Inada Masazumi

Inada Masazumi

Inada Masazumi ( Japanese 稲 田 正 純 ; * August 27, 1896 in Tottori Prefecture , Japan ; † January 24, 1986 ) was a Lieutenant General of the Imperial Japanese Army .

Life

Inada was born in Tottori Prefecture in 1896 and graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1917 , where he specialized in artillery . In 1925 he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army University , which he graduated with a special distinction.

After various administrative assignments in the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff , Inada was sent to France as a military attaché from 1929 to 1931 .

In 1938 he was promoted to colonel and transferred to Department 2 of the General Staff, which was responsible for maneuvers and war plans. In this position he was responsible for planning the Battle of Wuhan in the Second Sino-Japanese War . He is also said to have been involved in the planning that led to the battles on Lake Chasan and Chalchin Gol .

From 1940 Inada commanded a heavy artillery regiment in Acheng in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo . In 1941 he was appointed deputy chief of staff of the 5th Army, which was also stationed in Manchukuo . In the same year he was promoted to major general , which made him acting chief of staff of the 5th Army.

From 1942 to 1943 he was deputy chief of staff of the Southern Army in the Pacific War that had just broken out . He was later stationed in New Guinea for some time before becoming commander of the 6th Air Division in 1944. After he triggered a political incident in Thailand a short time later , he was released from his command and transferred to the reserve. Due to the increasingly worsening war situation, however, he was soon ordered back into active service and commander of the 3rd ship transport division in Singapore .

After a promotion to lieutenant general in April 1945, Inada commanded the 16th regional army until the surrender of Japan .

After the war ended, Inada was brought before a military tribunal in Yokohama by the American occupation forces for war crimes . Found guilty of ill-treatment of prisoners of war under his command in April 1946, he was sentenced to 7 years' imprisonment, most of which he served until he was released from prison in 1951.

literature

• Alvin Coox: The Anatomy of a Small War: The Soviet-Japanese Struggle for Changkufeng / Khasan, 1938. Greenwood Press, 1977, ISBN 0-837-19479-2 .
• Alvin Coox: Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939. Stanford University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-804-71835-0 .

Web links

• Inada Masazumi in the database of generals of World War II . Retrieved December 28, 2010.

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