Fujiwara Iwaichi

General Fujiwara Iwaichi

Fujiwara Iwaichi ( Japanese. 藤原 岩 市 ; * March 1, 1908 in Hyōgo Prefecture ; † February 24, 1986 ) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and a lieutenant general in the Japanese ground self-defense forces .

Life

Born in 1908 in Hyōgo Prefecture, Fujiwara graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1931 and was then assigned to the 37th Infantry Regiment. After a stay abroad in Tianjin , he went to the Imperial Japanese Army University , which he graduated in 1938. After graduating, he was transferred to the 21st Army .

In 1939 he was assigned to the Japanese military intelligence service Kempeitai and served in its branch at the Imperial Army General Staff . There he was involved in the planning for the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia. In 1941 he traveled to Bangkok , where he took over the post of Chief of Staff of the Southern Army . In the same year he founded the Fujiwara Kikan , a special unit whose task it was to support the independence movements in British India , British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies . The unit played an important role in building the Indian National Army . In 1943 she was administratively subordinated to the 15th Army .

In the run-up to the Japanese invasion of Sumatra and the rest of the Dutch East Indies, Fujiwara was tasked with establishing contact with the independence movement in Aceh in northern Sumatra . This was known for its long-lasting resistance against the Dutch colonial rulers. One of Fujiwara's first contacts was the strictly religious teacher Sahid Abu Bakar from Kedah . He helped him by recruiting a small secret service unit made up of locals for Fujiwara, which, in addition to gathering information, also spread pro-Japanese propaganda. He also brought the Japanese into contact with the nationalist-Islamist PUSA, which they tried to persuade into an open rebellion. Units of the PUSA and the Fujiwara Kikan captured the provincial capital Banda Aceh in the night of March 10th to 11th, 1942 in the course of the Japanese invasion . The Japanese division of the Imperial Guard landing the next morning found, to their surprise, a city already in Japanese hands.

Fujiwara later served as an intelligence officer on the staff of the 15th Army in Burma. There he spent most of the time in the north of the country and helped plan Operation U-gō , the planned invasion of British India. After the failure of the operation, Fujiwara, like most of the army's staff, was given a criminal transfer and he was recalled to Japan. There he taught at the Army Staff College for a few months before he took over a field command again in April 1945. However, he only remained Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army for a short time and was transferred to Singapore in June 1945 to become Chief of Staff of the 57th Army . He held this post until the surrender of Japan .

After the war, Fujiwara was one of the few officers in the Imperial Japanese Army who managed to re-enter military service and serve in the newly established Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces . He commanded the 1st Division there from 1956 until his retirement in 1964 and rose to become Lieutenant General .

During his retirement he wrote the book F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in Southeast Asia During World War II , in which he portrayed himself as "Lawrence of Arabia of Southeast Asia".

literature

• Joyce C. Lebra: Japanese trained Armies in South-East Asia. Columbia University Press, New York 1977, ISBN 0-231-03995-6 .
• Peter W. Fay: The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence, 1942–1945 . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1993, ISBN 0-472-08342-2 .
• Iwaichi Fujiwara: F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in Southeast Asia During World War II. Heinemann, 1983, ISBN 9-622-25072-6

Web links

• (Book Review) F. Kikan: Japanese Intelligence Operations in Southeast Asia during World War II. Review Author: Edward J. Drea in Military Affairs, Issue 49, No. 4. (Oct. 1985), p. 220.
• The Fujiwara Iwaichi Monument , Waseda University.

Remarks

1. ↑ Louis Allen, Burma: The Longest War , p. 386

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Fujiwara is the family name, Iwaichi the first name.