35th Army (Japanese Empire)

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35th Army

Surrender of IJA 35th Army.jpg

Surrender of the 35th Army by the highest ranking officer, Lieutenant General Kataoka Tadasu, on Cebu , Philippines, August 19, 1945
active July 26, 1944 to September 1945
Country JapanJapan Japanese Empire
Armed forces JapanJapan (war flag) Japanese armed forces
Armed forces JapanJapan (war flag) Japanese army
Branch of service infantry
Type corps
Strength approx. 80,000-140,000
Insinuation 14th Regional Army
Location Cebu
Nickname Shō ( 尚 , "permanent")
Butcher Pacific War
Supreme command
list of Commander in chief

The 35th Army ( Japanese 第 35 軍 , Dai-sanjūgo-gun ) was a major unit of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1944 to 1945 . Your Tsūshōgō code (military code name) was permanent ( 尚 , Shō ).

history

After the Allies had advanced through the Solomon Islands and New Guinea in 1943 and early 1944 , they threatened to land in the Philippines next and thus cut off the Japanese supply routes to Indonesia , southern China and Burma . In anticipation , the Daihon'ei reinforced the troops in the Philippines and converted the 14th Army into the 14th Regional Army . The army, which had originally had two divisions, grew to 15 divisions. In order to improve the command structure, the 14th Regional Army set up the 35th Army on Cebu on July 26, 1944 under the command of Lieutenant General Suzuki Sosaku and placed the 16th , 30th , 100th and 102nd Divisions under her command . While the 16th and 102nd Divisions were positioned on Leyte , the 30th and 100th Divisions were positioned on Mindanao .

Leyte

Course of the battle during the Battle of Leyte in December 1944

On October 20, 1944, troops of the 6th US Army landed in the southern Leyte Valley and initiated the battle for Leyte . The 35th Army, which in the meantime had been reinforced with the 1st and 26th Divisions and had 55,000 men on Leyte, faced over 200,000 Americans. They withdrew their forces over the mountains in Central Leyte in the direction of Ormoc , as they had to reckon with less enemy tank use there. Between December 5 and 11, 1944, during Operation Wa , she supported the airborne company called Operation Te , which aimed to retake or destroy several airfields that had fallen into the hands of the American forces during the initial phase of the Battle of Leyte . The operations ended in failure, as the damage caused was repaired within two days. All deployed paratroopers fell . The survivors of Operation Wa then finally withdrew to Ormoc or west Leyte, where all Japanese troops were destroyed by the end of December 1944.

Mindanao

After the conquest of Leyte, General MacArthur and the 6th Army turned north towards Luzon , while on December 12, 1944 the 8th US Army landed under Lieutenant General Eichelberger on Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines and south of Leyte. The 30th and 100th Divisions were deployed there to defend the island. After the American troops landed in the undefended west of Mindanao, they quickly advanced into the interior of the island and separated the two Japanese divisions. Lieutenant General Morozumi Gyōsaku , the commander of the 30th Division, was with his troops in the northeast of the island near Surigao . On April 19, 1945, Morozumi's superior, Lieutenant General Suzuki, fell, so Morozumi was appointed commander of the 35th Army. However, Morozumi ignored this appointment, as he could not establish contact with other troops in his situation. In mid-May 1945, the 30th Division was broken up as a large formation and small groups of soldiers withdrew into the rugged interior, where they offered resistance until August 1945 and surrendered after the surrender of Japan .

The 100th Division was positioned in southern Mindanao and collapsed under the onslaught of two American divisions ( 24th and 31st Infantry Divisions ). In the Battle of Davao City, it suffered 4,500 casualties within a few days. The American units pushed in and were able to eliminate the 30th Division as a major unit by May 1945. Small groups of survivors withdrew to the interior of the island and surrendered after Japan's surrender in August 1945.

Cebu

After the loss of Leyte and Mindano, the 35th Army still had around 15,000 men on Cebu, most of whom were entrenched around Cebu City . On March 26th the American landing on Cebu began by units of the 8th US Army. The Japanese could not oppose the overwhelming quantitative and qualitative American superiority and about 9000 Japanese were killed in the following battles. The rest withdrew into the jungle and the mountains.

On August 19, 1945, the 35th Army, represented by the highest ranking surviving officer, Lieutenant General Kataoka Tadasu, surrendered.

Commander in chief

commander

Surname From To
1. Lieutenant General Suzuki Sosaku July 28, 1944 September 1945

Chiefs of Staff

Surname From To
1. Major General Tomochika Yoshiharu July 28, 1944 November 14, 1944
2. Lieutenant General Wachi Takaji November 14, 1944 February 20, 1945
3. Lieutenant General Tomochika Yoshiharu February 20, 1945 April 19, 1945

Subordinate units

July 1944

On July 26, 1944, the 35th Army was set up as follows:

October 1944

In October 1944, the 35th Army was reinforced and consisted of the following units:

literature

  • Victor Madej: Japanese Armed Forces Order of Battle, 1937-1945. Game Publishing, 1981, OCLC 833591372 , OCLC 833591376 .
  • Bill Yenne: The Imperial Japanese Army: The Invincible Years 1941–42. Osprey Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1-7820-0932-0
  • Philip Jowett: The Japanese Army 1931-45 (1). Osprey Publishing, 2002, ISBN 978-1-8417-6353-8
  • Gordon Rottman: Japanese Army in World War II (The South Pacific and New Guinea, 1942–43). Osprey Publishing, ISBN 978-1-8417-6870-0
  • Robert Ross Smith: Triumph in the Philippines, The War in the Pacific. University Press of the Pacific, 2005 ISBN 978-1-4102-2495-8
  • Stephen Lofgren: Southern Philippines. The US Army Campaigns of World War II. Washington, DC: US ​​Army Center of Military History, 1996, ISBN 978-0-1604-8140-6
  • M. Hamlin Cannon: War in the Pacific: Leyte, Return to the Philippines. Washington, DC: US ​​Army Center of Military History, 2003

Web links

  • 第 35 軍. Organization of IJA, accessed December 30, 2014 (Japanese).
  • Cebu Island. PacificWrecks.com, accessed June 29, 2015 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Madej, p. 5
  2. ↑ a b c Ness, p. 43
  3. ^ Smith, p. 194
  4. ↑ Lofgren, p. 18
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Adachi is the family name, Hatazō the first name.