Andō Rikichi

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General Andō 1940

Andō Rikichi ( Japanese 安藤 利吉 ; born April 3, 1884 in Miyagi Prefecture , † April 19, 1946 in Shanghai ) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and the 19th and last governor general of the Japanese colony of Taiwan .

Early career

Andō graduated from the army officer school with the rank of lieutenant in November 1904, in the same year as the later well-known General Doihara Kenji . After various promotions, he served at the Japanese Embassy in London from January 1919 to August 1921 . After serving with the Army General Staff from April 1923 to July 1924, he then served as a teacher at the Japanese Army University until August 1925 . He then served as a military attaché in British India until April 1927 . Returned to Japan, he served again in the Army General Staff before he was entrusted with the command of the 13th Infantry Regiment after his promotion to colonel in March 1928. In March 1930 he became Chief of Staff of the 5th Division .

General Andō Rikichi with the Order of the Rising Sun

From 1931 to 1932 he returned to the General Staff where he served as head of the army's military administration department. He was then used again from May 1932 to May 1934 as a military attaché, this time in the United Kingdom itself. During this time, he was promoted to major general in August 1932 . On 29 April 1934 he was Order of the Rising Sun awarded. After his return, after a brief renewed position in the General Staff and a nine-month command of the 1st Infantry Brigade until August 1935, he was entrusted with the command of the Toyama Army Infantry School . In April 1936, after being promoted to Lieutenant General , he took over the post of Commanding General of the 5th Independent Garrison Unit, which was stationed in Manchuria . From April 1937 he was first deputy and from February 1938 first general inspector of military training .

China and the occupation of Indochina

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , Ando took over the post of commanding general of the 5th Division in May 1938, which was in action in China. In November of the same year he became commander-in-chief of the 21st Army , which was disbanded in February 1940 and incorporated into the newly formed Southern China Regional Army , whose command Ando took over. The task of this army was to provide the garrison for the Japanese conquered Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi .

While Japan was still negotiating access to airfields and ports in French Indochina with the Vichy regime after the defeat of France in the western campaign , Andō took the initiative on his own. Without consulting his superiors, he ordered his troops to cross the border and occupy the French territories, if necessary with the use of force. Although neither the military nor the political leaders of Japan had originally planned this, during joint deliberations they came to the conclusion that withdrawal of the troops was no longer possible as it became so obvious that the Japanese generals were acting arbitrarily. The following invasion of French Indochina tightened diplomatic relations with the West, especially with the United States, and led to the American oil embargo against Japan, which provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor . As a punishment for his unauthorized behavior, Andō was called back to Tokyo in October 1940 and only released after two months in the General Staff in December and finally transferred to the reserve in January 1941.

Taiwan

General Andō (left) formally surrenders to the Chinese General Chen (right), October 25, 1945.

On November 6, 1941, Andō was reactivated and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Taiwan Army . In March 1942, following a request from the Southern Army, he and his Chief of Staff Higuchi Keishichiro ordered the Kempeitai to procure comfort women for war brothels in Southeast Asia. A total of 70 women were sent to Borneo. According to the travel documents, responsibility for this did not lie with Andō, but directly with the Army Ministry. In this post he was promoted to full general in January 1944. On September 22, 1944, the Taiwan Army was subordinated as the Taiwan District Army to the 10th Regional Army, which provided additional militia and reserve troops in Taiwan in the event of an Allied invasion . Andō took over the command of both the district army and the higher regional army and kept it until the surrender of the Japanese troops on the island in September 1945. On December 30, 1944 he was also the 19th and last governor general of Japanese-occupied Taiwan. In this position he also commanded the Japanese troops on the Ryūkyū , Amami , Daitō and Sakishima Islands .

As governor general, he pushed for the war mobilization of the population by issuing a decree on February 2, 1945, which demanded the mobilization of all middle-aged and elderly residents. He repeatedly emphasized in public statements that the residents of Taiwan are full citizens of Japan and organized the mobilized population in a People's Volunteer Corps ( Giyūtai ), in which ethnic Japanese and Taiwanese were jointly under a unified command of Japanese and Taiwanese officials. The People's Volunteer Corps helped maintain public order after Japan's surrender .

In May 1945 Andō ordered a trial of 14 captured soldiers of the US Air Force in Taihoku and then their execution. Isayama Haruki served as the judge . On August 15, 1945, in the face of Japan's unconditional surrender, Japanese officers, including Taiwan Army Chief of Staff Isayama Haruki and leading ethnic Taiwanese, planned to set up an Independent Taiwan Movement to prevent the island from annexing mainland China after the surrender. Andō reacted cautiously and warned the officers to act wisely, causing the plan to collapse. After Japan surrendered, the 10th Regional Army disbanded independently by September 1945. Andō and his staff surrendered on October 25, 1945 to the Chinese General Chen Yi, who had landed on Taiwan .

After the handover of the island, Andō received from the new provincial government the supervision of the return of all ethnic Japanese from Taiwan to the Japanese main islands, a total of over 450,000 people, beginning on December 25th of that year. This task shamed him so much that he entrusted the organization of the repatriation entirely to subordinate officers and only carried out the nominal supervision. The repatriation, in which the displaced persons had to leave most of their property behind, officially ended after four months. One day after the official end, Andō and several other Japanese officers were arrested as possible war criminals.

After his capture, Ando was taken to Shanghai, mainland China, where there were plans to charge him with war crimes , including atrocities against prisoners of war under his command, while in China. Andō, however, evaded the charge by suicide by taking poison in prison. He did so in the belief that superiors were fully responsible for the actions of their subordinates.

Remarks

  1. ^ A b c d e Richard Fuller: Japanese Generals 1926–1945. 2001, p. 28.
  2. ↑ 旧 ・ 勲 一等 旭日 大 綬 章 受 章 者 一 覧 (List of Bearers of the Order of the Rising Sun). Retrieved on May 4, 2015 (jp).
  3. ↑ Biographies: Page 2 (Ando - Babington-Smith). In: WW2: Your World War II Resource. Archived from the original on July 3, 2008 ; accessed on June 14, 2010 (English).
  4. ^ Yuki Tanaka: Japan's Comfort Women. Sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and US occupation. 2002, p. 27.
  5. ↑ Zehan Lai, Ramon Hawley Myers, and E Wei: A Tragic Beginning. The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947. 1991, pp. 36-38.
  6. ^ A b Hsu Chieh-lin: The Republic of China and Japan. 1990, p. 48.
  7. ↑ C. Peter Chen: Trip to Taipei, Nov. 5, 2006. In: World War II Database. Retrieved June 14, 2010 .
  8. ^ Charles Brewer Jones: Buddhism in Taiwan. Religion and the State 1660-1990. 1999, pp. 98-99.

literature

  • Richard Fuller: Japanese Generals 1926–1945. 1st edition. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, PA 2011, ISBN 978-0-7643-3754-3 .
  • Chieh-lin Hsu: The Republic of China and Japan. In: Yu San Wang (ed.): Foreign Policy of the Republic of China. An unorthodox approach. Praeger Publishers, New York 1990, ISBN 0-275-93471-3 , OCLC 20852296 .
  • Charles Brewer Jones: Buddhism in Taiwan. Religion and the State 1660-1990. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, Hawai'i 1999, ISBN 978-0-585-32866-9 , OCLC 45843014 .
  • Zehan Lai, Ramon Hawley Myers, and E Wei: A Tragic Beginning. The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 1991, ISBN 0-8047-1829-6 , OCLC 21760583 .
  • Henry Tsai Shih-Shan: Lee Teng-hui and Taiwan's Quest for Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, ISBN 1-4039-7056-4 .
  • Yuki Tanaka: Japan's Comfort Women. Sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and US occupation. Routledge, London and New York 2002, ISBN 978-0-415-19400-6 , OCLC 47785668 .

Web links

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Andō is the family name, Rikichi the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Andō, Rikichi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 安藤 利吉 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION General of the Imperial Japanese Army
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Miyagi Prefecture
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 1946
Place of death Shanghai