During the War, the Japanese were struggling, and failing, to produce enough of anything. But, they still felt they had a chance to win if they could just get a single large victory.
One commander (not sure on rank) remarked that he lost faith in this when he discovered that the US had 2 specially designed "Ice Cream Ships." These were boats that were formally designed to make concrete on the move and use that for building ports and air strips in the Pacific. We made too many however, so the US Brass decided to convert two of them to make ice cream to be served to US troops fighting in the pacific where they had few tastes of home. The Japanese naval officer was aghast that we had so much production that we could afford to waste money, fuel, food, and sailors on ships that had no purpose (or armaments) aside from giving our soldiers a luxury like ice cream. In the tropics. During a war that he, until then, thought his side was winning.
According to his recollections, his men were short of food, clothing, boots, ammunition, fuel, ships, guns, aircraft, training, and everything but the US had so much we could waste it on ice cream. And the fact that these ships were chosen because the giant concrete mixers came on each ship in sets of three allowing the GIs and sailors to choose between Vanilla, Chocolate, and whatever fruit was available (often frozen strawberries) was another nail in the coffin of his opinion.
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