3rd Army (Japanese Empire)

3rd Army
Japanese soldiers of the 3rd Army prepare for the next attack during the siege of Port Arthur in September 1904 .
active	August 1904 to September 1945
Country	Japanese Empire
Armed forces	Japanese armed forces
Armed forces	Japanese army
Branch of service	infantry
Type	corps
Strength	40,000 - 150,000
Nickname	Iwa ( 岩 , "rock")
Butcher	Russo-Japanese War Siege of Port Arthur Battle of Mukden Soviet invasion of Manchuria
Supreme command
list of	Commander in chief

The 3rd Army ( Japanese 第 3 軍 , Dai-san-gun ) was a large unit of the Imperial Japanese Army . It was erected and demobilized twice between 1904 and 1945. Your Tsūshōgō code (military code name) was rock ( 岩 , Iwa ).

history

1904 to 1905

After the Battle of Yalu during the Russo-Japanese War , the 3rd Army was formed in August 1904 under the command of General Nogi Maresuke . Your task was to besiege the Russian Port Arthur and force it to give up so that the Russian Pacific Fleet stationed there could be neutralized. General Nogi had already taken Port Arthur with a single regiment in the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894 , which is why only the 9th and 11th Divisions were subordinate to him at the beginning of the operation . The Russians had provided Port Arthur with strong fortifications since the occupation and so the Japanese High Command was forced to reinforce the 3rd Army to 150,000 men during the loss - making five-month siege . The 1st Division of the 2nd Army joined in during the siege . In August 1905, the newly established 14th Division in Japan joined the 3rd Army and was responsible for guard duties on the Liaodong Peninsula .

Port Arthur surrendered on January 2nd, 1905 and Nogi's remaining men set out for Mukden to take part in the Battle of Mukden with the 1st , 2nd, 4th and 5th Army .

After the fighting ended, the 3rd Army was demobilized in January 1906.

1938 to 1945

On January 13, 1938, the 3rd Army was reactivated and deployed in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo as part of the Kwantung Army . Their task was to protect the eastern border with the Soviet Union . The 9th , 12th and 57th Divisions were subordinate to the 3rd Army .

From July 1942 she was under the command of the newly established 1st Regional Army , which in turn was subordinate to the Kwantung Army. In the course of the Pacific War , the focus of the fighting shifted from China, where the war front had increasingly moved away from the border with Manchukuo since the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, to Southeast Asia, which is why troops and material of the 3rd Army were repeatedly withdrawn. The war-experienced divisions were withdrawn and replaced by the 79th , 112th , 127th and 128th divisions from the beginning of 1945 .

On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Red Army started the invasion of Manchukuo with Operation August Storm . The thinned out and poorly equipped 3rd Army, like the entire Kwantung and Manchurian armies, was unable to offer sustained resistance. The last units of the 3rd Army surrendered in September near the cities of Yanji and Hunchun in southeast Manchukuo.

Commander in chief

	Surname	From	To
1.	General Nogi Maresuke	August 1904	January 1906
	demobilized	January 1906	January 13, 1938
2.	General Yamada Otozo	January 13, 1938	December 10, 1938
3.	General Tada Hayao	December 10, 1938	September 12, 1939
4th	General Suetaka Kamezo	September 12, 1939	March 1, 1941
5.	General Kawabe Masakazu	March 1, 1941	August 17, 1942
6th	Lieutenant General Uchiyama Eitarō	August 17, 1942	February 7, 1944
7th	Lieutenant General Nemoto Hiroshi	February 7, 1944	November 22, 1944
8th.	Lieutenant General Murakami Keisaku	November 22, 1944	September 1945

Subordinate units

1904

• 1st division
• 9th division
• 11th division
• 14th division

1941

• 9th division
• 12th division
• 57th Division

1945

• 79th Division
• 112th division
• 127th Division
• 128th division

literature

• Gordon L. Rottman : The Japanese Army in World War II. Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2005, ISBN 1-84176-789-1 , p. 9 ff.
• Bernard Jowett: The Japanese Army 1931-45. Volume 2: 1942-45. Osprey Publishing, Oxford 1999, ISBN 1-84176-354-3 .
• Victor Madej: Japanese Armed Forces Order of Battle, 1937-1945. Game Publishing, 1981, OCLC 833591372 , OCLC 833591376 .
• Geoffrey Jukes: The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. Osprey Publishing, 2002, ISBN 1-84176-446-9 .
• Rotem Kowner : The A to Z of the Russo-Japanese War. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2009, ISBN 978-0-8108-6841-0 .

Web links

• IJA 3rd Army. niehorster.org, accessed October 22, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. Osprey Publishing, p. 38 ff.
2. ^ The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905. Osprey Publishing, p. 42.
3. ^ IJA 3rd Army. niehorster.org, accessed October 22, 2015 . 
4. ↑ Jowett, Philipp; The Japanese Army 1931-1945 , Osprey Publishing, p. 15

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Nogi is the family name, Maresuke the first name.