U.S. Army Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

U.S. Army - Essay Example Following Black (2004, 206) it was World War I that set the pattern for the most important future operations of the United States Army. The Superior Board consequently advocated retaining the four-regiment division and urged that it be reinforced with a large assortment of heavy supporting units in artillery and the division train. The relative immobility of the big square division, the board reasoned, accorded with certain intractable facts of modern war: that the division always attacks frontally, that it attacks in a severely constricted zone of action, and that accordingly it has little occasion for maneuver. The Superior Board insisted that with the First World War setting the pattern for the army's major future combats, the essential principle shaping the army ought to be power, not mobility. The Congresses and chief executives in the 1920s and 1930s prevented the design of the National Defense Act from attaining fruition. The statute authorized a regular army of 280,000 officers and men. Congressional appropriations failed to maintain any such level. The actual strength of the army was by 1922, 147,335; by 1932, 134,024. By 1939 there had been a gradual increase to 188,565. As a result of fiscal trimming, regular army formations became largely skeletonized after all (Black 234). Yet the few formations that were kept at an approximation of full strength and readiness remained those most likely to be involved in small wars reminiscent of the old Indian campaigns--particularly the troops along the Mexican border. MacArthur's thinking not only limited the size of tanks, but also did much to kill one of the army's few promising ventures toward preparing for a possible return from small-scale colonial wars to European war. (Sweeney 145). The choice of the small wars army, akin to the American army of the Indian-fighting past, as the basis upon which to build the post-1919 force was a choice for mobility rather than power as the central principle of the army (Sweeney 148). Late in the First World War, however, there had emerged a new potential for combining mobility and power, for designing military formations that would emphasize neither principle to the debilitation of the other, but would harmonize both (Sweeney 148). The weakness of the Army and military strategy was lack of training and 'old fashioned design' of the army. The most vigorous army chief of staff in the years following World War General Douglas MacArthur, reinforced this emphasis on a mobile army preparing for small colonial and border wars. When he began his tour as chief of staff in 1930, MacArthur found that despite the absence of prospects for another war of mass armies, his planners were busily at work on mobilization schedules for the mustering in of citizen-soldiers to wage a hypothetical grand-scale war (Sweeney 151). He turned the mobilization planners instead to designing an Immediate Readiness Force, to be drawn from the regular army for dispatch to colonial or Western Hemisphere trouble zones (Sweeney154). The concept of a light, fast-moving army tailored to wage war not against European mass armies but against elusive, highly mobile opponents emerged also, with a particularly conspicuous effect upon the subsequent comba t capacities of the army in World War II, in the restriction of the weight of American tanks to 15

Japanese cinema Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Japanese cinema - Movie Review Example The present essay is dedicated to the discussion of the cultural shift from the comprehension of the warrior code among yakuza to realizing their criminal nature. At first, a large amount of attention is devoted to the discussion of the Battles without Honor and Humanity. Then, the history of common perception of yakuza through folklore is unfolded. The difference between older yakuza representation and the newer one is analysed next. Finally, global prerequisites of the cultural shift, described in Battles without Honor and Humanity, are given one by one: post-war political situation, nuclear threat, American occupation, and the corruption of the police forces. Most of the Japanese films about yakuza made before Kinji Fukasaku's Battles without Honor and Humanity were concentrated on the confrontation of the good yakuza and the bad yakuza. While being outlaws they were divided by 'jingi' - the code of honor. That is, good yakuza always acted in accordance with jingi, while their opposites showed treachery, dishonor, and other signs of falling from yakuza's grace with their actions. Moreover, jingi was respected so greatly among yakuza that even evil characters had to hide their true nature from other gang members. Once the disrespect to jingi was discovered, antagonists were quickly and violently dealt with. Obviously, the real life was far from the ideal picture drawn by th... Indeed, Fukasaku's life has made him to be able to judge about the authenticity of yakuza image in the Japanese cinema. Kenji Fukasaku was born in 1930 in hard times for Japan. At first the Japanese invasion into China, then the Second World War ending with nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - constant wars have transformed the everyday life into the battle for survival. With his youth spent at that times, no wonder that Fukasaku's view of a post-war Hiroshima in his Battles without Honor and Humanity is filled with cynicism and fatalism. His work as a director at the Toei studio began in 1961. At that time the studio was focused on the production of historical 'jidaigeki' films, and with the studio policy, obliging directors to simply carry out instructions rather than be creative, the film made by Fukasaku in 1973 can be perceived almost as a revolution. Battles without Honor and Humanity offer a realistic view of yakuza gangs emerging in radioactive dust of post-war Hiroshima, and at the same time Fukasaku's film is very personal - it is almost like the director himself talks to us. At the beginning of the film the main character Hirono Shozo performed by Bunta Sugawara comes out of the prison where he was put for dispatching some American soldier. Hirono has no plans for new peaceful life; instead he is instantly taken under the wing of the Yamamori yakuza group. Traditionally to yakuza genre, Hirono represents a hero fallen behind the new life, which has changed seriously while he was in prison. The second difference between Shozo and other yakuza is that he still believes in 'jingi', offering loyalty to his boss, while the other