Ōba Sakae

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Ōba Sakae, around 1937

Ōba Sakae ( Japanese 大 場 栄 ; * March 21, 1914 , † June 8, 1992 in Gamagōri ) was an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army . He served in both China and the Pacific War during World War II . After the Japanese forces were defeated in the Battle of Saipan , he withdrew deep into the jungle with a group of soldiers and civilians to avoid capture by the Allies. Under Ōba's leadership, the group survived for over a year after the battle and finally surrendered in December 1945, three months after the war was over (see also Holdout ). Upon his return to Japan , he became a successful businessman and a member of the Gamagōri City Council.

Early years

Wife Ōba Mineko, around 1937

Oba Sakae was born on 21 March in the city Gamagōri in Aichi Prefecture was born as the first son of the farmer Oba Isuke. Ōba graduated from the Aichi Commercial Teachers' College ( 愛 知 県 実 業 教員 養成 所 ) and the following month took up a teaching position at a local public school. While he was working as a teacher, he married Mineko Hirano (1912-1992), who also came from Gamagōri.

Military career

In 1934 Ōba joined the 18th Infantry Regiment of the Imperial Japanese Army , which was stationed in the nearby town of Toyohashi . As an officer candidate 1st class ( 甲 種 幹部 候補 生 , Kōshu kanbu kōhosei ) he took part in special training and was sent to Manchukuo , where the majority of the 18th regiment was already stationed as an occupation army. In 1936 the regiment returned to its home base in Toyohashi and Ōba briefly saw his wife again.

In 1937 the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out and the 18th Infantry Regiment was mobilized. Ōba and his regiment were deployed in China , where they took part in the amphibious battle for Shanghai . In December of that year he was promoted to lieutenant . In 1939 he rose to lieutenant and in November 1941 he was given command of a company of infantry . In March 1943 he was promoted to captain .

Saipan

In early 1944 the 18th regiment was withdrawn from Manchuria and relocated to the Pacific theater of war. Ōba was the commandant of the regiment's medical company. At around 3:00 p.m. on February 29, the regiment's transport ship , the Sakito-maru , was hit by a torpedo from the American submarine USS Trout (SS-202) near Saipan Island . The ship sank and took half the regiment with it. Escort ships came quickly, rescued 1,800 survivors and deposited them on Saipan. After a hasty reorganization, the majority of the regiment was successfully promoted to Guam . Almost 600 men, including Ōba, were left behind in Saipan. Ōba received orders to assemble a 225-strong medical company from the tank soldiers, engineers and medics who had survived the Sakito-maru disaster . They received the few medical supplies available and built a medical supply station by mid-May.

On the morning of June 15, 1944, the United States Marine Corps landed on the beaches in the Battle of Saipan . Despite heavy defenses, the Japanese were pushed back bit by bit with heavy losses. The Japanese commander used Mount Tapochau in the center of the island as his headquarters and formed defensive lines around the mountain. With no supplies or any prospect of success, the defenders' situation became hopeless and an attack was finally ordered. On July 7, Ōba was part of the largest suicidal attack called Gyokusai of the Pacific War. After 15 hours of intense and relentless hand-to-hand combat , almost 4,300 Japanese soldiers were killed. On July 9, 1944, the Allies declared the island secure. On 30 September 1944, the Japanese army wrote an official statement on the disappearance with regard to all persons of unknown status and were considered casualties ( killed in action ). This included Ōba and he was promoted to major “posthumously” .

Ōba, December 1, 1945

In reality, Ōba survived the fight and took command of 46 other soldiers. Ōba then led over 200 Japanese civilians deeper into the jungle to avoid capture. He and his people organized the civilians and placed them in mountain caves and hidden jungle villages. If the soldiers did not accompany the civilians with protection troops, Ōba and his people continued the fight against the occupation by the US Marines. Ōba used the Tapochau mountain at a height of 473 meters as a starting point, the top offered an unobstructed 360-degree view over the island. From the base camp on the western slope of the mountain, Ōba and his people carried out occasional guerrilla- style raids on American positions. Because of the speed and secrecy of the operations - and because of the frustrated attempts to find him - the Marines on Saipan Ōba finally referred to Ōba as "the fox" and later "Fox of Saipan".

In September 1944, the Marines began patrolling the interior of the island in search of the survivors who raided their camps for their supplies. These patrols sometimes encountered Japanese soldiers and civilians, and if they were captured they were interrogated and taken to an appropriate detention center. During these interrogations, the Marines learned Ōba's name. At the height of the hunt for Ōba, the Marines commander developed the plan that his men should line up across the width of the island, two meters away from the neighbor, and walk the island from the southern end to the north. The commander assumed that Ōba and his people would either fight, surrender, or be pushed north and perhaps imprisoned. With this tactic, elderly and frail civilians would voluntarily give up. Though some soldiers wanted to fight, Ōba ordered that their main concern was to protect the civilians and stay alive in order to continue the fight. When the chain of marines reached the area, most of the remaining soldiers and civilians climbed to a hidden clearing on the mountain, while others stood on a narrow ledge and clung to the mountain. They maintained their precarious positions for most of the day while the Marines roamed the grounds, looting huts and gardens when they found them. In some places the Japanese were on the ledges less than 20 feet (6.1 m) above the heads of the Marines. The Marines' search proved in vain and eventually led to the commander's resignation.

Ōba and his people are part of the Japanese holdouts , they spent 512 days and about 16 months on the island. Other holdouts that have become famous are Nakamura Teruo , Onoda Hirō and Yokoi Shōichi , which were only discovered decades after the end of the war. On November 28, 1945, the former Major General Umahachi Amō, the commander of the 9th Independent Mixed Brigade in the Battle of Saipan, succeeded in luring some Japanese out by singing the Japanese anthem of the Japanese infantry division. Amō was thus able to show Ōba the documents of the defunct Daihon'ei , who asked him and his followers to surrender to the Americans. On December 1, 1945, three months after Japan's official surrender , the Japanese soldiers gathered again on Mount Tapochau and sang a farewell song in memory of the war dead and their ghosts . Ōba then led his people out of the jungle and placed himself in the hands of the 18th Air Defense Company. In all formality and with appropriate dignity, Ōba handed over his Japanese sword, the so-called Nihontō , to Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Kirgis and his people delivered their weapons and the troop flag . They were the last organized resistance of the Japanese armed forces on Saipan.

After the war

After the Japanese government confirmed that Ōba was still alive, his "posthumous" promotion was reversed. After his release from Allied custody, he was repatriated . Back in Japan, he was reunited with his wife and met his son for the first time. He was born in 1937 after his father left for China. Ōba was employed in 1952 at the department store chain Maruei , where he was employed as a representative and spokesman for the board until 1992. From 1967 to 1979 he was a member of the city council of his hometown Gamagōri.

Fascinated by the history of Japanese holdouts, Don Jones, a former US Marine stationed on Saipan who was once ambushed by a group of Ōba’s people, visited Ōba after the war. In collaboration with Ōbas, Jones wrote a book about his experiences on Saipan. Jones became a lifelong friend of the Ōbas family and went so far as to track down the retired Lt. Col. Kyrgyz to whom Ōba had surrendered in 1945 and to ask him to return the sword ba had given at the surrender. Kyrgyz agreed, and Jones returned the sword to Japan to his grateful friend. The sword as a traditional heirloom was back in the family's possession.

Sakae Ōba died on June 8, 1992 at the age of 78. His remains were buried in the family crypt at the Kōun Temple in Gamagōri.

Processing in literature and film

The result of the joint efforts of Ōba and Don Jones was a new release, first translated into Japanese and published in 1982. It became a best seller. The English edition appeared in 1986 with the title Oba, The Last Samurai: Saipan 1944–1945 .

Hisamitsu, the second son of Ōba Sakae, discovered over 1200 pages of letters and postcards between his parents Sakae and Mineko in May 2010. They were dated between 1937 and 1941, although some are dated to 1944. Hisamitsu showed these letters to the related writer Hirano Keiichirō , a grandson of Mineko's brother. Keiichirō is a novelist and winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1998. Hirano was deeply moved by what he read in wartime correspondence and helped find a local publisher. They offered the task of publishing to Mari Mizutani from Toyohashi, who found that the letters provided particularly precise descriptions of everyday life during the war. And this under the aspect that the couple expressed deep affection for each other and both wrote about countless everyday occurrences, Mineko in Gamagōri and Ōba in China or during the occupation of Manchuria with the order to be shipped to the Pacific. The letters were examined by a panel of local volunteers; most of them had a professional background in literature, publication, history or were familiar with local circumstances. A selection of letters was compiled and published in January 2011 under the title Senka no rabu retah or Love Letters from the Fires of War .

On February 11, 2011, the film Taiheiyō no kiseki - Fokksu to yobareta otoko ( 太平洋 の 奇跡 - フ ォ ッ ク ス と 呼 ば れ た 男 - or Miracle of the Pacific: The Man Called Fox ) was released in the theater. It portrays the efforts of Ōba and his group on Saipan, as well as the relentless manhunt of the Marines. It was produced by Tōhō Pictures under the direction of Hirayama Hideyuki in Japan, the United States and Thailand. The main character Ōba was played by Takenouchi Yutaka . In preparation for the role, Takenouchi met with Ōba Hisamitsu and both paid their respects at the tomb of Ōba Sakae. The film received positive reviews from critics.

literature

  • Ando, ​​Satoshi: 大 場 大尉 夫妻 の "戦 火 の ラ ブ レ タ ー" 校正 進 む . East Aichi Newspaper, Japan. (Continued with the review of The Love Letters from the Fires of War by Ōba and his wife, Japanese)
  • Harry Gailey: The Liberation of Guam July 21 - August 10 . Presidio Press, Novato, CA 1988, ISBN 0-89141-651-X (English).
  • Hata, Ikuhiko: 日本 陸海軍 総 合 事 典 . Tokyo University Press, 2nd Edition 2005. (Comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Japanese Army and Navy, Japanese)
  • Edwin P. Hoyt: To the Marianas: War in the Central Pacific: 1944 . Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York 1980.
  • Don Jones: Tapochau, or In Praise of My Enemy: The Oba Unit and 512 Days' of Gallant Struggle . Shodensha Publishing Co., Tokyo 1982 (English, Japanese: タ ッ ポ ー チ ョ - 「敵 な が ら 天晴」 大 場 隊 の 勇 戦 512 日 . Translated by Sadamu Nakamura).
  • Don Jones: Oba, The Last Samurai: Saipan 1944–1945 . Presidio Press, 1986, ISBN 0-89141-245-X .
  • Richard Kuipers: Oba, the Last Samurai. In: Variety. Reed Business, February 27, 2011, accessed July 9, 2012 .
  • Sato, Yoshihisa (23 August 2010): 戦 火 の ラ ブ レ タ ー 出版 目 指 す (Aiming to Publish Love Letters from the Fires of War ). Tonichi Shinbun. Toyohashi, Japan: Tokai-nichi Nichi-shinbun Publishers. News & Topics. (Japanese)

Web links

Commons : Ōba Sakae  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Sato (23 August 2010)
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Ando (August 25, 2010)
  3. ↑ a b c d e Hata (2005)
  4. ↑ 豊 橋 市 史 [Toyohashi City History] (Japanese) 8th Toyohashi Educational Committee, Toyohashi, Japan 1979.
  5. ^ A b W. Victor Madej: Japanese Armed Forces Order of Battle, 1937–1945 . Game Marketing Co, Allentown, PA 1981.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h Jones (1986).
  7. ^ Gailey (1988), p. 36.
  8. ↑ Hoyt (1980), p. 240.
  9. ^ Jones (1986), p. 10.
  10. ^ Gailey (1988).
  11. ^ Philip A. Crowl: Campaign in the Marianas, US Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific . Department of Defense, Washington, DC 1959.
  12. ^ Jones (1986), p. 20.
  13. ^ A b John Toland : The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945 . Random House, New York 1970, pp. 516 .
  14. ^ Harold Goldberg: D-Day in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2007.
  15. ^ Jones (1986), p. 2.
  16. ↑ a b c Remnants of Japanese Forces on Saipan as The Surrendered Yesterday . In: The Daily Target , December 2, 1945. 
  17. ↑ a b c Jones (1982)
  18. ↑ a b Jones (1986), p. 3.
  19. ↑ 蒲 郡 市 史 本文 編 ４ 現代 ​​編 [City history of Toyohashi. Volume 4: Modernism] (in Japanese) 4. Gamagori, Japan: Gamagori Board of Education. 2006.
  20. ↑ Sato (2010)
  21. ↑ List of descendants of Akutagawa ( Japanese ) In: Bungei Shunjū . Retrieved January 6, 2011.
  22. ↑ Cast: Taiheiyou no Kiseki . Toho Co., Ltd. 2010. Archived from the original on November 21, 2010.
  23. ^ Kuipers, Richard (February 27, 2011)
  24. ↑ Mark Schilling: A balanced, moving elegy to Japan's last action hero . In: The Japan Times , February 25, 2011. Retrieved March 18, 2011. 
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Ōba is the family name, Sakae the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Ōba, Sakae
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 大 場 栄 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese officer
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1914
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1992
Place of death Gamagōri