Warren J. Clear

Close-up of the Jap Fighting Man Warren J. Clear

In the immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American military was in desperate need of information on all aspects of Japan's armed forces. Lieutenant Colonel Warren J. Clear had served in Japan in the 1920s as a language officer, participated in an intelligence mission to Asia in 1941 and, finding himself in Manila at the outbreak of the war, was attached to General MacArthur's staff until evacuated by submarine in 1942. For the balance of the war, he taught classes on the Japanese Army at the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Close-Up of the Jap Fighting Man, originally delivered by Clear in October 1942 as a lecture at Fort Leavenworth, is both a document reflecting tensions of the period in which it was composed and a little-known source of information on the Japanese military as perceived by an intelligent but unsympathetic observer. It includes an invaluable first-hand report on Clear's assignment to the Japanese Army's Second Division during his tour of duty in Japan, excerpts from other pre-war military reports, and first-hand testimony regarding Japanese operations in the Philippines. Both as a primary source on Japanese military thinking and practice and a reflection of the racial thinking so prevalent during this period, Close-Up of the Jap Fighting Man is in its own way a small classic.