A Samurai at the Court of Il Duce
Italian bombers belatedly raiding Malta
“In Italy the opinion is widely held that politicians and those who govern enrich themselves on the backs of the public. But what most surprises me is that the Italians consider to be intelligent those who acquire their riches by violating the laws…”
This unremarkable opinion becomes more interesting when you consider the source. The words were written not quite seventy years ago by the Imperial Japanese naval attaché in Rome during the Second World War, Rear Admiral Tōyō Mitunobu.
Though the Second World War is still often cited, it is in truth not much remembered and the current view, especially among Americans, seems to be that it was mostly fought on the beaches of Normandy. Admiral Mitunobu instead found himself in Italy for the conflict – and, as we will see, died here – because his country and Italy, together of course with Nazi Germany, were the three principal allies, the “Axis” which underpinned the losing side.
Mitunobu reached Italy in the late 1930’s and, to say the least, seems to have been puzzled – “stunned” might be a better word – by what he found. Coming from a country and a military establishment that considered the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor to be a reasonable policy of aggression, he was amazed by the languid approach the Italians took to making war.
In June 1940, a fews days after Mussolini’s declaration of hostilities against France and Great Britain, he wrote in his diary: “Italy is at war, but nothing is happening. From my point of view I was convinced that the first operation would have been the conquest of Malta and Tunisia. Judging from the propaganda, I thought that that would have begun in the same moment as the declaration of war. Instead, Mr. Mussolini, on the tenth of June, announced that the war was to begin on the eleventh. That was the first surprise. Why warn the enemy? Why not strike immediately? Then the 11th passed, the 12th, the 13th, the 14th and operations against Malta and Tunisia still did not begin… Perhaps Mr. Mussolini has his reasons, but for me all of this is incomprehensible…”
Two months later, in August of 1940, he was still puzzled: “From my point of view, Italy should have taken control of the Mediterranean; instead it conquered Ethiopia, which is impossible to resupply. This too is incomprehensible for me…”
The Japanese admiral’s wartime diary is that of a senior military officer who, as the conflict ground on, became ever more doubtful about the policies he observed in execution. He was by turns struck by the complete lack of coordination between Italian air and naval units, that a country which considered itself a maritime power did not possess a single aircraft carrier (“incredible”), that Italian ground troops were sent unsupported into faraway Russia, that Italian submarines were patrolling the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean, that the Italian navy was not equipped to fight at night and so on.
He continued though to do his duty until the end, staying to represent his country’s military forces in Italy even after the Italian collapse in September 1943. He received his last orders on station at the Japanese Embassy in Rome on the 6th of June 1944 – that is, by an interesting coincidence, on D-Day. These required him to reach Merano, in the far north of Italy, for a three-power Italian-German-Japanese naval conference.
This was an essentially useless exercise. The puppet “Salò” government still operating in Northern Italy above the Gothic Line had no navy at all and the Germans very nearly none. Still, he set out with an Italian driver and his aide, Lieutenant Iki Yamanaka, to drive the length of a country caught in raging combat in an Alfa-Romeo 1500 sedan.
He was shot dead two days later, on June 8th 1944, by a group of partisans at a road block on a mountain pass in Tuscany. The episode appears to have had more the characteristics of a hold-up than a military action. Since it was a bad business, it was later claimed though that he had at least been in possession of “important documents”. As far as we can now tell, the “document” in question was in fact the diary we have been citing.
But these things happen in war and Mitunobu himself was probably not greatly surprised either by the fact of his death or the circumstances in which it took place. Still, he left what amounts to a surprisingly generous testament in a late, undated diary entry:
“The Italians are likeable and talkative, but they are always changing the cards on the table and are very imprudent. I admire the genius of the Italians, their inventions and the initiatives they undertake, but I’m sorry to have to say that they trust too much in their own intelligence. They always say “It’s not my fault” and seek a thousand pretexts to pin their errors on someone else. But in spite of everything they are always cheerful, they love life and try always to have a good time.”
What is interesting about these wholly ordinary judgements is that they are just that. Admiral Mitunobu was the least likely person in the world to have come to Italy much influenced by the standard mandolin-strumming, spaghetti-eating clichés. He reached the same conclusions by himself and in the most dramatic circumstances imaginable.
“Upper Italy” is beholden for most of the information in this
note to the writings of Italian historian Arrigo Petacco