Portrait of a Japanese

"We'll defeat the Japanese in the end," said Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, "but we shouldn't look at the war with them through rose-colored glasses."

Secretary Stimson has had a record of Tightness about the Japanese stretching back to 1931, when, as Secretary of State, he condemned the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in terms far stronger than the rest of the diplomatic world was prepared then to accept. As Secretary of War he has personally been guilty of no cocky bombast, has indulged no huggermugger secrecy, has, instead, been frank, grave, honest. And so his words last week deserved a hearing.

He gave the warning because he respects the Japanese man as a fighting mechanism and wants the U.S. public not to underrate that mechanism. "There have been reports," he said, "that the Japanese in the Philippines are badly trained troops, ill-equipped. I regret to say that these are erroneous. The cold truth is that the Japanese are veterans and they are well-equipped. The Japanese soldier is short, wiry and tough. He is well-disciplined.

The Japanese staff officers' work has been of a high order." Outside. In battle dress a Japanese soldier looks like a badly wrapped brown paper package. His legs are too short, his pants are baggy, his leggings droop, his tunic is loose, his kit askew. He wears muddy leather shoes. He may have on a sweater or messy fatigue clothes.

But the sloppiness is misleading. For his size, this man-weapon carries an extraordinary amount of equipment. His .25-caliber rifle or machine gun is light and accurate to 1,000 yards. He can carry 400 rounds of its little bullets, twice as many as the load of larger bullets the larger U.S. trooper totes. He carries a bayonet, a canteen, a helmet with a little gold star on it. He carries five days' rations of rice and sardines, and he tends his own cooking.

Physically he is as tough as he is un handsome. From the top of his shaved head to the bottom of his splay-toed feet he is hard. His buttocks are big with marching. His arms are strong, and he can dig himself into a shallow trench quickly and neatly. His eyes are generally good, and there is no physical reason why his aim should not be clean.

He walks like a duck, runs like a man cut off at the knees. "They didn't charge," said one U.S. officer, describing a Japanese advance, "but crouched forward just a little bit, lifting their knees high in a sort of imitation goosestep. They kept coming forward in pairs, one directly behind the other."