It was a different time as you know, when there wasn't all this money printing and acceptance of huge debt like we have now. Was a cash & carry world at that time - if no cash, there's no budget thus no transaction. Nobody in the West had any money since there had been a depression sweeping the world since the first world war, and with the demilitarization after that war no one had any will much less excess funds to effectively rebuild - a fact that the Germans and Japanese were well aware of and set out to exploit. Keeping with the Pacific, the various European powers had valuable assets scattered all over the Pacific that were ripe for the picking since they would be lightly defended if defended at all. The Japs knew it and all they had to do was strike and strike hard and it would be theirs. The penny pinching by the future Allies gave the Axis an initial advantage which held until the USA got involved and organized, unleashing our mass of industry (and the debt that came with it) into the war effort.
The malfeasance came into play after it was painfully obvious that something was wrong, things weren't working and there were conscious choices not to do anything about it, even actively resisting attempts to straighten it all out. Quite a bit has been documented/written about that ordeal. Finding and studying all that is available on that subject is the only way to get the full picture, and is infuriating reading. It was also infuriating that I had a close relative on a sub banging away at Jap shipping with those dud torpedoes and not getting crap for his efforts.
Not sure how the Japanese financed their early war effort but Hitler used the guns and butter approach. First he made sure there was plenty of butter then he concentrated on the guns. Getting the ratio of guns to butter right was a bit tricky but he pulled it off.
Once the Japanese invaded China I imagine they operated under a plunder economy.
I can’t imagine the frustration of the men in those subs when their only weapon was a dud.
Malfeasance isn’t a strong enough word to describe the butt covering by NSTRI when they ascribed all the torpedoes problems to the sub crews.
Heads should have been served up on platters.