tanahmerah Bay area. The division G-4 Section had made a detailed study which had shown that a full infantry regiment could be supplied by hand-carry from Red Beach 2 over the Dépapré-Lake Sentani trail inland as far as Jangkena. When no road connecting Red Beach 2 with Red Beach 1 had been found, the division moved the main supply point to Dépapré, from which the advance inland would be supported. With this change in plans, the G-4 Section undertook new computations and calculated that the hand-carry distance could be extended to Dazai. This conclusion was based on the assumption that adverse weather conditions would not make the Dépapré-Lake Sentani road nearly impassable. On 23 April heavy rains started to turn the road into a quagmire through which struggling men could scarcely carry their own equipment and food, to say nothing of extra supplies for the leading battalion. By evening on that day logistic support of the 21st Regiment had therefore become a major problem. There was no question but that the regiment would have to be supported by hand-carry, for it was estimated that at least two weeks' hard work by engineers would be required before the road from Dépapré as far as Mariboe could be made passable even for jeeps. But the 1st Battalion had already advanced east of Dazai, beyond which point, according to the G-4 estimates, support by hand-carry would be next to impossible. Because of the logistical issues, General Eichelberger decided to make the Humboldt Bay area the principal task force landing site, allowing the 41st division to drive further inland. On the 24th, Newman's 3rd Battalion passed through the 1st and seized the Koejaboe area, only stopping there until the 2nd battalion came over to reinforce the continued advance. During this action however, most of the Japanese continued their retreat towards Genjem unmolested. Over in the west, Irving ordered Clifford to consolidate his forward positions around Sabron and Dazai as he now realized the continued rapid advance inland was no long possible as a result of their hand-carry logistics scheme and the weather was taking quite a turn for the worse hampering air drops. Back over at Aitape, Mason's troops crossed the Raihu and by midday the 2nd Battalion secured the town. However General Doe was dissatisfied with the pace of the westward advance, and he therefore suggested to Alamo Force that the 163rd's commander, Mason be relieved. This step was approved by General Krueger, although the regimental commander remained in control of his unit until 9 May, only two days before the 163rd Infantry began loading for another operation. For the next few days, the 163rd patrolled further inland and would fall into a heavy engagement at Kamti on the 29th. At the Kapoam villages, about twelve miles up the Raihu, elements of the 3rd Battalion encountered the only signs of organized Japanese resistance found in the Aitape area to 4 May. At one of these villages, Kamti, some outpost troops of the 3rd Battalion were surrounded by an estimated 200 Japanese who made a number of harassing attacks on 28 and 29th. These skirmishes cost the battalion 3 men killed and 2 wounded, while it was estimated that the Japanese lost about 90 killed. On the 25th, Colonel Lymann's two forward battalion resumed their march, heading through some dense jungle being met by sporadic enemy small arm fire. They eventually dug in around the vicinity of Julianadorp. Meanwhile Colonel Newman had his 3rd battalion advancing west along the main road to Nefaar while some LVT's transported his 1st battalion over Lake Sentani to a point on the western shore of Nefaar. Neither force faced much opposition and together would perform some patrolling of the Cyclops Drome during the afternoon. Back over at Aitape, Colonel Howe's 127th Regiment finished their occupation of Tumleo, Seleo and the Ali Islands and now were beginning to send patrols east towards Afua. On the 26th, Colonel Newman had his 1st Battalion seize the Cyclops Drome while his 2nd Battalion took some LVTS to capture the Sentani Drome. Shortly after midday both Battalions rapidly secured the airdromes under light enemy resistance. Despite a serious supply situation, Lyman's 1st and 3rd Battalion resumed the advance, only encountering one enemy bunker at Ebeli Plantation. It had been impossible to drop supplies from the air on April 25 and even hand-carrying had been stopped late in the afternoon by heavy rains which had flooded many small streams. Parts of the Dépapré-Lake Sentani trail were now knee deep in water. The two forward battalions were low on ammunition, and they would have to go on half-rations if the supply situation were not quickly improved. But General Irving was again optimistic about the weather, believing that air supply would be successful on the 26th. Furthermore, he had received information which indicated that the Japanese were evacuating the airfield area. For these reasons he considered that a continuation of the advance would not be unduly hazardous. In ordering the advance, the division commander was knowingly pushing his men far beyond the limit at which they could be supplied by hand-carry. If the airdrop should again fail or if track conditions should not improve, one of the two forward battalions would probably have to be echeloned back along the trail to augment the carrying parties, and the advance would probably have to be halted. Should enemy opposition prove stubborn, the forward battalions might have to withdraw, perhaps as far as Dazai, to replenish their meager supplies of rations and ammunition. General Irving was taking a calculated risk which assumed the success of the airdrop and an absence of determined Japanese opposition. By the afternoon of the 26th, the Hollandia Drome was secured after a successful airdrop at Dazai. After this the objectives of Reckless had been achieved. Mop up operation would continue up until June 6th, as Fuller's 41st Division cleared out Cape Soedja and the Cyclops Mountain. They would end up flushing out Japanese on Hill 1000 and Irving's 24th Division sent out patrols west towards Marneda, Demta Bay and Gemjem. By 6 June the they had all killed 405 Japanese and had taken 64 prisoners in the Genjem-Demta region. Many more Japanese were found dead of starvation or disease along the trails in the same area. During the same time period, Eichelberger's task force would develop Hollandia into a major base from which future operations would be support. In the end casualties for Operation Reckless amounted to 124 deaths, 1057 wounded and 28 missing for the Americans. The Japanese suffered 3300 deaths, 661 captured. On April 30th, 7220 Japanese from Hollandia's garrison would assemble at Genjem where General Inada began a gradual withdrawal in 11 echelons towards Sarmi. By May 7th, all echelons departed Genjem for a very long march through some of the worst terrain in New Guinea. Two-thirds of the garrison reached the Tor River by June. It's estimated 93% of their strength would succumb to the deadly jungles, lack of provisions and rampant cases of malaria. Meanwhile to secure the Tadji airstrips against Japanese attacks from the direction of Wewak, Colonel Howe sent Company C by boat to Nyaparake on April 28th where they set up outposts further inland around Charov and Jalup. By May 4th, further patrolling by the 127th regiment had discovered no trace of organized enemy units, thus Operation Persecution was successfully completed. During the operation 525 Japanese were killed, 25 were captured while the Americans suffered 19 deaths and 40 wounded. That is all for the New Guinea front as we are now traveling over to New Britain. After the Battle of Talasea and the area was secured, Colonel Smith reached the conclusion that the enemy was withdrawing as rapidly as possible to Cape Hoskins. He decided to send patrols to Numundo Plantation. A reconnaissance patrol on March 10th found enemy positions at Bola and Santa Monica Plantation evacuated, but came upon entrenched enemy at Garilli. On 11th Captain Andrew Haldane's Company K left Bitokara with orders to proceed to Numundo on a three-day patrol, a time estimate that was to prove too optimistic. Company K reached Garilli to find it empty of the enemy, but just north of Patanga encountered Japanese small-arms, automatic-weapons and mortar fire. For four days the Marine patrol made slow progress, fighting an enemy who made a stand in the heavy vegetation approximately every 200 yards and then withdrew effectively before the advance guard flankers could close in. On the evening of the 16th the company entered Kilu where the Japanese made their final stand. While the two forces battled, a Marine landing craft appeared offshore and as it approached the beach the enemy diverted what apparently was a 75mm field gun from the ground action to the "naval force". In the boat was Lieutenant Colonel Deakin who had obtained permission from Colonel Smith to transport a section of 81mm mortars to Captain Haldane's assistance. Although the Japanese bracketed the craft, they failed to hit it and the weapons were landed without casualties. Shortly after the heavy mortars began lobbing shells toward the enemy, the Japanese broke contact and the Marines reached Numundo 48 hours later without finding the Terunuma Detachment again. The 1st Battalion also set up an ambush at Garu which was productive of enemy dead and prisoners for awhile. Company I replaced Company K at Numundo and in turn was replaced on 25 March by the 2nd Battalion. Inasmuch as the enemy continued to straggle eastward singly and in small groups with little or no communications, patrols were kept busy returning over and over again to the same villages and plantations in hopes of catching unwary Japanese. Such hopes frequently paid off. On the 30th the 2nd Battalion moved southeast from Numundo to San Remo Plantation, described by one Marine as "a very pleasant place." From that point patrols probed westward to the Kulu River and eastward into the Cape Hoskins area as far as Buluma. Overall the patrols saw 3 men killed with 8 wounded while accounting for 151 Japanese killed and 68 taken prisoner. Meanwhile, Matsuda, Komori and Terunuma;s Detachments all were performing withdrawals. Komori dispatched his force to the rendezvous point in successive echelons. He himself left Didmop with the rear guard, back on February 28th, reaching Augitni via Vakan on March 1st. The following morning he started his hospital patients along the evacuation route and sent a detail of 250 men to Bulawatni to help transport provisions. Yet the Marines at Iboki were becoming increasingly troublesome, though quite unaware that they faced anything more than starving stragglers. When Company A, 1st Marines entered Talawaga on the 5th, Colonel Sato felt the hot breath of pursuit on his neck and moved to the trail fork where he assumed command of the combined force. The next morning the Komori Group resumed its withdrawal in a northwesterly direction along the right prong of the trail fork, while Sato prepared to follow with his command on the 7th. At this point the ways of these two officers parted, and thenceforth each pursued his individual course toward the destiny that awaited him. On the 6th the Komori Group, with Major Tobuse's 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry in the lead, covered 16 km's on the trail running northeast from the fork toward the coast to reach what the Japanese called the "North Road." After the first day on the trail, Komori's progress becomes difficult to follow, owing to his use of place names occurring in no other reports or maps. It was slow and difficult at best, because of rain and mud, and the necessity for wide detours to find fords through deep streams and safe passages through or around extensive swamps. His immediate force numbered about 200, and on March 8th he recorded the Tobuse Battalion a half-day's march ahead. He sighted occasional enemy reconnaissance planes, and on the 12th U.S. landing craft fired upon his men as they attempted to cross the Kuhu River, obliging them to take to the jungle and swamps. The broad Via River stopped his force on the 14th. When improvised rafts refused to float, the major and 15 others swam across. The rest, through weakness or timidity, declined to follow this excellent example, and it took two days and a wide detour inland to get the whole group to the right bank. Then, on the 17th, provisions ran out. Thus the weakening men came by painful stages to Kometto (Eleanora Bay) and the welcome coconuts of Linga Linga Plantation on the 21st. But the wide Kapuluk River posed a formidable obstacle to further progress. They tried first to swim the Kapuluk near its mouth, but 18 men of the 2nd Company were swept away and 12 of them drowned, only the captain reaching the far bank safely. A patrol far upstream failed to find any fording point, so the troops spent the rest of the day building rafts. These managed to stay afloat, but broke apart so frequently that another two days were required for the passage. Then came the real heartbreaker on the 24th: they reached Kou only to find the provisioning post evacuated. On the 25th an officer patrol encountered a U.S. patrol, and once more the group had to detour. On the 26th Komori hired a native to guide him to Numundo Plantation, at the eastern base of the Willaumez Peninsula. But evidently the man had a change of heart, for the major recorded next day that, lacking a guide, "we advanced using a compass." They now entered a region of extensive swamps, intersected by another major obstacle: the two-pronged Kulu river. The column got across this stream on the 27th, but lost five more men in the swift current. The survivors emerged from the swamps on the 29th and followed the river southward. On the 31st Komori made his final diary entry, eloquent in its stark simplicity: "We are very tired and without food." Apparently at this point malaria laid the major low. Ordering his men to continue toward Cape Hoskins, he took refuge in a native village, accompanied only by his executive officer, his orderly and a corporal attached to his headquarters. For lack of further diary entries, obscurity shrouds the last week of his life. Most of the Japanese forces reached Malalia by the end of March, but Marine patrols were becoming increasingly troublesome. On the 11th, elements of the 1st Marines landed at Linga Linga, patrolling further inland. Company E landed at the Kulu River mouth at the base of Willaumez Peninsula. There the Marines encountered 4 enemy stragglers, killing three and taking one prisoner. Then they moved westward to Kandoka, where they were joined by two platoons of Company F, brought over by boat. There they established a roadblock, just in time to catch Sato's rear echelon. Second Lieutenant Richard B. Watkins was in command of the trail block. At 9am Watkins led his group inland from the village over some faint trails which he hoped the Japanese main body might be using. The Marines had proceeded about a mile and a half and were about to cross a stream in a sparsely wooded area when they sighted two Japanese standing with slung rifles, apparently resting. Watkins had about decided to dispose of these when they moved off in a northeasterly direction, followed almost immediately by a large body of their compatriots. Lying where the Japanese could easily have spotted them, the Marines counted the 73 enemy soldiers and noted the equipment cited above. Conspicuous among them was a tall, burly officer being carried on a litter. The Japanese were cutting fresh trail through the jungle, and fortunately were too intent on their work to discover the patrol. They made excruciatingly slow progress, however, and Watkins did not dare to move until the last man had disappeared. He then returned with all speed to Kandoka, sending a runner ahead with his report. At the village he met Major Brush who had come over from Yaluiai with one squad on what he had intended as merely a routine inspection. He promptly radioed his command post to send a rifle platoon and a 60mm mortar section to the scene and ordered Watkins to hold the trail block with one rifle squad, one machine-gun squad and two mortar squads while he himself set off with the rest of the troops available in an effort to overtake the Japanese from the rear. Before his own departure that morning, Watkins had sent a six-man patrol under Sergeant Frank Chliek to an inland village some two miles south of Kandoka, right where the Japanese appeared to be heading. The lieutenant promptly dispatched a native messenger there with a warning; then, when firing broke out in that direction, he surmised, correctly, that Chliek had become engaged and took the remaining rifle squad and hurried to his assistance. He arrived to find the sergeant and his men crouched on high ground by the east-west trail with dead Japanese all around them. The volume of fire was intense, the pattern not at all clear. As it turned out, Chliek had stumbled upon the column somewhere near its head and, taking advantage of his superior position, immediately opened fire. Major Brush's force, which had been closing rapidly, was on the opposite side of the valley at this time; hence, at sound of the first shots, had hastened to the scene and struck the Japanese column's other flank. In order to avoid becoming involved in a fire fight with that group, Watkins ordered Chliek's patrol back to Kandoka and followed with his own squad at a slower pace. Brush caught up with him shortly, whereat a counting of heads showed that, miraculously, the Marines had not sustained a single casualty. Here is the aftermath as Watkins recalls it: “On the following morning I took a 20 man patrol through the battle area. We counted 55 dead including 3 officers. It was quite easy to believe that perhaps 20 more died in scattered positions throughout the dense underbrush. The dead were all within a 100 yard stretch of trail. We encountered 2 more Japanese who had evidently just come upon the scene who were sitting side by side staring dazedly at the destruction and did not even turn their heads when we approached.” The burly officer previously observed on a litter proved to be Colonel Sato. Evidently Sergeant Chliek's patrol had struck the enemy column at precisely the point where he was being carried, for the colonel had only had time to leap to his feet and draw his sword to fight back before the Marines' fire riddled him. Seeing their leader fall, those Japanese farther forward took off in mad flight, while those behind were cut off by the converging of the two patrols. Thus perished one of the few Japanese to deserve much credit for the performance of the 65th Brigade on New Britain. Although the rear echelon attacked by the two patrols comprised less than half of Sato's total force, the group, as such, ceased to exist with the death of the leader who alone had held it together. Units split into components, these into smaller parties, straggling eastward over a variety of trails, often hacking their own way by compass azimuth.  Throughout April, the 17th Division continued their retreat towards Rabaul, managed to repel multiple marine patrol attacks around Cape Hoskins. General Sakai's survivors finally got to Rabaul between April 16th and May 15th, erecting the last bulwark of defense for the South Pacific. On April 6th, the journey of another Japanese commander came to an end. The body of the already deceased Major Komori was captured at the San Remo Plantation by the 2nd Battalion, 5th marines. They came upon the outpost, suddenly face to face with a group of four bedraggled Japanese. It was one of those abrupt encounters that allow little time for reflection or deliberation. The flurry of fire that followed killed three of the enemy and wounded the fourth, who promptly surrendered. Komori had apparently died of malaria along the way.  For the 5th Marines, too, was nearing its journey's end, so far as New Britain was concerned. With promotion of the regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Buse took over on an acting basis, and General Smith returned to Cape Gloucester to relieve General Shepherd as Assistant Division Commander. Units attached to the regiment followed, and representatives of the Army's 185th Infantry arrived to inspect positions preparatory to replacing the 5th, just as other 40th Infantry Division elements were doing in the Cape Gloucester area with a view toward relieving the entire 1st Marine Division. Last clash of the campaign occurred onthe 22nd of April, when a 2/5 patrol intercepted a party of Japanese, killing 20, including two officers, and suffering the regiment's last fatality on New Britain. Three days later the whole 185th RCT moved into Talasea and San Remo, and at 1530 command of the area formally passed to the Army. LCM's carrying the 1st and 3rd Battalions back to Borgen Bay cleared Talasea at 1630, followed by those carrying 2/5 from San Remo at 2000. The movement was reported complete at 1930 on the 26th, and men of the 5th learned that the 1st Marines had departed this island of evil memory the previous day and that they would follow as ships became available. Soon they would be relieved by Major-General Isaac Rapp Brush's 40th Division, which took responsibility for Cape Gloucester, Arawe and Talasea by the end of April.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Thus Operation Reckless and Persecution were both successful. Now MacArthur had a strong foothold in Western New Guinea seeing the Japanese continued their frantic retreat wherever allied forces seemed to pop up. Over in New Britain, the Japanese were losing formidable commanders as they too were on the retreat, things were simply disastrous for the empire of the rising sun. 

JPR's Jane Vaughan just had the pleasure of meeting Former Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada for the first time, and we share their interview here.

In Episode 34 of the National Health Executive podcast, we are joined by NHS England's national clinical director for infection, antimicrobial resistance and deterioration, Dr Matt Inada-Kim, to discuss whether the pandemic is really over, how the NHS has learnt from Covid-19 and what the NHS needs to do to prepare for the next global health incident.Dr Inada-Kim said: “Whilst technically it [the pandemic] might be over in terms of the numbers, certainly from a Covid perspective, we're very much still in maelstrom of the effects of it – particularly the backlog.“But it's not just catching up on the elective work in terms of surgery, operations or appointments but it's also a backlog of preventative and chronic disease management that I don't think we were optimally able to provide during the lockdown.”Dr Inada-Kim went onto explain how he believes the health service needs a “sea change” to ensure patients are cared for in the right place and not just the most convenient one as well as highlighting the need to make use of industry partnerships to further accelerate the “ explosion of digital tech”.He also went on to note need for better “measurement” in terms of how the NHS benchmarks quality and safety of care against both itself and other health systems.“A lot of our initiatives appear to be focused around avoiding work – reducing activity, avoiding an admission, avoiding an attendance, reducing general practice appointments for instance – [but] we also need, with 50% of our energy, to be focusing on quality of care, the safety of care [and] ensuring outcomes for patients remain at the very forefront of everything we do.”

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.04.19.537409v1?rss=1 Authors: Matsumoto, T., Higaki, T., Takatsuka, H., Kutsuna, N., Ogata, Y., Hasezawa, S., Umeda, M., Inada, N. Abstract: ACTIN DEPOLYMERIZING FACTOR (ADF) is a conserved protein that regulates the organization and dynamics of actin microfilaments. Eleven ADFs in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome are grouped into four subclasses, and subclass I ADFs, ADF1-4, are all expressed throughout the plant. Previously, we showed that subclass I ADFs function in the regulation of the response against powdery mildew fungus as well as in the regulation of cell size and endoreduplication. Here, we report a new role of subclass I ADFs in the regulation of nuclear organization and gene expression. Through a microscopic observation of epidermal cells in mature leaves, we found that the size of chromocenters in both adf4 and transgenic lines where expression of subclass I ADFs are downregulated (ADF1-4Ri) was reduced compared with that of wild-type Col-0. A. thaliana possesses eight ACTIN genes, among which ACT2, -7, and -8 are expressed in vegetative organs. The chromocenter size in act7, but not in the act2/8 double mutant, was enlarged compared with that in Col-0. Microarray analysis revealed that 1,818 genes were differentially expressed in adf4 and ADF1-4Ri. In particular, expression of 22 nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) genes, which are involved in effector-triggered plant immunity, was reduced in adf4 and ADF1-4Ri. qRT-PCR confirmed the altered expressions shown with microarray analysis. Overall, these results suggest that ADF regulates various aspects of plant physiology through its role in regulation of nuclear organization and gene expression. The mechanism how ADF and ACTIN regulate nuclear organization and gene expression is discussed. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by Paper Player, LLC

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.02.03.527077v1?rss=1 Authors: Tasaka, G.-i., Hagihara, M., Irie, S., Kobayashi, H., Inada, K., Kihara, M., Abe, T., Miyamichi, K. Abstract: Maternal behaviours, which are crucial for the survival of mammalian infants, can be learned. How the efficient acquisition of these behaviours is implemented at the neural circuitry level remains poorly understood. Although prevalent models of neural circuits for parental behaviours often assume the frontal cortical network as an integrator of infant-related sensory signals and a controller of decision-making and motivation, these ideas have not been functionally tested. As such, detailed input/output neural circuit organizations of the frontal cortex in relation to parental behaviours remain unknown. Here we show that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) promotes efficient learning of maternal behaviours in virgin female mice when they are co-housed with lactating mothers. Chronic microendoscopy in freely behaving animals reveals robust representations of pup-directed anticipatory activities and ongoing sequential motions of pup retrieval that are innately sculpted and largely unaffected by learning. Through viral tracing and manipulations, we functionally identify the submedius thalamus as a prominent presynaptic partner of the OFC that shapes pup-related representations. Optogenetic inactivation of OFC reduces the pup retrieval-related activities of midbrain dopamine neurons that promote maternal behaviours. Collectively, these findings reveal a higher-order cognitive network that connects innately formed, pup-related integrated representation to the top-down control of motivation centers, thus enabling efficient maternal behavioural learning. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by Paper Player, LLC

¿Emociones y educación? Sí, emociones y educación. Este nuevo episodio de La universidad imaginada tiene como invitado al lector, escritor y profesor Mauricio García Villegas, autor del libro El país de las emociones tristes. ¿Qué es el miedo y cómo la educación “pluriclasista” puede ser una respuesta necesaria para Colombia? ¿Cómo las emociones nos unen o dividen como país? ¿Cómo la educación puede ayudar a construir una sociedad más justa y equitativa? Conversar sobre educación y emociones es abordar las inquietudes que nos plantea el mundo hoy, es explorar una nueva dimensión para encontrar respuestas a los fenómenos actuales. La diversidad, la pluralidad, la tolerancia y el encuentro entre clases sociales son elementos de análisis para contribuir desde la educación superior a una educación emocional que permita crear ambientes que nos permitan encontrarnos como sociedad.

¿Qué tan importantes son las emociones en la educación?, ¿qué tan importante es un abrazo en el proceso de aprendizaje? Más de lo que nos imaginamos. En EAFIT, a través de nuestro Centro Imaginar Futuros, identificamos la educación en emociones como una de las señales que nos muestra el mundo para transformar los ambientes de aprendizaje. Los juegos, las herramientas tecnológicas, las narrativas y las leyes orientadas a reivindicar las emociones en los procesos de formación marcan pautas importantes para que el bienestar físico, mental y espiritual de las personas sea un pilar del sistema educativo. En este capítulo conversamos con Viviana Otálvaro Guzmán, creadora de Hugger Island, un emprendimiento social que enseña a ponerle inteligencia a las emociones a través del afecto, que es algo que no nos enseñan, y a quitarles ese velo de nuestra cultura que muchas veces nos impide expresarlas. Viviana es ingeniera de diseño de producto de EAFIT y especialista en Biodiseño y productos mecatrónicos. A partir de experiencias personales, creó un personaje que existe para abrazar. No tiene ojos, orejas, o boca, porque hace todo con el corazón. Hugger Island crea experiencias basadas en el cuerpo como un instrumento y en la naturaleza como fuente de inspiración para desarrollar habilidades de trabajo en equipo, comunicación y liderazgo.

Je reviens sur trois maîtres incontournables du karate uechi : Tomoyose, Takara et Inada qui ont énormément épaulé Uechi Kan.ei dans les années 1960-1970. Pour soutenir mon travail, vous pouvez me parrainer sur ma page Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Okinawa_juku Mes livres : https://jcjuster.jimdofree.com/mes-livres/

Supernova get all the press, but Nova and Micronova are still pretty powerful. White dwarf stars are normally pretty inactive, unless some hydrogen ends up kickstarting them again. Enough helium leeched from a nearby star can ignite the entire surface of a white dwarf. Nova may not destroy the star, but they can create immensely powerful explosions and particles. The right combination of White Dwarf and Red Giant can create powerful particles near the speed of light. Micronova sound small but they are still colossal and brief explosions on white dwarf stars. Not powerful enough to ignite the whole surface of a star, but definitely enough to destroy a planet, micronova are quite deadly. Scaringi, S., Groot, P.J., Knigge, C. et al. Localized thermonuclear bursts from accreting magnetic white dwarfs. Nature, 2022 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04495-6 V. A. Acciari, S. Ansoldi, L. A. Antonelli, A. Arbet Engels, M. Artero, K. Asano, D. Baack, A. Babić, A. Baquero, U. Barres de Almeida, J. A. Barrio, I. Batković, J. Becerra González, W. Bednarek, L. Bellizzi, E. Bernardini, M. Bernardos, A. Berti, J. Besenrieder, W. Bhattacharyya, C. Bigongiari, A. Biland, O. Blanch, H. Bökenkamp, G. Bonnoli, Ž. Bošnjak, G. Busetto, R. Carosi, G. Ceribella, M. Cerruti, Y. Chai, A. Chilingarian, S. Cikota, S. M. Colak, E. Colombo, J. L. Contreras, J. Cortina, S. Covino, G. D'Amico, V. D'Elia, P. Da Vela, F. Dazzi, A. De Angelis, B. De Lotto, A. Del Popolo, M. Delfino, J. Delgado, C. Delgado Mendez, D. Depaoli, F. Di Pierro, L. Di Venere, E. Do Souto Espiñeira, D. Dominis Prester, A. Donini, D. Dorner, M. Doro, D. Elsaesser, V. Fallah Ramazani, L. Fariña Alonso, A. Fattorini, M. V. Fonseca, L. Font, C. Fruck, S. Fukami, Y. Fukazawa, R. J. García López, M. Garczarczyk, S. Gasparyan, M. Gaug, N. Giglietto, F. Giordano, P. Gliwny, N. Godinović, J. G. Green, D. Green, D. Hadasch, A. Hahn, T. Hassan, L. Heckmann, J. Herrera, J. Hoang, D. Hrupec, M. Hütten, T. Inada, K. Ishio, Y. Iwamura, I. Jiménez Martínez, J. Jormanainen, L. Jouvin, D. Kerszberg, Y. Kobayashi, H. Kubo, J. Kushida, A. Lamastra, D. Lelas, F. Leone, E. Lindfors, L. Linhoff, S. Lombardi, F. Longo, R. López-Coto, M. López-Moya, A. López-Oramas, S. Loporchio, B. Machado de Oliveira Fraga, C. Maggio, P. Majumdar, M. Makariev, M. Mallamaci, G. Maneva, M. Manganaro, K. Mannheim, L. Maraschi, M. Mariotti, M. Martínez, A. Mas Aguilar, D. Mazin, S. Menchiari, S. Mender, S. Mićanović, D. Miceli, T. Miener, J. M. Miranda, R. Mirzoyan, E. Molina, A. Moralejo, D. Morcuende, V. Moreno, E. Moretti, T. Nakamori, L. Nava, V. Neustroev, M. Nievas Rosillo, C. Nigro, K. Nilsson, K. Nishijima, K. Noda, S. Nozaki, Y. Ohtani, T. Oka, J. Otero-Santos, S. Paiano, M. Palatiello, D. Paneque, R. Paoletti, J. M. Paredes, L. Pavletić, P. Peñil, M. Persic, M. Pihet, P. G. Prada Moroni, E. Prandini, C. Priyadarshi, I. Puljak, W. Rhode, M. Ribó, J. Rico, C. Righi, A. Rugliancich, N. Sahakyan, T. Saito, S. Sakurai, K. Satalecka, F. G. Saturni, B. Schleicher, K. Schmidt, T. Schweizer, J. Sitarek, I. Šnidarić, D. Sobczynska, A. Spolon, A. Stamerra, J. Strišković, D. Strom, M. Strzys, Y. Suda, T. Surić, M. Takahashi, R. Takeishi, F. Tavecchio, P. Temnikov, T. Terzić, M. Teshima, L. Tosti, S. Truzzi, A. Tutone, S. Ubach, J. van Scherpenberg, G. Vanzo, M. Vazquez Acosta, S. Ventura, V. Verguilov, C. F. Vigorito, V. Vitale, I. Vovk, M. Will, C. Wunderlich, T. Yamamoto, D. Zarić, F. Ambrosino, M. Cecconi, G. Catanzaro, C. Ferrara, A. Frasca, M. Munari, L. Giustolisi, J. Alonso-Santiago, M. Giarrusso, U. Munari, P. Valisa. Proton acceleration in thermonuclear nova explosions revealed by gamma rays. Nature Astronomy, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01640-z

Salve, Salve, galera! . Neste episódio, trazemos o início do debate sobre as Lutas por cotas de uma perspectiva que parte das disputas da unicamp . Hoje na companhia da camarada Sofia, que comanda o canal ContraPalavra, nos propusemos a discutir um pouco sobre as disputas de ingresso e permanência dentro das universidades . Nessa discussão entram elementos como a luta e ocupação de reitoria ocorrida na unicamp e os problemas, ainda atuais. . Vem com a gente e se liga nesse papo! . Indicações: FERES JÚNIOR, João; CAMPOS, Luiz Augusto; DAFLON, Verônica Toste; VENTURINI, Anna Carolina. Ação afirmativa: conceito, história e debates. Rio de Janeiro: EDUERJ, 2018. IBGE. Censo Demográfico 2010: Resultados gerais da amostra. Disponível em: . Último acesso em 03/09/2020. ______. Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios: Microdados. Disponível em: . Último acesso em 03/09/2020. INADA, Angélica Kimie. Quando a Unicamp falou sobre cotas – Trajetória de militância do Núcleo de Consciência Negra e da Frente Pró-Cotas da Unicamp. Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso, Faculdade de Educação, 2018. Disponível em: . Último acesso em 12/08/2020. . Acompanhe a camarada nas redes: Instagram: @sofiabhlisboa / @canalcontrapalavra Twitter: @/sofiabhlisboa / @/contrapalavra Canal Contrapalavra - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBO0ebmEq5npLRPcuQlJFHQ . Não se esqueça de nos seguir nas redes sociais para ficar sempre por dentro dos nossos conteúdos: . Twitter/instagram: @morcego_marcos_ e @yibamberadio Site: Yibambecorp.com.br Twitch: twitch.tv/cavernamorcego . Colabore com a Caverna do Morcego, seja um apoiador: Apoio coletivo: apoia.se/cavernamorcego picpay: @ marcos.morcego . Equipe: Roteiro/edição : Marcos Morcego Revisão: @ro_revisor (Instagram).

On Episode 21 of NHE's Finger on the Pulse podcast, host Matt Roberts is joined by Matt Inada-Kim, Irem Patel and Catherine Dale to discuss how pulse oximetry was identified and scaled out during the pandemic to support the pandemic response. Matt, Irem and Catherine offer a range of different perspective, brought together by the Health Innovation Network South London.

Boots Boudreaux is in rare form for this episode of How Boots Makes His Billions. After reading two tweets from his Twitter account, Boots dives into a segment of Three Words of the Day. One word is from the Oxford English Dictionary, the next word is from the Urban Dictionary, and the final word is a business term. Then, it's the 2nd part of Boots's Hot Take on Business regarding Carlos Ghosn's escape from Japan. It's like something out of a spy novel! Boots rounds out the episode talking about how he prefers to pay attorneys who work for him. All in all, it's one hell of an episode. But honestly, what would you expect from Boots Boudreaux? If he can be CEO of Pound Town Pretzels, Doggy Style Airlines, and 73 other companies, of course he can put out a world-class podcast. Enjoy it your filthy animals! Tell a friend! Please review and rate it as well!   Twitter: @bootsboudreaux Instagram: @bootsboudreaux Email: boots@howbootsmakeshisbillions.com   Sources used for this episode: Kostov, Nick. Maremont, Mark. Jones, Rory. “In Carlos Ghosn's Escape, Plotters Exploited an Airport Security Hole.” The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones and Company, Inc., 6 January 2020. Kostov, Nick. Gauthier-Villars, David. Schechner, Sam. Inada, Miho. “Inside Carlos Ghosn's Great Escape: A Train, Planes and a Big Black Box.”  The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones and Company, Inc., 7 January 2020. Jeong, May. “Exclusive: How Carlos Ghosn Escaped Japan, According to the Ex-Green Beret Who Snuck Him Out.” Vanity Fair. Conde Nast. 2020 July/August. Dooley, Ben. “Two Americans Tied to Carlos Ghosn's Escape Are Extradited to Japan.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 1 March 2021. Wayland, Michael. “Fugitive former Nissan exec Carlos Ghosn feared he would ‘die in Japan' if he didn't escape.” CNBC.com. CNBC LLC, 8 January 2020. Campbell, Matthew. Inoue, Kae. Jie, Ma. Nussbaum, Ania.  “Carlos Ghosn Never Saw It Coming.” Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg L.P., 4 February 2019. Leonard, Mike. Feeley, Jeff. “McDonald's Can Move Ahead With Clawback Suit Against Ex-CEO.” Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg L.P., 2 February 2021. Epstein, Anthony Jay. The Big Picture. New York: Random House, 2006.

O Episódio 5 do podcast Uma ceramista disse apresenta a voz de Julie Inada @entornoceramica. Temporada 1 | Processo criativo: o que vem antes da mão no barro? Escute e se inspire! Podcast: Uma ceramista disse Por: Mankay | Ateliê de Cerâmica

Twitch @ScottyNada www.purpleelfproductions.com

Boss positions over others are often the last refuge of insecure people.  They are like little Napoleons, bossing everyone around, flaunting their status power.  They don't have great personal ability but they do have authority and they like to use it. They have worked out that fear is a great tool to use on others to keep themselves in control of the work situation.  This is a flawed model and the opportunity costs of having these people in charge are huge.  Motivation, engagement, innovation plummet under these types of leaders.  Surely we can do better than this in the twenty first century?  Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo. Why the Cutting Edge?  In this show, we are looking at the critical areas for success in business in Japan.  We want to help advance everyone's thinking so that we be at the forefront, the Cutting Edge, of how to flourish here in this market.   Before we get into this week's topic, here is what caught my attention lately.  Eighty four percent of Japanese hold positive views about receiving nursing care from robots according to a survey by Orix Living.  Most respondents see robots as serving to alleviate burdens on care receivers and care givers.  The survey found  eighty  four  percent of men want to care for their wives and only  sixty  six percent  of women said they want to care for their husbands.  In other news, the rise of the single or ohitorisama phenomenon has led to some changes in retail business in Japan.  In 1980 in Japan, only  one  in  fifty  men had never been married by the age of  fifty and only  one  in  twenty  two for  women. That ratio is now one  in  four  for  men and one  in  seven  for  women. With more than  thirty  percent  of households containing just one person this makes for an attractive solo market. Many are craving more “me time” in this fast paced , interconnected and workaholic society.  Surveys show Japanese consumers rate quality time alone above hours spent with family and friends.  In this social media infested, interconnected, totally “always on” world, some people feel fatigued and want relief from contact with others. Karaoke chains realised around six years ago that there were customers who came by themselves and so created One Kara, that is a tiny booths for solo singers.  Some Cinemas now offer seats with partitions and theme parks let singles jump the line at certain rides.  Grocery stores sell items aimed at single diners and travel agents are catering to solo travelers.Finally, there have been some innovative developments in Japanese agriculture.  Spread company has opened up its second vertical farm producing leaf vegetables. It is getting closer to having such low cost production it can compete with traditional farms on a large scale. In Keihanna Science City it will launch Techno Farm its second facility and grow thirty thousand heads of lettuce a day on racks, under custom designed lights using light emitting diodes.  A sealed room protects the vegetables from pests, disease and dirt.  Temperature and humidity are optimized to speed growth of the greens, which are fed, tended and harvested by robots.  Spread President Shinji Inada said, “Our system can produce a stable amount of vegetables of a good quality for sale at a fixed price throughout the year, without using pesticides and with no influence from weather”.  Spread sells lettuce about  twenty  to  thirty percent  above normal lettuce  prices but consumers see these pesticide free products as an alternative to more expensive organics foods.  Climate change is making the weather more unpredictable and this makes Techo Farm's consistent availability attractive.  Inada plans to export his farming system to  one  hundred countries worldwide,  “We are targeting countries where fresh vegetables cannot be produced because of scarce water, extremely low temperatures or other natural conditions”.   This is episode number fifty seven and we are talking about Nice Or Nasty Bosses     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.The New York Times carried an article about the growth of rudeness and bad behaviour at work over the last twenty years.  Christine Porath, the article author, noted, “How we treat one another at work matters.  Insensitive interactions have a way of whittling away at people's health, performance and soul”.  These interactions release hormones called   glucocorticoids leading to potential health problems.    The more interesting part of the research on this topic looked at why we are uncivil and more than half said they felt overloaded with their work and 40% said they have no time to be nice.  Nearly half linked career progression to using their position power and being nice was seen as weak. Bosses attitudes were enlightening. Twenty-five percent believe they will be less leader-like if they are nice at work.  Nearly 40% feared they would be taken advantage of, if they weren't projecting a tough manner.    There seems to be no shortage of bosses who can only muster position power, know it and so exploit it to the full, because they are so insecure.  Strip away their titles and they are total nobodies.  The way people become the boss is part of the issue.  The individual who can succeed and be accountable in their own little world is promoted to be in charge of others who are nothing like them.  They find that the skills that got them selected as leader is not what they need to be a real leader.  Their fall back strategy is to use their position power and lord it over their underlings, driving them forward through fear.   Ironically, the Center For Creative Leadership found the number one characteristic associated with senior executives failure was their insensitive, abrasive or bullying style.  So we are left with a bunch of wannabe Napoleons, bossing us around and going nowhere in their careers.   What are we looking for in business?  We want our people to come up with great ideas, innovations and creative solutions.  Some mini-me Napoleon type is not going to command anything more than compliance and so the innovation capacity of the organization is hamstrung.  In this fast paced competitive world of doing more, faster with less, this is a big opportunity cost.  From our own research on what engages employees to make the discretionary effort to go above and beyond, we found that feeling valued was the critical trigger.    If the mentality is to beat people up to let them know who is the boss, then the “I feel valued” trigger never gets pulled, the ideas do not flow, the cooperation doesn't happen and the information is not passed on when you need it.  Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backWe want leverage, a next generation of leaders to be developed who can move the organisation forward.  Youthful tolerance for bad boss behavior is very low and they simply vote with their feet and go across to the competition.    Bosses need to become better time managers, so they are in better control of their emotions.  When you are disorganized you become stressed and you spread your stress to all of those around you.  Bosses need to be trained in how to smile when they interact with their staff. Sounds simplistic but there is whole raft of things going on in the background for that to happen and they are all good.  We want the bosses to be better in communication.  Explaining the why and not just the what or the how.  By the way, rather than pontificating, we want to use the Socratic method of asking questions, which lead the staff member to their own discoveries of the why.  This is how we get ownership of the ideas and the commitment to follow through with them.    We want them to praise people in a smart way.  Tell the staff member what they specifically did well, link this to the bigger picture, reinforce that they should keep doing it and thank them.  We want coaching that is not critique based around past mistakes but forward looking – what they did that was good, how they could do it even better the next time. And how that will positively impact the business.   Building a positive, supportive workplace must be the boss's focus, if the organization wants to succeed through its people.  We start with attitudinal change leading to behaviour change, producing performance change.   As mentioned, we know from our research that staff engagement requires three conditions and a trigger.  The three conditions are the current relationship with the boss – an obvious one. The other two are the belief by staff that the direction senior management are taking the company is the right one.  This implies they actually know what the direction is.  Lastly, the feeling of pride in the organisation.  This also sounds obvious, but the survey results refer to the “organisation” not just insular pride in their siloed “division”, within the organisation. Getting internal cooperation across silos is always a challenge in big organizations.    The engagement trigger is the feeling that the boss cares about the staff and they feel valued.  They know they are valued because the boss tells them so directly.  Engagement matters.  Innovation is only interesting to staff who care about the company.  If you are not engaged, you don't care if the operation is running more effectively or about finding new ways of doing things. These staff haven't signed on for the old way of doing things yet.  Innovation is going to be the differentiator, so the key step before that, is getting people to feel high levels of engagement.  The boss role here is critical and are the bosses in your organization ready for this crucial role they must play?   THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show is here to help you succeed in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues, become a regular. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode seventy we are talking about Get Your Presentation Rhythm Going. Find out more about that next week. So Yoroshiku Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

017: Battle Royale vol. 10   By Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi With English translation by Keith Giffen   Schoolkids are forced to fight to the death until only one survives. 35 down, 6 to go!   Skip to the synopsis @14:20 contact us at WeAppreciateManga@gmail.com   Theme Music: 'Electro Hype' by Liam Bradbury Podcast created by Jim Fitton and Steven Gorton.     Topics:   ·       Stream of conscious narrative done right! ·       Lighthouse aftermath ·       Nanahara’s Reunion ·       Mental illness (PTSD, suicide, survivor guilt, schizophrenia)     Pop culture references:    ·       Demon on TV in the style of Go Nagai / Toshio Maeda ·       Dungeons and Dragons Sourcebook 2 (monster manual) D&D fan     Adaptation differences:   In the manga Inada worships the “Trinity” (Peliphon, Meodius  and Lucien) most likely derived from ‘Dungeons and Dragons’. In the original novel she is Monotheistic, and worships Ahura Mazda (derived from ancient Iranian religion Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism, derived from Avestan word for wisdom)   Synopsis:   The most optimistic of the student contestants, Shuya Nanahara is nursed back to health by Utsumi’s gang of girls. When a bowl of soup meant for Nanahara is poisoned it breeds mistrust in them, resulting in a massacre. Nanahara survives by being locked in the upstairs bedroom of the lighthouse. The girl who is responsible for the poisoning is Yuko Sakaki.   None understand Yuko Sakaki more so than her parents. At home her mother looks at her photo album, the father is watching TV in the hope of seeing his daughter survive. When a horror movie appears on TV he switches it off. A force of habit due to Yuko’s nervous nature and belief in the devil. Her parents have had to deal with Yuko’s trauma of seeing boys fight in her class, knowing that she is now in a genocidal program has forced their denial to turn to grief.   With 9 contestants left, Nanahara makes his way downstairs and confronts the paranoid and frightened Yuko Sakaki. She runs off upstairs to escape Nanahara, stopping to fire at him. Whilst at the top the recoil of her gun causes her to fall. Nanahara rescues Sakaki before she experiences an epithany. Having believed that Nanahara was a demon, she realises that her inner demons, her paranoia, have caused her to hurt the ones she loves. She jumps from the lighthouse, choosing suicide.   After giving the recently passed girls at the lighthouse their dues, Nanahara leaves to search for Noriko and Kawada. He meets Izuno Inada, he can’t save her, she is delirious and is playing the game on her own private terms. Nanahara manages to flee but Inada’s paranoid schizophrenia has her now worshipping a god.   Nanahara travels through the woods and recalls all the people he has seen die. His survivor guilt takes its toll when he comes across the bodies of Keita Ijima, Yutaka and Mimura. ­He learns of the fight with Kiriyama, the microphones in the collars, the bomb that was made and the confidence that Yutaka gained in the end.   When Nanahara finally meets Noriko and Kawada he sees that the 3 of them are all they have to rely on. Noriko who so loves Nanahara has drawn a sketch of him in his absence. Meanwhile Izuno Inada has stripped down to her underwear and has made a sigil for her god, a deluded belief that it will protect her from all harm and bestow divination on her. Waiting for her prayers to be answered, Kazuo Kiriyama comes forth and provides a bullet to her thoughts.   35 down, 6 to go.     Instagram –  weappreciatemanga.co.uk Twitter - @RealJamesFitton Website – Weappreciatemanga.com Email – Weappreciatemanga@gmail.com

Человеку всегда было свойственно открывать новые горизонты, а манящая идея о других мирах будоражила сознание многих поколений. Нередко именно в творчестве получалось реализовывать самые смелые фантазии, а безграничное воображение давало начало новым смыслам и формам. Художники, музыканты и поэты постоянно раскрашивали мир новыми красками и наполняли досуг миллиардов мечтателей по всей земле. Сегодняшний выпуск подкаста #alphabetoftrance скомпилировал и прислал нам владелец бельгийского #goatrance лейбла #cronomirecords - #djInada ,в котором большую часть треков представляют релизы и пока ещё неизданные работы данного лейбла. В сопроводительном письме он поведал нам, что открыл для себя #goatrance в Греции ещё в далеком 1999м году, где купил первый диск "Goa Head 8", вдохновивший его на коллекционирование этой музыки. Он часто играет в своей родной Бельгии и за её пределами. Нередко делит сцену с такими артистами, как: Power Source, Artha, Total Eclipse, The Muses Rapt, New Born, Color Box, M-Run, Electric Universe, Xenomorph, Vibrasphere, Subcouds, Bypass Unit, Dimension 5, UX, E-Mantra и многими другими. "Running and managing Cronomi Records is like a dream come true: Making original new-made Goa Trance available for the world: Goa lives & Grows!!!" Обложкой для сегодняшнего выпуска стала работа фрактального художника из Нидерландов - #juliushorsthuis На прошлой неделе Юлиус приезжал в Москву, где провел небольшую лекцию, дал мастер класс по программе в которой работает - #mandelbulb3d и выступил с купольным VJ сетом. Спасибо CHILL OUT PLANET и SAMSKARAPRO за возможность увидеть работы Юлиуса в большом масштабе , послушать и пообщаться с ним. Всем #погружения и #сто2 Tracklist: 01. Chi-ad - Astral warrior (intro) 02. New Born - lesson 1 (unreleased) 03. Astral projection - Another World 04. Electric Universe - the Prayer 05. Power Source - Granada 06. Artha - Antistatic Circle (Cronomi Records) 07. New Born - lesson 2 (unreleased) 08. California Sunshine - Dejavu 09. X-Dream - The 5th Dimension 10. INTERMEZZO: Chi-ad - The Ocean Also Dreams 11. Chi-ad - Purity 12 Deedrah - Reload 13. M-Run - Chronos (Cronomi Records) 14. Red-M - Deep Dark Doppler Dangler 15. New Born - Lesson 3 (unreleased) 16. M-Run - Zadnji (unreleased) 17. New Born - Healing Proces (Cronomi Records) 18. Hallucinogen - LSD (Artha remix) (unrelreased) 19. M-Run - Trans Our Way (Cronomi Records) 20. New Born - Fish (Cronomi Records) Total Time - 133:23 min

Wochenrückblick des Unbehagens 27 Norman ist verreist und klingt deshalb komisch. Intro und Outro hatten einen tragischen Unfall und klingen auch komisch. Die Tage waren dünne und deshalb sind wir ausnahmsweise mal kürzer. Außerdem bellt ein Kind. Wird schon gehen. Dafür haben wir heute viel Politik aus Japan, Staatstrojaner, Eichhörnchen, gekauftes Glück, Cyber-Cyber-Cyberpunk, die staatenlose Vorschau auf das AfD-Parteiprogramm, Emojis, tollen Gin, das Mischief Reef und filmhassende Filmförderung. Podcast herunterladen 00:01:30 Nachtrag vom 19.07. und Begrüßung 00:05:15 Montag: Immobilienproblematik bei Eichhörnchen, VW und die Militärdiktatur, "Kauft euch Glück!", schwedische Daten und Göttingen steht auf Cannabis (+Portugalergänzung) 00:27:49 Dienstag: Neues von Matt Groening und Peter Pilz 00:32:52 Mittwoch: Violinenmassaker, Polizeimessenger, Abe weiß von nichts, Amnesty die Terroristen und Jugend durch Gehirnmanipulation 00:54:00 Donnerstag: Gegen den Bundestrojaner, das Antiflüchtlingsschiff (mit Flüchtlingen drauf), kluge K.I. & zu kluge K.I., keine Keylogger bei der Arbeit, kein Pass für Saakaschwili, die deutsche Filmförderung hasst Filme und arisches Fitnessstudio 01:27:02 Freitag: Rätsel der japanischen Politik, Asylbewerberüberwachung, Aldi und der Supergin, Staatstrojaner bei Google und Inada macht Schluss 01:49:24 Samstag: Der Emoji-Film und China pult Gas aus Eis 01:56:35 Sonntag: Cybercyber gegen Naturkatastrophen und ein Bürgermeister, der bei einer Drogen-Razzia erschossen wurde 02:03:22 Abschied/Outro

Wochenrückblick des Unbehagens 24 Verehrtes Publikum, wir sind wieder da! Hoffentlich ohne technische Probleme und andere Ärgernisse. Die mp3-Datei wurde diesmal auf anderem Wege ausgegeben, sollte die Qualität ungenügend sein, bitten wir um Meldung. Mit dem Kotelettphantom reden wir über Strom, der teuer ist, weil es nicht billig ist, Japans Politiker, Österreichs Politiker, die Demonstrationen beim G20-Gipfel (und somit über Krawall und Polizeigewalt), Käse, Kängurus, selbstfahrende Autos, Gesichtserkennung, Armut, tote Menschen, die letzte(?) Gangbangparty und andere Probleme der Prostituierten, Trägheit durch Videospiele, Tiefkühlkost mit Nazilogo, den Trollpenis und mehr. Wir wünschen viel Vergnügen. Podcast herunterladen 00:00:00 Intro/Begrüßung/Neues vom Penis 00:06:56 Montag: "Battle for Tokyo!", Camping in Entenwerder, Drama in der Oper und Videospiele, die Männer weniger arbeiten lassen 00:29:25 Dienstag: Mehr Extremisten, Kinderarmut in England und Kampftraining für Polizisten 00:49:18 Mittwoch: Selbstfahrende Autos und Kängurus, Gesichtserkennung in Haneda, Tod des Erzbischofs Meisner, abwechselnd demonstrieren und schlafen, Susis letzte Gangbangparty, 2x Alkohol am Tag führt zu Krebs, Finanztransaktionssteuer und Tiefkühlkost gegen Neo-Nazis 01:18:10 Donnerstag: verspäteter Vergewaltigungsskandal, Katalonien sucht Leichen von Kriegsopfern, John Carpenter macht Fernsehen und mehr Arbeit und Erwerbsarmut 01:37:02 Freitag: Die Polizei bei den G20-Demonstrationen, umgekrempelte Parteien (mit komischen Namen) in Österreich, alles Käse und Atomwaffenverbot 02:10:30 Samstag: Abe schmeißt Inada raus und der mongolische Präsident 02:20:28 Sonntag: Der schwarze Block beim G20 und Strom von der Bahn 02:38:08 Abschied/Outro

The best-selling author discusses Japan Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, scrapping more 2020 Tokyo Olympic venues, singing superstar Hikaru Utada, karoshi and Hall of Fame pitcher Takahiko Bessho.

Dr. Alan Weidner of https://www.massage-chair-relief.com reviews the latest news in the massage chair industry, including new & discontinued Osaki Titan models, an Inada award, Infinity's new headquarters, and much more.

Kompendium 41 Podcast herunterladen Teil 1: Inada on the guillotine – Ein kleiner Kommentar über das politische Elend Japans Nationalismus grassiert auf der ganzen Welt. Japan stellt keine Ausnahme dar, im Gegenteil. Schattenhafte Vereinigungen reichen bis in die obersten Riegen der Politik. Das neu aufgestellte Abe-Kabinett ist bereit das Land patriotisch umzuerziehen, zurück zum Nationalismus der Vorkriegszeit. Doch wer stellt sich Abe und seinen Schergen in den Weg? Wer soll die taffe Verteidigungsminister mit ihren schicken Fukui-Brillen und Netzstrumpfhosen bezwingen, bevor sie zur nächsten Premierministerin wird? Ein düsterer Blick in die Zukunft Japans Verweise: Ich habe natürlich nicht nur Wikipedia als Quelle herangezogen ;) Deutschlandfunk: Japan: Monarchie unter Beobachtung Frau Inada erzählt, warum sie Brillen ohne Stärke trägt und wie sie sich Japan als moralische Supermacht vorstellt (während die Abe-Regierung die Menschrechte einschränken will). Sie offenbart ihren Größenwahn und ihre schlechten Englischkenntnisse, kichert dabei auf eine Weise, die selbst Hillary Clintons Lache sympathisch wirken lässt. The Religious Cult secretly running Japan. Von Jake Adelstein und Mari Yamamoto Bild Quelle: Sankei News Teil 2: Der Tennō mag nicht mehr Am 8.8.2016 sprach der Tennō über die Möglichkeit eines Rücktritt. Bzw. über das Fehler eben dieser. Warum das wichtig für Japan ist, fasst Michael kurz zusammen. Die erwähnten Artikel findet ihr hier: The Daily Beast: The emperor strikes back The Asahi Shimbun: Emperor held regular talks with sons before his broadcast The Asahi Shimbun: Many hurdles to legal changes to allow abdication of emperor The Mainichi: Emperor began to consider abdicating after blood found in stomach 8 years ago The Mainichi: Full text of Emperor Akihito's video message

Dr. Alan Weidner of https://www.massage-chair-relief.com covers the latest news and notes in the massage chair industry. This week's edition includes a chat on warranties, extended Father's Day sales, and a discontinued Inada model.

Inada瞳の中の宇宙この曲を作詞作曲したのは、高校一年生の時です。つまり１５才の頃ですね。当時、フォークソングやパンクロックが大好きで、良く聞いていました。一番最初にカセットデッキで、録音した際には、ハープなんかも弾いていてめちゃくちゃフォークチックな曲でした。その後、２０００年にアルバムを作る際に「この曲良いから入れたら？」と知人に言われて、録り直したものがこのテイクとなっています。高校生の頃に録ったものは、音も荒くとても聞けたものではありませんが、実際は、そっちの方が、勢いと言うかなにか魂の底から歌っている感じがして、個人的には好きだったりします。しかしながら、あまりにも下手な上、ハープはめちゃくちゃという有様でとても聞けたものではない・・・・・・・・。と言う事で今回は、２０００年に録った音を載せました。はっきり言って、こっちも下手だし、あまり変わりない？気もしますが・・・・・・。

Inadafour leaf cloverグレーテルという曲は、私の中でもすごくお気に入りの曲で、前から載せているものもすごくお気に入りですが、いつか録り直したいと思っている曲の一つです。実は、グレーテルの所にも書いたかもしれないですが、この曲は、元々、単純なドラムトラックの上に、ギターを弾きながら適当に歌を歌いながら曲を作っていたら出来てしまったという・・・・・・そんな曲です。その後、何となく録り直す事もなく・・・・・・・・。ずるずると来てしまいました。何度も録り直そうとするのですが、最初に録ったものを何となく越える事が出来ない・・・・・・・。実際には最初に録ったものは、およそ３時間であの状態まで仕上がった作品なので、集中度と言うか思い入れみたいなものがあるのかもしれないですね。このVersionは、ギター１本で取り敢えず歌ってみたって感じです。いつかちゃんと録り直したいなぁと改めて思います。

Inada瞳の中の宇宙この曲は、８年程前に同じ職場にいた同僚が、一年目の途中で、突然亡くなってしまい・・・・・・。私は、月命日の度に彼のお墓に顔を出していたのですが、いつ行っても彼のお墓は、花で溢れていて、こんなに愛されていたんだなと思うと同時に、なぜ彼は亡くなったのだろうとか、色々な事を考えてしまって、彼のように多くの人から愛されている人間がなぜだろう？って・・・・・。すごく理不尽で、儚い世界だって・・・・・・。そうして出来た曲です。

Inada愛という名実は、この曲・・・・・・・。前回通常Versionを載せた際に「特に明記することはない。」と書いているのですが、「愛という名」というアルバムの最初に通常Versionそして、最後にこの今回載せたPure Versionが入ってるという何だか特別な扱いの曲でした。曲調は、高校生の頃に作っていた様なちょっとフォークっぽい感じ。でも、メロディーラインなんかは、結構良いですよね。私個人的には、実は好きな曲です。ただ、重いかなと・・・・・・・。想いが重いかなと・・・・・・。そう思いまして・・・・・・。何となく前回載せた際には、コメントを控えました。ところが、この曲結構色々な方から良い曲ですね。と言われるようになり、「あれ？そういうもの？」って驚いてます。この曲のように深く誰かを想ったり愛したり出来たら良いなぁって思いますね。ちなみに、今回このVersionを載せるにあたり通常版のコメントにも追記させて頂きました。

InadaLove&Truthこの曲は、いわゆるロックが作りた〜いみたいな気持ちで作った曲ですね。こういう曲が作りたくて仕方なくなる時があるんですよね。思いっきりインチキギターソロ全開の一曲ですが、お気に入りです。また、こういう曲が書きたいなぁって思う今日この頃です。

Inada瞳の中の宇宙この曲は、元々２０００年に作成した「RPM」というアルバムに収録した曲です。作詞作曲をしたのは、更に前で、１９９６〜１９９７年頃に作成したようです。あまりにも前の出来事で、うろ覚えですいません。実は、この曲やたらと長い間奏部分があるのですが、２０００年に行ったライブの際にこの部分で何か色々話した記憶があります。ライブは、弟がベースを担当してくれ、その他の音は、この音源からギターやベース、ヴォーカルを取り除いた形で流して使いました、半カラオケ状態のライブでしたが、それまでは、ギター１本で弾き語りという形が多かったので、それなりに楽しんだ気がします。ちなみにその時のライブでは最後にこの曲をやりました。当時すごく思い入れがあった曲の一つです。

InadaNew Recording久々の新曲です。とは言っても、いい加減に録ったものになりますが・・・・・・・。本当は、映像がありこのホームページの宣伝素材です。その内、映像付きのものをホームページ上にも載せるようにしますね。

Inada瞳の中の宇宙この曲は、物語「白い窓」を作った際に、その物語におまけで付けられていた「瞳の中の宇宙」というCDに収録した曲です。物語同様、SIONの「１２号室」という曲からヒントを得て作られています。物語「白い窓」は、Storyに、縮小版が公開されています。

Inada愛という名この曲は、ミニアルバム「愛という名」に収録されていたものです。特に明記する事もありませんが、こういう曲も作っていたってことで・・・・・。追記この曲は、すごく多くの方（女性）から良い曲ですねって言われます。こんなふうに思われたいとか・・・・・・。う〜んと、そういうものなんですかね？私は、重過ぎるかな？って思ったのですが・・・・・・。実際、私はこんなふうに思える女性と出会いたいってそう思います。でも、重過ぎるかな？って思っていたので、特に明記せずに来ました。でも、こんなふうに誰かを愛したいなぁって、そう思います。はははははははは！！恥ずかしい！！

Inada桜の季節この曲は、実にアルバム、「桜の季節」に収録したものです。元々、アルバム「Love & Truth」にシークレットで入れた曲を再レコーディングし直したものです。この曲は、卒業生の為に作られた曲ですが、実は、作成期間が２日しかなくて、違う曲用に作曲したものに、詞だけを書き直したものです。その為、出来が今一つで、気に入らず、ずっと封印してきました。しかし、「新しい風」が出来た今、こういうのも書いたんだよって出しても良いかなぁと思い今回放出する事にしました。

Inadaデモこの曲は、１６歳か１７歳位の時に作ったものです。このヴァージョンは、その後２０歳位の時にカセットタイプのMTRを使い行いました。詞の中に出てくる、ボタンは、私の好きな詩人である中原中也の有名な詩の中の一説を使っています。中原中也は、小学校の授業で習った後、中学生の時に「汚れちまった悲しみに」という詩を改めて読む機会があり、それ以来ずっと愛読しています。彼の残した詩は、私に「生と死」「ささやかな幸せ」「世界の孤独と美しさ」等を考えるきっかけを与えてくれました。私が、最も好きな詩人です。

Inadaデモこの曲は、「瞳」の一番最初に作ったヴァージョンになります。この曲は、前にも書きましたが、作るのにとても時間と労力がかかりました。最初にこのヴァージョンが出来た時はすごく良いものが出来たと思ったのですが、同じアルバムに入れようと思っていた「白詰草」と曲調がかぶってしまい、良さが出せなくなってしまった為に、このヴァージョンは、ボツにしてしまいました。詞の一部と構成、曲調が、違っています。今聞いてもこのヴァージョンは、結構良いなぁと思います。

Inada&Dice KBestこの曲は、「あの海に」の別ヴァージョンです。ギターや、リズムトラック等を作り直したものになります。ギターは単純なリフの繰り返しになっており、リフレインの様にしています。「あの海に」は、再活動後直ぐに出来た曲の内の一つで、個人的にはすごく大切にしている曲の一つです。でも、詩が暗いし、多くの方は、あまり聴きたいタイプの曲ではないと思います。でも、少しでも聴いて頂けたらと思い、このヴァージョンを作りました。

Inadafour leaf cloverこの曲は、アルバム「four leaf clover」に収録された曲で、いわゆるラップっぽい曲です。このアルバムには、「未来の鍵」や、この曲で分かる様にHI-SENSEの影響を強く受けた曲が入っています。このトラックもHI-SENSE用に書いたものですが、使われる充てが無い為に、自分で使ってしまいました。HI-SENSE用に作られた曲は、まだまだあり、今後それらの曲が使用されない場合は、自分用に回して新たな曲を作る事が有りそうです。

Inadaはじまりの詩ずっと卒業生の為にしっかりとした曲を作りたいと思っていました。しかし、なかなか時間に余裕が無く、実際に書いても良い曲が出来なかったりと今まで諦めていました。しかし、この度、曲を作る機会が与えられわずかな製作時間ながらも、このようなとても気に入った楽曲の製作を行う事が出来ました。今まで関わった全ての卒業生とこれからの卒業生に送る曲です。製作過程で、今回はアレンジに悩み、悩んだ末、５ヴァージョンを製作しました。正直、とても気に入っています。実は、この曲は前回のアルバム制作から実に１年６ヶ月ぶりの音楽活動となっています。この間もけして音楽活動をしていなかった訳ではありませんでしたが、音楽の製作を今までのMTRのような物からパソコン（Mac）に移行したりするのに手間取ってしまっており、正式な活動をしてきませんでした。今回は、久しぶりの活動であると同時に、Macへの完全以降をしています。Macを使い、Logic Proというソフトで音楽を製作しています。まだまだ、課題も多く、次の作品作りには、時間が掛かりそうですが、この曲を期に新しい曲の製作に早速少しずつ取りかかろうと思います。時間的な余裕が無く、歌の声が風邪声だったり、演奏が少し荒い所もありますが、是非多くの方に長く聴き続けて頂けたらと思います。

Inadaはじまりの詩このヴァージョンは、ビッグビートやユーロのリズムを取り入れたヴァージョンです。Dice K Remixともいえるヴァージョンだと思います。

Inadaはじまりの詩この曲は、「新しい風」のいわゆるパンクヴァージョンです。実は、ドラム等がまだ未完成ですが、時間的な猶予がなく、このまま発表してしまっています。もう少し時間に余裕ができたら、もう一度トライしようと思っています。

Inadaはじまりの詩このヴァージョンは、オリジナルの曲に、キーボードを使いストリングスを追加したヴァージョンになります。

InadaLove & Truthこの曲は、ミニアルバム「愛という名」に初収録後、気に入っていなかったものをアルバム「Love & Truth」様に新たに録音をし直して収録をしたものになります。この頃の曲は、愛の歌が多いのですが、理由は、この当時製作していた「白い窓」という物語が、愛の物語だったからです。実は、再活動前は、殆ど愛の歌を作る事がなく、いわゆるLoveSongは、あまり手掛けてきませんでした。そういう歌を作ると彼女の為に書いた曲でしょうって思われるのも嫌だったし、何だか格好悪いって思っていたんです。再活動後は、色々な曲を作ろうと思う様になって、このような曲も書く様にしてきました。今は、むしろ愛の歌が多くなった様に思います。こういう曲も、有りなのかなって今は思えます。それに、今なら特定の人に書いた様に思われないですしね。

InadaLove & Truthこの曲も、ミニアルバム「愛という名」に収録後、アルバム用に作り直したものになります。

InadaLove & Truthアルバム「Love & Truth」に収録されたオリジナルのものになります。アルバム「Love & Truth」は、まだMRSに慣れていないのと、再活動後なかなか思い通りに曲作りが出来ないのとがあり、悔いの残る作品が多いのも事実です。

Inada愛という名この曲は、カバー曲です。とても有名な曲ですが、U2のカバーヴァージョンを聞いて、かっこいいと思い作成してみました。発音等のことを言ったらきりがないのでしょうが、結構気に入ったアレンジが出来たと、自分では満足しています。ちなみに、U2のカバーヴァージョンは、必聴です。めちゃくちゃかっこいいので、是非機会があったら聞いてみて下さい。

Inada愛という名この曲は、物語「白い窓」におまけで付けられていたCDに収録後、再活動一作目に作成したミニアルバム「愛という名」にヴァージョン違いで収録されたものです。曲の中に出てくるドロップは、佐久間ドロップです。あの缶に入った飴です。あの缶の質感といい懐かしい味といい、今でも良く購入する好きなドロップです。でも、実は、ハッカとチョコレートがあんまり好きじゃなくて、いつも缶の中に残っちゃうんですよね。あの缶から、何が出るかなぁってワクワクする感じ・・・・・分かるかなぁ？

Inada瞳の中の宇宙「瞳の中の宇宙」は、物語「白い窓」におまけとして付けられていたCDのタイトルです。この曲は、１９９９年年末から２０００年年始にかけて製作した活動停止前に作られた最後のアルバムに収録されていたものになります。カセットタイプのMTRを使用して製作されています。当時、色々なタイプの曲を作りたいと思い、こんなラップもどきの曲も作っていました。ベースは、弟が弾いてくれています。

Inada白詰草　Promotional Diskこの曲は、アルバム「four leaf clover」の製作前に作られたPromotional Diskに収録された曲になります。その後アルバムにも収録されましたが、マスタリングが若干違いこちらのヴァージョンの方が、後になって好きだったんだなぁと気付きました。ずっと同じ感じの曲調で、単調過ぎてしまいつまらない反面その分、詞を聞いてもらえるんじゃないかと思い単調なままにしています。実は、「瞳」等の曲も同じような理由から、単調なままにしています。しかし、実際には、長いときついものがありますね。

InadaLove & Truthこの曲は、「愛してる」の別ヴァージョンとなっています。「愛してる」が出来て直ぐにロックがしたいと思い立ち、作ったものになっています。実は、アルバム収録以前に表現活動一発目として２００７年１２月に作った本「白い窓」のおまけとして付けたものが、最初の発表になります。ちなみに、「白い窓」は、５０冊程作った時点で、印刷、製本等の大変さから、作るのを止めてしまい、現在は、製作していません。自費出版ならぬ、事故出版の限界を感じました。ちなみにアルバムは、頼まれると製作していますが、こちらも、完全自己出版の為、製作枚数が限られており、バックオーダーに追われる感じです。こんな事やってる暇があったら早く作れよって怒ってる人がいるんじゃないでしょうか？もう暫くお待ち下さい。この場をお借りしてお詫びをするなら、「Love & Truth」の歌詞カード等の原稿が見当たらない為、現在作り直しております。出来る事なら、曲も作り直したいくらいですが、いつになるか分からないので、歌詞カード等の外装品を作り直して出来次第お届け致します。って結局言い訳ですね。

InadaLove & Truthこの曲は、アルバム「Love & Truth」に収録された曲です。この曲は、大好きな浅井健一の曲に触発されて作ったものです。浅井健一の作る曲は、激しさの中にある、美しいメロディーラインや、綺麗な言葉と激しい言葉のコントラストがとても好きです。彼の曲は、純粋さがにじみ出ているのも、好きな理由の一つです。あんな曲が書けたら良いのにっていつも思います。

Inadafour leaf cloverこの曲は、「Love & Truth」に収録の同曲をアレンジし直したものとなっています。はっきり言って最初に作ったものは、駄作でひどいものでした。このヴァージョンも苦肉の作で、別の曲のトラックをそのまま使い回しています。この「新しい国」は、詞がとても気に入っていて、コンセプトは、なかなか面白いと思います。しかし、この詞を聴かせる曲が出来ない。未だ後悔の多い曲です。

Inadaデモこの曲は、以前に卒業生に向けて曲を作った際に、はじめに出来た曲ですがボツにした曲です。（実は、本職は、教育関係で仕事をしています。）結局、この曲は、暗いし、うっとうしい内容かなと思いただのデモのまま改めて、曲にする事無く、お蔵入りしてしまいました。でも、結構好きなんですよね。こういう暗くて訴える感じの曲って・・・・・

InadaLove & Truthこの曲も、浅井健一に触発されて作った曲です。タイトル、歌詞、曲、全てが浅井健一よりです。技術は足下にも寄りませんが・・・・・　この当時は、まだ、再活動直後の手探りな感じで、こんな曲を作りたいなぁって思ったら、まず好きな曲を聴いて、まねてみるって感じで、最初に音楽を始めた時にかなり近かった様に思います。

InadaBestこの曲は、元々「Love & Truth」というアルバムに収録していた曲をアコースティックヴァージョンにしてみたものです。キーボードを使い、ストリングスなんかも入れてみましたが、出来は、微妙ですね。結構気に入っていますが、技術的なことを言うと今一つ、う〜んって感じです。

InadaBestこの曲は、高校生の時に、知り合いが亡くなった事を期に書いたものになっています。最初は、アコースティックギターのみのシンプルな曲でしたが、活動を停止する前の２０００年にレコーディングをし、この曲は完成しました。当時は、まだ、カセットタイプのMTRを使用して曲作りをしていました。この曲も同様にYAMAHAのカセットタイプのMTRを使用して作られています。今から、１５年以上前に作った曲ですが、今でも好きな曲の一つです。先日、インディーズ活動をしている知り合いが、曲を作り直して、カバーしCDにして発売を始めました。全国のレコード屋で販売されています。クレジットには、私の名前も、もちろん入っていて、ちょっと驚いています。（BC 5AMの 「4REAL」というアルバムに入っています。)

InadaLove & Truth活動を停止していた２０００年２月から２００７年の８年間の間に唯一作られた曲です。部屋で、ギターを久しぶりに弾いていた際に、ふと浮かんだメロディーと詞を口ずさんでいたら出来た曲で、その後すぐにHDDタイプのレコーディング機材を購入し録音したものです。それまで、曲を作ろうなんて思いもしなかったのに、作り始めたら、どんどんと出来ていって、久しぶりに歌いたいなぁって感じた想い出の曲です。この曲がきっかけで、現在の再活動がスタートしました。自分には、伝えたい言葉があってメロディーがあると再認識させてくれた大切な曲です。

Inada桜の季節２００８年４月に制作したミニアルバム「桜の季節」に収録したタイトル曲です。桜をテーマに曲を作ろうと思い作られたものです。爽やかな感じを出そうと思い作ったら、こんな感じの曲になりました。曲は、当時聴きまくっていたスペースカウボーイに影響されています。っていうかまんまですね・・・・・

Inadafour leaf Cloverこの曲は、未来を作っていく子ども達への応援歌です。　共に活動をするHI-SENSEの影響でHip-Hopばかりを聞いていた時に出来た曲です。ラップは好きでしたが、やるのはとても無理と思っていたのですが、やってみたくてやってみました。まぁ、にわかラッパー剥き出しですね。本気でラップをしている人に怒られそうで怖いです。でも、本気で作ったから許してやって下さい。

Inada桜の季節QueenのWe Will Rock Youが大好きで、自分が日本語で歌うならこんな感じかなと詞を付けてみました。実は、このトラックは元々「Love & Truth」に収録の「新しい国」のトラックをそのまま使い回しています。We Will Rock Youは名曲ですよね。あんな曲を作りたいと思ったけど、イメージが強すぎて出来ない。結局、じゃああの素晴らしいメロディーラインと曲の感じをそのまま使ちゃえってことで、こんな感じです。

Inadaデモ結構気に入っている曲ですが、音のバランスや、歌が気に入っていない為、録り直そうと思っています。曲や詞は気に入っているのですが、とにかく、声が出ていない。もうちょいマシになるように頑張ります。

Inadaデモこの曲は、詞が出来ていたものに取り敢えず曲を付けてみたら予想以上に気に入ってしまってそのまま発表してしまった曲です。聞くと気付くと思いますが、演奏はかなりいい加減で、ミストーンはあるし、ドラムパターンはワンパターンだしで、ひどい感じです。しかし、なぜかとても気に入っていて、好きな曲です。いつかしっかりと録り直したい曲です。

InadaLove & TruthZOOMのMRSを使用して作成。２００８年に作成したアルバム「Love & Truth」に収録。この曲は、私の遺書の様な曲です。これとは別に、Dance Version等が存在しますが、今回は、一番シンプルなこのヴァージョンを収録しました。

Inadafour leaf cloverZOOMのMRS1266を使用して作成。２００９年に作成したアルバム「four leaf clover」に収録。この曲は、葉山のよつば写真さんをイメージして作った曲です。とっても良い写真を撮ってくれる写真屋さんです。素晴らしい写真に感謝してこの曲を作り、プレゼントさせてもらいました。

InadaLove & TruthZoomのMRS1266を使用して作成した曲です。２００８年に作成したアルバム「Love & Truth」の２曲目に収録したヴァージョンです。

Inadafour leaf cloverMRS1266を使用して作成。２００９年に作成したアルバム「four leaf clover」に収録。この曲は、プロのフォトグラファーの方に書いた曲です。誰かをイメージして曲を作ることは殆どないので、苦労しました。自分の好きなことや、信じる道を生きる人って良いですよね。そんな輝きを持った曲だと思います。

demo clip.mp3 * title : port doc.1-5 artist : V.A. cat no. : PTCD001 track.09 "-[8] / Kozo Inada [digital narcis]" * 30sec.demo clip.mp3 more informations -> http://port-label.jp/catalog/001.htm