Higuchi Kiichirō

Higuchi Kiichirō

Higuchi Kiichirō ( Japanese 樋 口 季 一郎 ; * August 20, 1888 in Minami-Awaji , Japan ; † October 11, 1970 ) was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army .

Life

Born in Minami-Awaji on Awaji-shima , Higuchi was the oldest of his parents' nine children. When he was 11 years old, his parents divorced and he was raised with his mother's family. He graduated in 1908, the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and in 1918, the Imperial Japanese Army Academy from. First he was sent to Poland as a military attaché . As he was able to speak fluent Russian, he was later assigned to the Kwantung Army in Manchuria to serve as a possible contact officer with the Soviet authorities. There he became a close confidante of Generals Ishiwara Kanji and Anami Korechika .

From 1933 to 1937 he was in command of the 41st Infantry Regiment, and from 1935 to 1937 he served as Chief of Staff of the 3rd Division . As part of a military delegation, he visited the German Reich in 1937 .

Higuchi's memoir, published posthumously in 1971, alleges that while he was stationed in Harbin , during which he was also promoted to major general, he allowed 20,000 Jews waiting at the Manchurian-Soviet border to enter Manchukuo under the Fugu Plan . However, this number is most likely an error that was made during editing by the editor. Today's research assumes that no more than 5,000 Jews crossed the Soviet-Manchurian border between 1938 and 1941, when the war between Germany and the Soviet Union closed this escape route for European Jews.

In late 1938, Higuchi was recalled to Japan, where he briefly served in the Imperial Japanese General Staff before being appointed Commanding Officer of the 9th Division . In 1942, when he was transferred to the 5th Regional Army in the Sapporo area, he was promoted to lieutenant general. With this he took part in the invasion of the Aleutians , including the catastrophic landings on Attu and Kiska Island . In 1943 he served there as administrator of the occupied territories until the islands were retaken by the USA . Subsequently, as the commander of the Northern District Army , he organized the defense of the northern Japanese islands against an expected US invasion . For this reason he had fortifications built on Shumshu , the Kuril Islands and the prefecture of Karafuto .

literature

• David Glantz: The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: August Storm . Frank Cass Publishers, London 2003. ISBN 0-7146-5279-2 .
• Marvin Tokayer, Mary Swartz: The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War II . Gefen Publishing House, Jerusalem 2004, ISBN 965-229-329-6 .
• Shinichi Yamamuro: Manchuria Under Japanese Domination , University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8122-3912-1 .
• Martin Kaneko: The Jewish policy of the Japanese war government . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2008. ISBN 978-3-938690-91-8
• Miriam Bistrović: Anti-Semitism and Philosemitism in Japan . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0499-6

Web links

• Higuchi Kiichirō in the database of generals of World War II
• Higuchi Kiichirô. The Japanese memory

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ammenthorp, The Generals of World War II
2. ↑ Martin Kaneko: The "Otpor Incident" - a fiction. In: The Jewish policy of the Japanese war government. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2008, pp. 66–80.

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