Kawabe Masakazu

Kawabe Masakazu, before 1940.

Kawabe Masakazu ( Japanese 河 辺 正 三 ; * December 5, 1886 in Toyama Prefecture , Japanese Empire ; † March 2, 1965 ) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army . He was the older brother of Kawabe Torashirō , another general in the Japanese army.

Life

Kawabe Masakazu was born in Toyama Prefecture in December 1886. In 1907 he graduated from the Army Officer School with the rank of sub-lieutenant and in 1915 the three-year training at the Army University . Between November 1927 and August 1929 he was a teacher at the university himself. Kawabe went twice to Japanese missions in Europe as a military attaché . From April 1918 to July 1921 he held this post in Switzerland and from 1929 to 1932 in the German Reich . In the meantime he had made extensive trips to America, Europe and Java in the Dutch East Indies . After his return to Japan, Kawabe, who was promoted to colonel in August 1931, was charged with command of the 6th Infantry Regiment until August 1933. He then headed the infantry training regiment in Toyama until March 1934. He was then head of the General Affairs Department at the Inspector General of Military Training . Kawabe left this post when he was promoted to major general in March 1936 to take command of a brigade stationed in China.

His brigade stationed in Shanghai was indirectly involved in the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge , which sparked the Second Sino-Japanese War . As the fighting in China continued to expand, Kawabe was appointed deputy chief of staff of the newly established Northern China Regional Army on August 26th . On February 14, 1938, he moved from there as acting chief of staff to the newly established Central China Expeditionary Army and held the post until the end of January 1939. In March 1939 he was promoted to lieutenant general .

In September 1939, Kawabe was ordered back to Japan, where he received the prestigious post of Inspector General of Military Training. In March 1940 he returned to China and took command of the 12th Division . A year later he became Commander in Chief of the 3rd Army and on August 17, 1942, after the outbreak of the Pacific War , he became Chief of Staff of the China Expeditionary Army . In March 1943 he was posted to the southwest front of the Japanese sphere of influence and appointed commander in chief of the Burma regional army . There he worked with the commander of the 15th Army , Mutaguchi Renya , whom he knew from previous posts, to carry out a pre-emptive strike against British troops at Imphal . The aim of this strike was to prevent the Allied troop concentrations around Imphal and, if the operation went well, to prepare an offensive into British India . These plans came subordinate unit commanders resistance and also the deputy chief of staff in most Kawabe Singapore stationed southern army , Masazumi Inada , spoke out against such an offensive at this time from. Many Japanese officers saw the difficult supply situation in Burma in particular as an obstacle to a successful operation. After Inada was recalled from his command as a result of a diplomatic incident with Thailand in October 1943, Terauchi Hisaichi as Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Army and Tōjō Hideki as Prime Minister approved the blow as they understood it to be of a defensive nature.

The offensive planned by Mutaguchi turned out to be a complete failure and resulted in the highest operating casualties the Japanese suffered in the entire war. In the medium term, the Japanese losses during the fighting ensured the Allied reconquest of Burma. In the course of the operation, Kawabe fell ill with amoebic dysentery and was replaced on August 30, 1944 by General Kimura Heitarō so that he could return to Japan to recover. There he received a post on the Supreme War Council until December of that year . On December 1, he took over the supreme command of the Central District Army and held this until April 1945. From February 1, 1945, he was parallel commander of the newly established 15th Regional Army . This was set up to meet an expected Allied landing on the main Japanese islands . After promotion to full general in March he gave two commands on April 7, from around the command of the April 8 air main army to take over all remaining air units of the Army air forces were subject in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In August he became Commander in Chief of the entire Army Air Forces and remained so after the surrender of Japan until the end of September in order to coordinate their demobilization .

On October 1, he was used by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers as commander of the 1st Main Army , since the two commanders previously used, Doihara Kenji and Umezu Yoshijirō , had been imprisoned on suspicion of war crimes. On November 30th, with the official dissolution of the army, Kawabe resigned from his post. He was then arrested by the occupation authorities and his involvement in planning or carrying out war crimes was investigated. No charges were brought and in September 1947 Kawabe was released from custody. He died on March 2, 1965.

literature

• Richard Fuller: Japanese Generals 1926–1945. 1st edition. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, PA 2011, ISBN 978-0-7643-3754-3 .
• Saburo Hayashi and Alvin D. Coox: Kogun. The Japanese Army in the Pacific War. The Marine Corps Association, Quantico, Virginia 1959.

Remarks

1. ^ Saburo Hayashi and Alvin D. Coox: Kogun. The Japanese Army in the Pacific War. 1959.

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