The Image of British Intelligence Service toward Japan, 1937-1941: The Gap between Perceptions and Realities

Abstract

In the early stage of the Pacific War, the British army suffered a humiliating defeat in Malaya, and the Royal Navy lost its capital ships. These events really shocked policy makers in Whitehall. Before the war, they did not believe that Japan would wage a war against Britain and the United States in spite of an ample evidence of Japanese intentions to expand toward South East Asia. British intelligence organization, such as the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) and the intelligence divisions of each military service also failed to grasp Japanese military capabilities and her exact intentions. Policy makers and intelligence officers underestimated Japanese military performance and her intention toward Malaya and Singapore. Therefore this thesis will follow the reason why Britain failed to estimate Japanese capabilities properly.
As far as military intelligence concerned, such as NID (Naval Intelligence Division) and MI2c (Military Intelligence Section dealing with Asia) underestimated Japanese military capabilities, while they overestimated British troops in South East Asia. The military intelligence faced difficulties to collect information in Japan, mainly because of a Japanese counter intelligence. As a result, they constructed an image of Japanese troops that Japan was the second-class force compared with the British.
It was also difficult for SIS and FECB (Far Eastern Combined Bureau) to operate in the East Asia. They were suffered from lack of funds and personnel and it is said that the SIS Far East could not get useful information in this area. The FECB, code-breaking organization in Asia, succeeded in breaking several Japanese diplomatic and naval cipher. The FECB could estimate the Japanese potential capabilities and intentions to some extent, but unfortunately, reports from FECB were called ‘alarmist’ or ‘defeatist’ by staff officers and decision-makers in Whitehall.
However, there is a fundamental problem, why neither staff officers nor decision-makers in Whitehall and Singapore doubted that most of reports from intelligence services referred to only the deficiencies of Japanese troops. In fact, there were several reports, which stressed positive aspects of Japanese troops, but finally these reports were rejected as ‘unrealistic’. There appeared several reasons as follows why officers did not believe the positive reports; difficulties of two frontal wars in Europe and Asia, British ethnocentrism related with racial prejudice, and lack of specialists of Far Eastern affairs.
Finally not only decision-makers, but also intelligence officers did not believe that Japan would wage a war against Britain in 1941. Intelligence officers sent so many useless reports to Whitehall, and politicians did accept these incorrect reports undoubtedly and formed the Far Eastern strategy, which would lead the disaster of Singapore.