Here it is
CHAPTER ONE:
Development and Evolution of the Japanese Steel Helmet and its Accessories
Japan’s First Army Steel Helmet, the 1918 “Siberian Incident Model”
“Ship what helmet?”
On July 19th, 1918 a packet marked “Secret” arrived at the Army’s Accounting Office in Tokyo. The delivery was from the Ministry of the Army’s Weapons Bureau, Equipment Section（兵器局器材課）.
It contained two sheaves of documents, each with official cover sheets with sign-off boxes, where members of the Army hierarchy were to affix their stamps of approval from the lowly clerk, who had to handwrite the document, all the way up to the Minister of the Army, Lt. General Tanaka himself. The cover sheets had consecutive document numbers “Ou-Uke-Dai 1110(欧受第１１１０)” and “Ou-Uke-Dai 1111”, the “Ou-Uke” prefix being the designation for the Army’s World War I files. One document was titled, “Regarding the production of Steel Head Armor*”, the other, “Regarding the dispatch of Head Armors”.
They were copies of orders to produce and immediately deliver 20,000 helmets. Despite the unmistakable urgency in the tone of the message, the Accounting Office would have had every reason to ask, “What helmet?”, as the Japanese Army’s success in taking away Germany’s possessions in China during WW1 had already been achieved without having any steel helmet to wear, and the opposing 4,700 German soldiers were safely in POW camps in Japan.
Besides, Japan had no experience in mass-producing steel helmets; there was no way production and shipment could be managed at such short notice. The first Army steel helmet for the Japanese troops already seemed to have missed the war and this official paperwork made it all look like something born of a panic-stricken desk jockey’s knee jerk.
*The Japanese word for “steel helmet” evolved over the years from “Tetsu Kabuto” to simply “Kabuto” and finally to “Tetsu Bou”. Instead of simply translating it as steel helmet, the author has tried to reflect this transition of nomenclature into English at the risk of sounding somewhat archaic.
President Wilson’s request
The seemingly uncharacteristic haste in which the Japanese Army jumped into its first helmet production was actually in response to an urgent request from US President Wilson, received earlier that month by the Japanese government. He had requested Japan to join America in sending troops to Siberia, into Russia where a raging Bolshevik Revolution was threatening the world’s balance, first by dropping their war against Germany the Bolsheviks freed the Germans from the eastern front, allowing the Kaiser to shift all his strength against France and England. Secondly, communist Russia would become a threat to Japan, which shared borders with Russia in her holdings in Manchuria and Korea. Furthermore, the separate peace that the Russians arranged with the Germans was going to allow huge stock piles of war supplies in several Russian ports to fall into German hands. Luckily, however, war supplies in Vladivostok had already been secured earlier that year by the British Navy that sent a ship there from Hong Kong and the Japanese Navy that responded to the call of the British by dispatching a shipload of Naval Landing Forces.
The pretense for the armed intervention into the Russian Revolution was to rescue a 50,000 man Czech Legion trapped in Siberia behind enemy lines, who had been fighting WWI as an ally of America and Japan. This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Siberian Intervention.
After a heated debate in the diet, the Japanese government agreed to send 12,000 troops, which by the end, swelled to 73,000 troops. Japan’s Siberian expedition, which was to last 4 years and 3 months, started with the landing of the 12th Infantry Division in Vladivostok on 11th August, 1918. The 7th and 3rd Divisions also followed soon from Manchuria and Mongolia respectively.
The Army’s Cover-up
With the historical context now established, we can now understand the haste and urgency the Army found itself in July 1918.
The first document, “Regarding the production of Steel Head Armor”, was issued on July 15th and reads “To the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal（東京砲兵工廠）. Twenty thousand Steel Head Armors are to be produced immediately and handed over to the Army Main Arsenal (陸軍兵器本廠). Expenses thereof are to be invoiced to the Main Arsenal under the account of Military Contingency Expenses”. On the same sheet, a message addressed to the Army Main Arsenal repeats the same. Notes that must have been added later say “In view of critical developments of the times, the need for preparation and immediate production is endorsed as per the aforementioned plan”. “The cost involved would be approximately 100,000 Yen”
The second document, “Regarding the dispatch of Head Armors” reads “To the Main Arsenal. The following dispatch of prototype head armors are to be arranged as emergency preparation for the 7th Division and the 40th Infantry Brigade. The freighting costs thereof are to be invoiced to the Army Tokyo Accounting Office as Military Contingency Expenses.”, and continues to specify the delivery as “7,000 pieces to the Army Weapons Department, Kwantung Leased Territory Administration (in Port Arthur),
3,800 pieces to the Yongsan Arsenal (in Korea)”. An additional note attached by the Vice Minister and his aide clarifies that the shipment of 7,000 was for the 7th division and the 3,800 for the 40th Brigade and explains that the delivery notice was sent in advance, due to the urgency of the situation.
Placing an order for 20,000 steel helmets never before mass produced in Japan, as late as 19th July for delivery to troops that in hindsight landed in Russia on 11th August, just didn’t make sense, until the author discovered other secret communications that suggest the official paperwork must have been re-dated to placate some bureaucrat and that things had been already been in motion for a while behind closed doors at the Army.
A virtual copy of the order for helmet production exists with an April 18th date, the only difference being an additional line after the instruction on the expense account to charge, it says “Regarding specs, you are requested to discuss them with the Army Technical Assessment Department (技術審査部)” and besides the cost estimate of 100,000 Yen, a second line saying “A prototype sample is in our Equipment Office”. Furthermore, documents that the Army Accounting Office prepared to justify its “Military Contingency Expenses” to the Ministry of Finance has as attachment a letter dated as late as August 2 from the Weapons Bureau to the Chief of the Technical Assessment Department informing them of the order and the need that they need to advise the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal regards specs. One can conclude from this that they had to hide from the civilians of the Ministry of Finance that the Army had once again taken matters into its own hands on matters of war and jumped the gun by 3 months.
Then on August 3rd, a letter went out to the chief of staff of the 12th Division that 7,500 helmets and 3,000 gas masks were on their way for them to carry. This is followed by a letter dated August 26th ordering the Main Arsenal to deliver 8,000 helmets and 10,000 gasmasks to the 3rd Division.
So the tally of helmets issued was—
12th Division: 7,500 3rd Division: 8,000
7th Division: 7,000 40th Brigade: 3,800
Total 26,300
Mismanaged Expectations
Despite all the hectic activity to send the new helmets into the battlefield, the author is so far not aware of any evidence in the form of photos, etc that the helmets were actually worn by the troops in Siberia. In the author’s opinion, it is very likely that these helmets were rarely worn, if at all, by the troops that received them. When one reads between the lines of some reports from 1918, it becomes clear that the troops took the first ever gas masks and helmets to be the “wonder weapons” that would make them impervious to poison gas and bullets. So when they received a small quantity of helmets in advance for field testing, they invariably took them out to the firing range and soon their confidence in the new wonder weapon was as badly bullet-ridden as the shot up helmets they sent back to the Weapons Bureau.
One report dated 13th September 1918 from the Commander of the 62nd Infantry Regiment, Isamu Watanabe, addressed to Army Minister, Oshima explains that a helmet provided to the regiment as a “weapon” to be tested was received on 19th July, and was taken to the regimental firing range for impact testing on the 24th, in which they fired 25 rounds at the helmet with a Type 38 rifle from a distance of 200 meters. The 5 rounds that hit all penetrated the helmet. The damaged helmet was being returned to the Weapons Bureau.
According to an Army memo issued in mid May of 1918, Infantry and engineer regiments were to be shipped 10 helmets each for testing (the Infantry School received 300 pieces), but as the Army failed to specify the nature of testing to be conducted, what transpired at the 62nd regiment appears to have been a widespread reaction by the regiments that received the helmets.
This must have caused uproar, as the Weapons Bureau was forced to issue a damage control memo to all divisions in early August to explain that “the Steel Head Armor is not made to be impervious to rifle rounds nor shrapnel. As such, it was never the intention of this office to have your units conduct experiments on this aspect”. By then the 12th Division was already unleashed and such excuses would have only fallen upon deaf ears this late in the game.
The Army soldiers had been fighting at the front, wearing visor caps with a bright red cap band, an ideal invitation for an enemy bullet to the head, which for a Japanese soldier must have been a badge of courage of sorts. Now they found that they were to be encumbered by a heavy pot on their heads that didn’t do much, and in those circumstances, it is easy to imagine Japanese soldiers choosing, out of bravado, to show the Americans, British and other troops in Siberia that the Japanese soldier required no such protection. The damage was done and the Weapons Bureau’s failure to manage the expectations of the soldier probably doomed the helmet to oblivion.
The final document that the author has located that refers to this helmet directly is the development report attached to the type approval request of 1930 for the type 90 helmet in which they mention that they also included the helmet produced in 1918 at the time of the “Siberian Incident” in their comparative studies..
CHAPTER ONE:
Development and Evolution of the Japanese Steel Helmet and its Accessories
Japan’s First Army Steel Helmet, the 1918 “Siberian Incident Model”
“Ship what helmet?”
On July 19th, 1918 a packet marked “Secret” arrived at the Army’s Accounting Office in Tokyo. The delivery was from the Ministry of the Army’s Weapons Bureau, Equipment Section（兵器局器材課）.
It contained two sheaves of documents, each with official cover sheets with sign-off boxes, where members of the Army hierarchy were to affix their stamps of approval from the lowly clerk, who had to handwrite the document, all the way up to the Minister of the Army, Lt. General Tanaka himself. The cover sheets had consecutive document numbers “Ou-Uke-Dai 1110(欧受第１１１０)” and “Ou-Uke-Dai 1111”, the “Ou-Uke” prefix being the designation for the Army’s World War I files. One document was titled, “Regarding the production of Steel Head Armor*”, the other, “Regarding the dispatch of Head Armors”.
They were copies of orders to produce and immediately deliver 20,000 helmets. Despite the unmistakable urgency in the tone of the message, the Accounting Office would have had every reason to ask, “What helmet?”, as the Japanese Army’s success in taking away Germany’s possessions in China during WW1 had already been achieved without having any steel helmet to wear, and the opposing 4,700 German soldiers were safely in POW camps in Japan.
Besides, Japan had no experience in mass-producing steel helmets; there was no way production and shipment could be managed at such short notice. The first Army steel helmet for the Japanese troops already seemed to have missed the war and this official paperwork made it all look like something born of a panic-stricken desk jockey’s knee jerk.
*The Japanese word for “steel helmet” evolved over the years from “Tetsu Kabuto” to simply “Kabuto” and finally to “Tetsu Bou”. Instead of simply translating it as steel helmet, the author has tried to reflect this transition of nomenclature into English at the risk of sounding somewhat archaic.
President Wilson’s request
The seemingly uncharacteristic haste in which the Japanese Army jumped into its first helmet production was actually in response to an urgent request from US President Wilson, received earlier that month by the Japanese government. He had requested Japan to join America in sending troops to Siberia, into Russia where a raging Bolshevik Revolution was threatening the world’s balance, first by dropping their war against Germany the Bolsheviks freed the Germans from the eastern front, allowing the Kaiser to shift all his strength against France and England. Secondly, communist Russia would become a threat to Japan, which shared borders with Russia in her holdings in Manchuria and Korea. Furthermore, the separate peace that the Russians arranged with the Germans was going to allow huge stock piles of war supplies in several Russian ports to fall into German hands. Luckily, however, war supplies in Vladivostok had already been secured earlier that year by the British Navy that sent a ship there from Hong Kong and the Japanese Navy that responded to the call of the British by dispatching a shipload of Naval Landing Forces.
The pretense for the armed intervention into the Russian Revolution was to rescue a 50,000 man Czech Legion trapped in Siberia behind enemy lines, who had been fighting WWI as an ally of America and Japan. This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Siberian Intervention.
After a heated debate in the diet, the Japanese government agreed to send 12,000 troops, which by the end, swelled to 73,000 troops. Japan’s Siberian expedition, which was to last 4 years and 3 months, started with the landing of the 12th Infantry Division in Vladivostok on 11th August, 1918. The 7th and 3rd Divisions also followed soon from Manchuria and Mongolia respectively.
The Army’s Cover-up
With the historical context now established, we can now understand the haste and urgency the Army found itself in July 1918.
The first document, “Regarding the production of Steel Head Armor”, was issued on July 15th and reads “To the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal（東京砲兵工廠）. Twenty thousand Steel Head Armors are to be produced immediately and handed over to the Army Main Arsenal (陸軍兵器本廠). Expenses thereof are to be invoiced to the Main Arsenal under the account of Military Contingency Expenses”. On the same sheet, a message addressed to the Army Main Arsenal repeats the same. Notes that must have been added later say “In view of critical developments of the times, the need for preparation and immediate production is endorsed as per the aforementioned plan”. “The cost involved would be approximately 100,000 Yen”
The second document, “Regarding the dispatch of Head Armors” reads “To the Main Arsenal. The following dispatch of prototype head armors are to be arranged as emergency preparation for the 7th Division and the 40th Infantry Brigade. The freighting costs thereof are to be invoiced to the Army Tokyo Accounting Office as Military Contingency Expenses.”, and continues to specify the delivery as “7,000 pieces to the Army Weapons Department, Kwantung Leased Territory Administration (in Port Arthur),
3,800 pieces to the Yongsan Arsenal (in Korea)”. An additional note attached by the Vice Minister and his aide clarifies that the shipment of 7,000 was for the 7th division and the 3,800 for the 40th Brigade and explains that the delivery notice was sent in advance, due to the urgency of the situation.
Placing an order for 20,000 steel helmets never before mass produced in Japan, as late as 19th July for delivery to troops that in hindsight landed in Russia on 11th August, just didn’t make sense, until the author discovered other secret communications that suggest the official paperwork must have been re-dated to placate some bureaucrat and that things had been already been in motion for a while behind closed doors at the Army.
A virtual copy of the order for helmet production exists with an April 18th date, the only difference being an additional line after the instruction on the expense account to charge, it says “Regarding specs, you are requested to discuss them with the Army Technical Assessment Department (技術審査部)” and besides the cost estimate of 100,000 Yen, a second line saying “A prototype sample is in our Equipment Office”. Furthermore, documents that the Army Accounting Office prepared to justify its “Military Contingency Expenses” to the Ministry of Finance has as attachment a letter dated as late as August 2 from the Weapons Bureau to the Chief of the Technical Assessment Department informing them of the order and the need that they need to advise the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal regards specs. One can conclude from this that they had to hide from the civilians of the Ministry of Finance that the Army had once again taken matters into its own hands on matters of war and jumped the gun by 3 months.
Then on August 3rd, a letter went out to the chief of staff of the 12th Division that 7,500 helmets and 3,000 gas masks were on their way for them to carry. This is followed by a letter dated August 26th ordering the Main Arsenal to deliver 8,000 helmets and 10,000 gasmasks to the 3rd Division.
So the tally of helmets issued was—
12th Division: 7,500 3rd Division: 8,000
7th Division: 7,000 40th Brigade: 3,800
Total 26,300
Mismanaged Expectations
Despite all the hectic activity to send the new helmets into the battlefield, the author is so far not aware of any evidence in the form of photos, etc that the helmets were actually worn by the troops in Siberia. In the author’s opinion, it is very likely that these helmets were rarely worn, if at all, by the troops that received them. When one reads between the lines of some reports from 1918, it becomes clear that the troops took the first ever gas masks and helmets to be the “wonder weapons” that would make them impervious to poison gas and bullets. So when they received a small quantity of helmets in advance for field testing, they invariably took them out to the firing range and soon their confidence in the new wonder weapon was as badly bullet-ridden as the shot up helmets they sent back to the Weapons Bureau.
One report dated 13th September 1918 from the Commander of the 62nd Infantry Regiment, Isamu Watanabe, addressed to Army Minister, Oshima explains that a helmet provided to the regiment as a “weapon” to be tested was received on 19th July, and was taken to the regimental firing range for impact testing on the 24th, in which they fired 25 rounds at the helmet with a Type 38 rifle from a distance of 200 meters. The 5 rounds that hit all penetrated the helmet. The damaged helmet was being returned to the Weapons Bureau.
According to an Army memo issued in mid May of 1918, Infantry and engineer regiments were to be shipped 10 helmets each for testing (the Infantry School received 300 pieces), but as the Army failed to specify the nature of testing to be conducted, what transpired at the 62nd regiment appears to have been a widespread reaction by the regiments that received the helmets.
This must have caused uproar, as the Weapons Bureau was forced to issue a damage control memo to all divisions in early August to explain that “the Steel Head Armor is not made to be impervious to rifle rounds nor shrapnel. As such, it was never the intention of this office to have your units conduct experiments on this aspect”. By then the 12th Division was already unleashed and such excuses would have only fallen upon deaf ears this late in the game.
The Army soldiers had been fighting at the front, wearing visor caps with a bright red cap band, an ideal invitation for an enemy bullet to the head, which for a Japanese soldier must have been a badge of courage of sorts. Now they found that they were to be encumbered by a heavy pot on their heads that didn’t do much, and in those circumstances, it is easy to imagine Japanese soldiers choosing, out of bravado, to show the Americans, British and other troops in Siberia that the Japanese soldier required no such protection. The damage was done and the Weapons Bureau’s failure to manage the expectations of the soldier probably doomed the helmet to oblivion.
The final document that the author has located that refers to this helmet directly is the development report attached to the type approval request of 1930 for the type 90 helmet in which they mention that they also included the helmet produced in 1918 at the time of the “Siberian Incident” in their comparative studies..
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