Production

Perry Special Collections, Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

Used by permission.

Production is where economics meets warfare. The capacity of each belligerent nation to wage modern war depended both on the soundness of its military doctrine and on its ability to equip and supply a large fighting force. Apologists for the Axis have long argued that the Allies won, not because they fought better, but because they buried the Axis with their massive production. There is considerable evidence supporting this view.

Consider the following table of relative production (Hastings 2007):

Total production, 1942-1945

This table exaggerates the disparity in oil production, since it does not include production from the oilfields of southeast Asia seized by Japan in the early months of the war. Nevertheless, the overall picture of a huge disparity in production between the United States and Japan is correct. Total Japanese industrial capacity was about 10% that of the United States. Even with 70% of U.S. resources pledged to the war in Europe, Japan was outproduced in every important category.

In July 1943 Tojo announced new measures to increase production. These included tighter restrictions on civilian production, a seven day work week, and the abolition of the age limit of 60 for war production. Women began taking on traditionally male jobs such as traffic direction and streetcar operation. The entertainment industry was shut down and high school students began working part-time in the factories. None of this was sufficient to close the production gap with the Americans.

By 1944 the Japanese industrial labor force had increased from 5.8 million in 1930 to 9.5 million. However, this increase included increased numbers of women and about a million Korean workers, who likely lacked the capability or motivation of Japanese men. By contrast, the U.S. industrial labor force included 13 million women alone by 1940, and the industrial labor force peaked at 45,390,000 in 1943. As with the Japanese, much of the American wartime labor force included women.

Japan was far poorer in natural resources than the United States, even including the Southern Resource Area (Nampū Yōiki) seized during the initial Japanese offensive. The only important resource Japan produced at anything close to its wartime needs was coal. The only metal mined in any quantity in Japan was copper, which still met only about 50% of Japan's needs. Japan's war was essentially a race to build an impenetrable perimeter and wear the Allies down before Japan's own stockpiles of essential raw commodities ran out. This strategy failed, both because the Americans proved far more determined than the Japanese anticipated, and because the submarine blockade of Japan was effective at cutting off exports from conquered territories.

Production figures for ships and aircraft are tracked individually by type in this Encyclopedia.

Production Models

An economy is a terribly difficult thing to model.  Production depends on a complex interplay between availability of raw commodities, number of laborers with various levels of skills, and the foresight of national leadership in anticipating what to produce. The simplest wargame production models simply copy the historical production figures, without any modification for deviations of the course of the game from the actual history. More sophisticated production models take the historical production figures as a baseline, but modify these based on control of sources of raw commodities. The groundbreaking Pacific War (1985) based Japanese air squadron and ground battalion replacement rates on control of oil fields but did not allow any deviation from the historical production of warships or raising of new divisions.

A really sophisticated production model would include the effects of shifting manpower from one activity to another, including the drafting of industrial labor into the armed forces. Constructing such a model would be a fascinating exercise for an economist, but perhaps of less interest to most students of military history. However, since most wargaming now takes place with a high level of computer assistance, there is no fundamental difficulty in coding a fairly sophisticated production model into a simulation without burdening the players with the task of managing its details.

United States

Armament production figures were:

It is important to note that the American production miracle did not really swing into high gear until 1943. By then the decisive campaigns of Midway, Guadalcanal, Stalingrad, and Tunisia had already been decided. During the crucial first year of the war, the American logistical situation was little short of parlous. Equipment was routinely stripped from training units to fill out the TO&E of units deploying overseas.

Thereafter Allied deployed fighting strength was limited by availability of shipping and manpower, not by availability of equipment.

U.S. Army deployment of manpower overseas was as follows:

Japan

Japanese production figures include:

The fruits of victory were not very fruitful. McClain (2002) gives coal production in Manchuria and north China as 22.8 million tons in 1941, suggesting much more was produced than could be shipped to Japan. Presumably much of the rest was used by puppet industries. In addition to these imports, Japan imported 2,515 thousand tons of scrap iron in 1939, the dramatic decrease being due to the scrap iron embargo.

Much of the difficulty was due to the chronic shortage of shipping:

In 1943, Tojo ordered that aircraft production be given top priority. The effects on (for example) tank production are clear from the previous tables. Japanese aircraft production did increase markedly:

References

Bureau of Labor Statistics (accessed 2008-11-8)

Cohen (1949)

Drea (2009)

Hastings (2007)

Hoyt (1993)
Leighton and Coakley (1955)

McLain (2002)

Victory Games (1985)

The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2008-2010 by Kent G. Budge. Index

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