Cooperation of Japanese oceanogeaphers with Army and Navy During the Pacific War

Abstract

The cooperation of Japanese oceanographers with the Army and Navy was not really active before 1944. This was because both Army and Navy had their own scientific staffs and institutions whose equipment, facilities, and money by far exceeded those of universities and civil institutions. These military institutions exercised almost a monopoly on facilities before and during the War. If scientists other than those belonging to the Navy and Army wished to make researches, they encountered difficulty in finding apparatus, materials, and assistants. New graduates from the universities all entered the Army and Navy in recent years. They were indeed made to work in these institutions where there were, for the most part, no able scientific staffs and the efficiency of the researches was poor. Most professors in the universities were thus left without assistants and materials. For this reason, it was almost impossible for them to continue their research without having some association with military and naval institutions. The staffs of the latter, however, were not necessarily investigators of the first rank and had a tendency to prevent experienced scientific men from entering their institutions. Most had entered the Army and Navy from ten to twenty years ago, when few capable university graduates cared to join voluntarily. Some of the young scientific officers (graduates of recent years) had, of course, good qualifications because almost all were graduates of universities and colleges but the lack of capable senior staff members prevented them from utilizing their abilities freely.