Althrough the use of land mines by the Japanese forces was not as extensive as it was in Europe, land mines were important defensive weapons in the Pacific war. Also because of the Japanese lack of effective anti-tank artillery and the inequality of armored forces which was everywhere existent, mining and similar tactics became a mainstay of defence against mechanized equipment. This was more apparent as Allied forces approached the Japanese homeland, and the defense forces were better equipped than those in the out-lying islands had been.

Three features of the Japanese land mining methods were especially important. The first was the relatively small number of standard, mass-produced mines and firing devices. This lack of variety in standard mines led to a large amount of field improvisation of land mines and other defense devices, using ordnance and other types of explosives originally designed and manufactured for other purpose.

The second outstanding feature of Japanese land mining was the prevalent use of extre-mely large charges for all types of land mines. Bombs, sea mines, depth charges, and even torpedo war heads were used extensively with all types of detonating equipment. The use of these large charges, although it was wasteful, was the result of instability to use heavy explosive ordnance for its intended purpose, and rendered the potential dan-ger aera of land mines very great.

The third was the emphasis which was placed on various types of controlled mines. This tendency was in keeping with the use of improvised mines, controlled mines being much easier to improvise than enemy activated mines. Controls ranged all the way from elabo-rate electrical systems to crude, hand-operated, suicide devices. Firing devices operated by simple lanyards or poles were very common.

Japanese mining techniques were characterized by an almost complete lack of uniformity. Land mining policies seemed to have been formulated by local authorities and indicated that little or no information was available, and that training was inadequate. Thus, the Japanese landmining program was far from being as effective as it should have been tac-tically and did not often cause serious difficulty to advancing Allied forces.