In the autumn of 1941, with the Red Army crippled by Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, the Imperial General Headquarters decided to shift the strategic focus of Japan’s military operations from the Kwantung Army in China to the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Southern Army against objectives in the South Sea region-the possessions of United States, Britain, and the Netherlands. The army’s ten main infantry divisions each had a tank company. By December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) was forming more than a dozen new tank regiments intended to act as the shock force of offensive operations. Japan had an active and prolific tank program in the late 1930s to support its army in China, but after a brief use of tanks at the outset of the enlarged Pacific War in December 1941, its tank force was allowed to atrophy due to a lack of resources.
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