8th Regional Army

8th Regional Army
General Imamura Hitoshi , Commander in Chief of the 8th Regional Army, signs the surrender document for all Imperial Japanese Forces in New Britain , New Ireland , the Solomon Islands and New Guinea on the aircraft carrier HMS Glory anchored off Rabaul , September 12, 1945
active	November 16, 1942 to 1945
Country	Japanese Empire
Armed forces	Japanese armed forces
Armed forces	Japanese army
Branch of service	infantry
Type	army
Strength	approx. 250,000
Insinuation	South army
Location	Rabaul
Nickname	Gō ( 剛 , "force")
Butcher	Pacific War Battle for Guadalcanal Battle for New Guinea
Supreme command
list of	Commander in chief

The 8th Regional Army ( Japanese 第 8 方面軍 , Dai-hachi hōmengun ) was from 1942 to 1945 one of the regional armies of the Imperial Japanese Army . Your Tsūshōgō code (military code name) was Kraft ( 剛 , Gō ) or Gō 7960 .

history

The Daihon'ei ( Imperial Headquarters of the Army and the Navy ) set up the 8th Regional Army in Rabaul on November 16, 1942 under the command of General Imamura Hitoshi , up to now the commander of the 16th Army in Java . It was subordinate to the Southern Army and consisted mainly of the 17th and 18th Armies and other smaller associations and units . The 17th Army could henceforth concentrate on the battle of Guadalcanal , while the area of ​​responsibility of the 18th Army lay on New Guinea . The 6th and 17th Divisions were directly subordinate to the 8th Regional Army and were stationed on Bougainville . The 6th Air Division was initially stationed in Rabaul, but with the beginning of the Allied landing on New Guinea , they moved to their headquarters in Wewak , New Guinea.

In the course of the Allied Operation Cartwheel , which aimed to isolate the Japanese fortress of Rabaul , the 8th Regional Army increasingly lost the ability to support the units under its control. For this reason, the Daihon'ei decided in November 1943 to subordinate the 18th Army to the 2nd Regional Army in Western New Guinea. Rabaul was able to be held by the 8th Regional Army until the end of the war in September 1945, but had been completely isolated since the end of 1944 and no longer played a role in the course of the war.

On September 12, 1945, General Imamura Hitoshi , Commander in Chief of the 8th Regional Army, signed the surrender document for all Imperial Japanese Forces in New Britain , New Ireland , the Solomon Islands and New Guinea on the aircraft carrier HMS Glory anchored off Rabaul .

Commander in chief

	Surname	From	To
Commander in chief	General Imamura Hitoshi	November 16, 1942	August 15, 1945
chief of staff	Major General Katō Rimpei	November 16, 1942	August 15, 1945

Subordinate units

The 8th Regional Army was composed as follows on November 27, 1942:

• 17th Army (approx. 70,000 men)
  • 2nd division
  • 38th Division
  • Kawaguchi Association
  • Ichiki Association
  • more small units
• 18th Army * (approx. 100,000 men)
  • 20th division
  • 41st Division
  • 51st Division
  • more small units
• 6th division
• 17th Division **
• 6th Air Division

(*) assumed until November 1943 (**) joined in January 1943

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 978-1-78200-932-0
• Philip Jowett: The Japanese Army 1931-45 (1). Osprey Publishing, 2002, ISBN 978-1-84176-353-8
• Gordon Rottman, "Japanese Army in World War II, Conquest of the Pacific" Osprey Publishing, 2005, ISBN 978-1-8417-6789-5

Web links

• 総 軍 ・ 方面軍 . Organization of IJA,accessed January 2, 2015(Japanese). 
• List of Higher Echeron Army Headquarters. Organizations of IJA & N, accessed January 1, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rottman, p. 13
2. ↑ Madej, p. 3
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Rottman, p. 43
4. ↑ 総 軍 ・ 方面軍 . (No longer available online.) Organization of IJA, archived from the original on April 20, 2015 ; accessed on January 2, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Yenne, p. 54
6. ^ Rottman, p. 82
7. ^ Rottman, p. 44

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