World War II Forums - View Single Post - What if...the Japanese had landed troops in Hawai'i immediately after bombing Pearl?

brndirt1 · #61 (**permalink**) July 19th, 2009, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Dudek

Lastly, all of your horse drawn artillery would be without horses as all of them would either be seasick and incapacitated for several weeks, in the act of dying from shipboard fever or already dead from the long sea voyage. Horses die like flies after long periods of being pent up in a closed environment.

It is true that horses can become "sea-sick", but they cannot vomit due to their physiological construction, this is because of a tight muscle valve around the esophagus. However, they develop an illness which mimics, but is NOT colic which can be fatal, it is simply a "nausea" which can be easily treated with hyoscine (which has been around since 1880) before departure or while at sea.

The biggest problem with transporting horses by sea is that they become stressed when confined to dark enclosed spaces, and can lash out at their fellow equines, their handlers, or even the sides of the ship in which they are being transported. This is why "horse killers" were often aboard ship, not to put down those who became "sea-sick", but to eliminate those who had gotten so stressed out they were a danger to themselves and others.

I don’t know the breed of horse the Japanese used as draft animals during WW2, but the largest of their local breeds like the Hokkaido were tall for Japanese breeds, at the shoulder, 13-13.5 hands, and believe me that is short for a true horse (a hand is 4"). Because of this "smallish trait" (less than 13 hands) of indigenous Japanese equines, the authorities discouraged breeding purebred Kiso, Hokkaido, Tokara, and Miyako breeds and encouraged a crossbreeding program between the them and larger western horses. During the pre-WW2 period (1939) a government program was even administered for the purpose of castrating all purebred Kiso males. And until then the Kiso had been prized for their use as military horses as they seemed fearless in battle, but were not good as draft animals. An even smaller pony, the Yonaguni was found in the south, but surely not used as or for military draft animals.

That cross breeding policy nearly eliminated "pure-blood" Japanese horses, like the Miyako breed. It, like the Hokkaido breed were short, not ponies, but smallish horses. During WW2 they were crossed with larger imported stallions to increase their size to around 14 hands for draft purposes. There was another indigenous draft horse, the Taishuh but I don’t know how common they were in the WW2 period, since very few survive today with a few sperm and ova in "cold storage" at the Animal Husbandry Center in Hokkaido.