5th Army (Japanese Empire)

5th Army
active	January 15, 1905 to August 15, 1945
Country	Japanese Empire
Armed forces	Japanese armed forces
Armed forces	Japanese army
Branch of service	infantry
Type	corps
Strength	15,000
Nickname	Shiro ( 城 , "castle")
Butcher	Russo-Japanese War Battle of Mukden Second World War Soviet invasion of Manchuria
Supreme command
list of	Commander in chief

The 5th Army ( Japanese 第 5 軍 , Dai-go-gun ) was a large unit of the Imperial Japanese Army . It was erected and demobilized three times between 1905 and 1945. Your Tsūshōgō code (military code name) was Burg ( 城 , Shiro ).

history

1905 to 1906

The 5th Army was formed on January 15, 1905 under the command of General Kawamura Kageaki . It was only erected shortly before the end of the Russo-Japanese War and took part in the Battle of Mukden . It consisted only of the 11th Division and a few reserve units and was therefore smaller than ordinary Japanese armies, which were mostly about the size of a corps . In a large-scale encircling maneuver on the Japanese right flank, the 5th Army penetrated about 50 km behind the Russian lines during the Battle of Mukden, which forced the Russian units to retreat.

After the fighting ended, the 5th Army was demobilized in January 1906.

1937 to 1945

On December 7, 1937, the 5th Army was reorganized in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in the course of the Second Sino-Japanese War . Similar to the 3rd and 4th Army, the 5th Army was stationed on the Manchurian-Soviet border to show strength against the Soviet Union after several border incidents had already occurred. The 5th Army was briefly disbanded between February and May 1938, but on May 19, 1938 it came under the direct command of the Japanese General Staff . Then she was assigned to the 1st Regional Army, which was part of the Kwantung Army . As the war progressed, the focus of the fighting shifted, leading to the withdrawal of materials and troops from Manchukuo, leaving the army weak.

Towards the end of the Pacific War , the battle-hardened attacked on August 8, 1945 Red Army in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria Manchukuo and the Japanese Empire to. The 5th Army, which was poorly equipped in terms of quantity and quality, could not offer sustained resistance. Large parts of the army were overrun, some were able to withdraw as far as the Sino-Korean border. The 5th Army was officially disbanded in Jixi in September 1945.

Commander in chief

	Surname	From	To
1.	General Kawamura Kageaki	January 15, 1905	January 1906
	demobilized	January 1906	December 8, 1937
2.	General Furushō Motoo	December 8, 1937	February 26, 1938
	demobilized	February 26, 1938	May 19, 1938
3.	General Doihara Kenji	May 19, 1938	September 28, 1940
4th	Lieutenant General Hada Jūichi	September 28, 1940	October 15, 1941
5.	Lieutenant General Iimura Jō	October 15, 1941	October 29, 1943
6th	Lieutenant General Uemura Toshimichi	October 29, 1943	June 27, 1944
7th	Lieutenant General Shimizu Noritsune	June 27, 1944	September 1945

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 5th Army. niehorster.org, accessed October 22, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kowner, Rotem; The A to Z of the Russo-Japanese War, p. 46

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