Iida Shōjirō

Iida Shōjirō

Iida Shōjirō ( Japanese 飯 田 祥 二郎 ; * August 8, 1888 in Yamaguchi Prefecture ; † January 23, 1980 in Tokyo ) was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army .

Life

Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture Iida graduated in 1908 the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and in December 1915, the Imperial Japanese Army Academy from. In December 1918 he was promoted to captain. As such, he took part in the Siberian intervention .

After serving in various administrative positions within the Imperial Japanese General Staff , he was an instructor at the Army Infantry School from 1932 to 1934 before becoming commander of the 4th Regiment of the Imperial Japanese Guard until 1935 . After that he was Chief of Staff of the 4th Division until 1937 .

After the Second Sino-Japanese War began , Iida became Chief of Staff of the 1st Army fighting in China in early 1938 . Soon after, however, he was transferred to Taiwan to command the Taiwanese army there. In 1939 he returned to Japan, where he was commander of the Imperial Guard until 1941 .

Shortly before the start of the Pacific War , Iida took command of the 25th Army that was occupying French Indochina . He set up his headquarters in Saigon and dealt with the planning for a possible invasion of Thailand . At the beginning of December 1941 he took over command of the newly formed 15th Army , which consisted of the 33rd and 55th Divisions . From December 8th his troops crossed the border and beat the only slight resistance of the Thai troops. After Japan forced the Thai government into a defense pact, Iida's troops crossed the country and crossed the border to the British colony of Burma on January 20, 1942 . With this they started the Burma campaign .

Iida's 35,000 soldiers managed, despite the difficult terrain and scarce supplies, to outmaneuver the Allied forces and to conquer Rangoon on March 8th . With this he cut the Burma Road , which initially made it almost impossible for the Allies to send supplies to the beleaguered Republic of China by land. By May the Allies had been pushed back to the borders of India and China and suffered about 30,000 losses, while those of the Japanese, who had meanwhile been reinforced to four divisions, were only about 7,000 men.

In 1943, Iida was recalled to Japan and transferred to the Central Defense Command. In 1944 he was briefly Commander-in-Chief of the Central District Army before retiring that same year. Due to the massive recruiting of the Japanese army, however, he was recalled to service in mid-1945 and appointed commander of the 30th Army in Manchukuo . During the Soviet operation Auguststurm , Iida was taken prisoner and remained interned in the Soviet Union until 1950 . Iida died in Tokyo on January 23, 1980.

literature

• Saburo Hayashi: Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War , The Marine Corps Association, Quantico 1959.
• Louis Allen: Burma: the Longest War 1941-45 , JM Dent and Sons, 1986, ISBN 0-460-02474-4 .
• John Latimer: Burma: The Forgotten War , John Murray, 2004, ISBN 978-0-719-56576-2 .

Web links

• Iida Shōjirō in the database of generals of World War II
• Iida Shōjirō in the Encyclopedia of the Pacific War
• http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Myanmar.htm

Remarks

1. ↑ Hayashi, Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War .
2. ↑ Ammenthorp, The Generals of World War II .
3. ↑ Latimer, Burma: The Forgotten War .
4. ↑ Allen, Burma: the Longest War 1941-45 .
5. ^ Budge, Pacific War Online Encyclopedia .

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