World War II re; Jap war history - fuqjapbikes, fuqhonda, nojapbikes

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Timeline of Japanese expansion during World War II

1931	Japan began to take aggressive control of Manchuria - China.
1937	Japan invaded China and slaughters millions of children & women – Japanese war in the Pacific begins.
1941	7 December – Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour without warning, killing military families.
1942	February – Darwin bombed by Japanese planes, other Australian cities were soon hit. May – mini-subs attacked Sydney Harbour, and later Newcastle.
1945	August – Allies had a gut full of Japs atrocities USA Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Japan. War ends. Last Japanese POW sent home in 1946.

Read about Japs treatment of Aussie Prisoners - click links below : (BEWARE - Parental guidance is advised for children)

3) NANKING (Nanjing) MASSACRE - The Japs treatment of Chinese civilians - children & women - (WARNING - Disturbing topics - NOT for under 18 yrs)

Aitape, New Guinea, 1943.

An Australian soldier, Sgt Leonard Siffleet, about to be beheaded with a katana sword. Many Allied prisoners of war were summarily executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.

Today, Sunday the 8th. of May 2005 is the 60^th anniversary of VE Day in Europe which signalled the end of WW2 in that part of the world. It seems hard to believe we have reached that milestone, it has all gone so quickly, but in Australia, at that time, although we were pleased one phase of the war was over, for us, we still had the job in front of us to finally defeat the Japanese war machine in the Pacific.

We could but think of the thousands of Australian troops still incarcerated as POW's in the hands of the Japanese. We still had another 3 months of fighting to face before it was at last over in the Pacific, and the Japanese signed the surrender document aboard the USS battleship, Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, also on a Sunday, the 2nd. of September 1945.

Ø By the end of WW2, some 993,000 Australians had enlisted in the armed forces, of whom 575,799 had served overseas.

Ø In all, 28,756 had become Prisoners of War, 8,296 died in Japanese POW camps, of the 20,000 taken prisoner in the Pacific theatre.

Ø The Soviet Union - 4 million Red Army personnel died in battle. 5 million taken prisoner of war, probably 13 million people died from starvation.

So next time you get on your japbike, by all means put your candy coloured full face helmet on to hide your embarrassment.

Back when Kawasaki were in their infancy and the British big twins had the world market by the gonads, Kawa decided it was time to get serious about motorcycles and build a big air cooled twin of its own. Following the age old rule of "why develop when you can simply copy", Kawa's W1 was born. A blantant copy of the BSA A10, it sold well in the japanese market but not in Australia or North America !

A short description over Kawasaki's motorbike production. The first trails of motorbike activity at Kawasaki was shortly after second world war two. In those years Kawasaki made motorbike engines for other manufactures. A branch company of Kawasaki, Meihatsu Industries was formed for making and selling motorbike engines. (1953-1957)

The first bike. The first complete motorbike was a 125ccm called Meihatsu K125, ugly as hell, it was made in 1960. In 1963 Kawasaki and Meguro merged. Meguro was the Japanese motorbike manufactory with the longest experience. Kawasaki had now a complete staff with skilful engineers

The first Kawasaki. The first motorbike wearing the name Kawasaki come in 1962 / 63, a 125ccm called K128 B8 Earlier it was a B7 model under the name Meihatsu. (some pictures at right.)

Four stroke. The easiest way to make an attractive new bike is to copy another makers . Kawasaki choose famous & successful English BSA to copy. indeed they copied the whole bike. (picture at right) It was called W1, a two cylinder 650ccm. Production continued till 1973 with W3 (650RS)

The story begins in England, just before WW I.

As the world lurched towards war, motorcycling was in its most exciting, adventurous period. New designs, styles and transmissions were being invented, British & American companies sprang up in the boom, assembling bikes from the frames and engines of other manufacturers. Nowhere was motorcycling expanding more than in Great Britain. In 1909, a small British company called Triumph experimented with a new French engine, a 616cc, side-valve, vertical, parallel twin from Bercley. This new design had a 360-degree crankshaft. In 1913, Triumph announced its own vertical twin, based on the Bercley design, but using a 180-degree crankshaft. But production was halted when war broke out and Triumph turned its attention to making motorcycles for the Allied troops. The design would not be revived for another 20 years.

In 1933, Triumph's chief designer was Val Page. Page's 'flagship' model - and his last great effort for Triumph - was the 6/1- 25bhp, four-speed, four-stroke 650 vertical twin, designed primarily for the sidecar market. It had a 360-degree crankshaft. The 6/1 soon won speed awards, lapping in tests at Brooklands at 100 mph. However exciting the concept, it proved a commercial failure in a conservative market. Other companies' twins at this time were all V-twins, so the vertical/parallel twin was an oddity. Triumph struggled along for a few more years, concentrating mostly on the booming car industry, but in 1936 it split the car division into a separate company. Ariel founder Jack Sangster bought the motorcycle division and appointed a new designer, the young Australian engineer, Edward Turner, who had developed the Ariel Square Four. Val Page left Triumph to work for BSA.

In July 1937, Turner introduced the 500cc Speed Twin, selling at 75 pounds. It took the motorcycle world by storm. This 27bhp vertical/parallel-twin, overhead-valve model set the trend for motorcycles and its form continued well into the 1980s. It was capable of travelling 90 mph (145kph) and weighed 361 lb. (166kg). Some writers say the design was based on the engine design of the Riley 9 car, which Turner owned at the time. Soon after the Speed Twin was introduced, other motorcycle companies were making similar models - Ariel, BSA, Matchless, Norton, AJS and Royal Enfield among them. Triumph itself would produce dozens of vertical twin models for the next four decades, including the T100, T110 and Daytona.

The British motorcycle industry was devastated by the advent of the Second World War, and never fully recovered, as it had after WW I. Of 300-700 marques that existed between the wars, fewer than 100 emerged in 1946. Most of them struggled for survival, trying to retain a small foothold in a market that had changed its allegiance to cars. Most of these companies would fail within another decade.

Among the survivors were the three giants: Triumph, BSA and Norton - destined to become one company in another 20-odd years, joined by a dozen other struggling manufacturers who gave up production in that period - James, Francis-Barnett, Arial, Panther, and others. But no one suspected the impending collapse of the British motorcycle industry at that time. Britain shook off its miserly wartime rationing, and companies scrambled to re-establish their lines as civilian vehicles in those boom-time, post-war years. The next two decades would become the halcyon days of British motorcycling, even as the market dwindled and competition from overseas marques eroded the British mastery of the field.

Lurking in the background, also digging out from under the aftermath of the war , were the Japanese. Initially, their motorcycle industry was concerned with creating inexpensive transportation for the domestic market. It turned its eyes to the undisputed master of motorcycles for inspiration, Great Britain. Japanese manufacturers got a jumpstart in their market by copying British designs. Slavish replicas of British models were among the early motorcycles offered for local consumption. But the Japanese weren't content to simply copy: they tinkered. They improved. They advanced, contracting British & Euro designers, even Edward Turner (Triumph Eng., deserted ranks to visit & assist the Japs, giving them the heads up on new designs). By 1959, Honda was entering the TT races - which it would later dominate in the early 1970s. But until the mid 1960s, they didn't make any significant inroads into the export market. No one cared or could yet imagine their presence as a powerful player, they were building cheap poor quality rubbish of severe unreliability at bargain basement prices therefore attracting a buyer needing cheap transport but laughed at then regularly set on fire & the "japcrap"* riders bashed by the true Brit / American motorcycle enthusiasts.

* (The British vs American riders often came to clashes in the 50's - 60's, BUT the advent of the emerging Post-War japanese bikes gave them both a new enemy to vent on and joined forces against them as anyone seen on "jap-crap" was viewed as a post-war Traitor, hence it helped the birth of the Outlaw 1%er Clubs today whose hundreds of thousands of members world wide keep the tradition of its motorcycling heritage & staunch hatred of "japcrap" alive, rightly so, they never forgave the Japs for war atrocities)

Turner would continue to hone and develop his vertical / parallel twin through the next three decades. In 1950, he increased the size to 650cc when he introduced the Thunderbird model, popular among American riders. Turner declared that this was the optimum size for a vertical twin, with the engine running a top 6,500 rpm. He was worried vibration would tear the engine apart if it was pushed any higher. But Norton and Royal Enfield pushed beyond this limit in the 1960s, making 750cc parallel twins. However, Norton leaned its engine 20 degrees. Another, less successful, entry into the parallel twin market was the Indian Scout, introduced in 1949 as a 440cc engine, later upgraded to the 500cc Warrior. Triumph Bandit

Turner continued his vertical twin through to the Bonneville (so named from breaking the World land speed record at Bonneville Slat Flats Utah & still mentioned in the Guiness Book of World Records) , in 1959. This was easily the icon of British motorcycling engineering for the next decade, stunning in its looks and performance. Turner himself experimented with an angled engine - the 350cc bandit, which never went beyond prototype stage. The Bonneville would be increased to 750cc after Turner died, but by that time, it was outsold by the many cheaper Japanese motorcycles on the market and the development of the V-four engine.

One of the early Japanese manufacturers, Meguro (1937-1964), chose the four-stroke, BSA A7 and A10 vertical twins as its models of choice to clone in its own K1, a classically-styled air-cooled, vertical twin that would easily fool most casual watchers. Meguro produced the bikes under licence from BSA until it was taken over in 1964 by industrial giant Kawasaki, known then for its aircraft engines. Although BSA dropped their twins around this time, and would soon close its doors forever, Kawasaki continued to develop the bike under the name K2. Attempts to market this bike in the USA were unsuccessful: the K2 was too weak and underpowered for the North Americans. Kawasaki took this as a lesson.

In 1965, the K2 was revamped and upgraded and brought out as the W1, a 624cc twin they hoped would be more readily accepted in the USA when it was launched there in 1966. Several later variations such as the W1S, W2SS,W1SA, WT1 Commander, W2, W2TT and W3 kept the line going successfully until 1973-74, when the last of the breed, the W3-2, was dropped as outdated. Numerous vertical twins, including the long-lived Yamaha XS650, made from 1969 until 1983, were also dropped for newer designs. By then, new and more powerful Japanese bikes were storming the market. Japanese bikes were the rage in North American and Europe, winning races worldwide, and conquering the streets. Kawasaki's W series stayed doggedly old-fashioned and traditional, never even evolving to unit construction although its British cousins adopted the production methods years earlier.

The British styling and engine design had been left behind by more cheaper lower quality Jap modern machines. The Brits would struggle on for another decade, never able to find a lower price design that recaptured their prominence like the Speed Twin had done. The many companies that emerged from WWII eroded into one last, trouble-ridden company that imploded on itself and collapsed in 1983. The British motorcycle industry would not recover until industrialist John Bloor put his private money into reviving the Triumph name in the early 1990s. Bloor's Triumphs would be modern and stylish, but bore no resemblance to the vertical twins of Edward Turner's day. However, from the beginning, rumours maintained the new Triumph would one day launch its own, air-cooled vertical twin named the Bonneville. In late 2000, the machine was unveiled to the press and models appeared on shop floors in early 2001. Side by side the Triumph in many shops was another BSA / Triumph Bonneville replica, the Twin Cylinder W650 from Kawasaki, launched a few years earlier, a pathetic attempt to rival to Britsh Twin, thereby proving the British had the right formula the first time - Retro had returned.

So NOW its CHINA'S turn with our help (you see we fought alongside the Chinese, strong Australian / USA allies against the japs in WWII)

As we all laughed at the Jap industry in late '60's & early '70's, so are you younger guys today making the same mistake about China as a forward thinking machinery manufacturer. Look out, the Chinese Motorcycle industry are going to take over the Japs, just watch history repeat itself.

One little-known, highly ironic consequence of Milwaukee's quest for export markets in the 1920s and the economic slump of the 1930s was the creation of a Japanese big twin. During the 1920s, Arthur Davidson had pursued new sales openings with vigour, including the establishment of the Harley-Davidson Sales Company of Japan with a comprehensive network of dealers, agencies and spares distributors. Milwaukee's stock stood so high that Harleys soon became Japan's official police motorcycle.

Less worthily, in 1924 the Murata Iron Works began building copies of the 1922 Model J, but the quality was appalling. Murata would later build the Meguro, a distant precursor of modern Kawasakis. Harley exports to Japan all but ceased in the wake of the Great Depression & 1929 Wall Street crash, as the global economic slump crippled the yen. The story might have stopped there but for Alfred Childs, head of Harley's Japanese operation, who asked: "Why not build Harleys there?"

Juneau Avenue was sceptical at first, but such was Childs' persistence that Harley's first overseas factory soon began production at Shinagawa, near Tokyo. Built with tooling, plans, blueprints and expertise borrowed from Milwaukee, Harley Davidson built a factory that was considered the most modern in the world. By 1935 Shinagawa was manufacturing complete motorcycles, mainly 74-inch V-series flathead twins. In 1930, these had become the official motorcycle of the Japanese Imperial Army. Later, when the army became the effective civil power, it declined the chance to convert production to the new OHV Knucklehead, preferring the proven durability of the Harley-Davidson side-valve twin. It was at this point that the Sankyo corporation forcibly took over control of the factory and began selling Japanese Harleys under the Rikuo name. The "74" twin became the Rikuo Model 97.

As an increasingly truculent Japan readied for World War II, Harley cut its losses and got out. As military demand increased (especially after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937), Rikuo sub-licensed the product to Nihon Jidosha ("Japan Combustion Equipment Co."). Its "Harleys" were variants of the model 97s, entitled Kuro Hagane ("Black Iron").

Ominously, the factory had only a few more years to run. Nihon Jidosha was located in Hiroshima

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