Mutō Akira

Mutō Akira (1947)

Mutō Akira ( Japanese武 藤 章; * December 15, 1892 in Hakusui , today a district of Minamiaso , Kumamoto Prefecture , Japanese Empire ; † December 23, 1948 in Tokyo ) was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army before and during the Pacific War . He was convicted and executed as a war criminal after the war .

Life

Born in 1892 in Hakusui, Kumamoto Prefecture, Mutō graduated from the 25th grade of the Army Officer School in Tokyo in December 1913 with the rank of lieutenant of the infantry. After graduating from the Army University in 1920, he was promoted to captain in August 1922. From 1923 to 1926 he served as a military attaché at the Japanese embassy in Berlin . After his return to Japan, he served in various posts in the Army General Staff before taking command of the 1st Regiment for twelve months from March 1934, with the rank of lieutenant colonel . This post was considered particularly prestigious as the 1st Regiment was part of the Imperial Guard . From March to August 1935 he served in the Office for Military Affairs of the Army Ministry , before he was assigned to an unknown position in the Army Ministry until June 1936.

Then Mutō served until March 1937 as head of the Army Intelligence Department of the Kwantung Army in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo . There he was promoted to colonel in August 1936. From March to October 1937 he headed the maneuvers department in the Army General Staff before he was transferred again to the Asian mainland. There he served until February 1938 in the Second Sino-Japanese War, which had broken out in the meantime, as deputy chief of staff of the Central China Regional Army . After the war, he was accused of having participated with troops of this army in some particularly cruel excesses during the Nanking massacre . When the regional army was transformed into the Central China Expeditionary Army , he held the same function there until July 1938. He was then deputy chief of staff in the Northern China Regional Army until September 1939 , where he was promoted to major general in March 1939 . Between September 1939 and April 1942 he served for a relatively long time as head of the Military Affairs Office in the Army Ministry. There he was raised to the rank of lieutenant general in October 1941, relatively shortly after his last promotion .

In April 1942, Muto took over the command of the units of the Imperial Guard in Singapore as the commanding general, who had previously conquered the Malay Peninsula and parts of the Dutch East India with other units of the 25th Army . When the Imperial Guard was divided into several divisions in June 1943, Mutō became the commanding general of their 2nd Division, which was still under the 25th Army. In October 1944 he moved to the post of Chief of Staff of the 14th Regional Army in the Philippines . There he was supposed to fend off the feared Allied invasion of the Philippines together with Commander in Chief Yamashita Tomoyuki . On his arrival on the main island of Luzon , he was almost killed when his plane had to make an emergency landing after an attack by American fighter pilots. During the Battle of Luzon he served in General Yamashita's headquarters, which was initially in Baguio City and was later relocated to the north of the island. He accompanied Yamashita from August 14, 1945 to the negotiations in the American headquarters in Baguio City, which first resulted in an armistice on August 15, due to a decree of Tennō Hirohito as a result of the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki . On September 2, he accompanied Yamashita during the surrender of all remaining Japanese troops on Luzon, which took place parallel to the surrender of Japan . Of these 250,000 soldiers under his command at the beginning of the battle, only about 50,000 had survived the fighting.

Although Mutō was interned in Bilibid Prison in the Philippines immediately after the surrender, he was not officially demobilized until May 1946 . At that time, General Yamashita had already been convicted and executed as a war criminal, including for massacres of civilians and prisoners of war by troops under their joint command. Even before his demobilization, Mutō had been transferred to Japan, where he was charged as a class A war criminal in the Tokyo trials from April 26, 1946 . In addition to responsibility for atrocities in Luzon, he was also charged with war crimes committed by troops under his command during his time in China and Southeast Asia. These included torture, mass murder and the starvation of prisoners. On November 12, 1948, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging by the court. On December 23, 1948, the sentence was carried out in Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.

literature

• Richard Fuller: Japanese Generals 1926–1945. 1st edition. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, PA 2011, ISBN 978-0-7643-3754-3 .
• Hiratsuka Masao: Tōkyō Saiban . Kawade-Verlag, Tokyo 2002, p. 45
• Moriyama Kōhei: Hisho de Yomu Taiheiyō sensō. Shinju wan kishū kara middouē kaisen e . Kawade-Verlag, Tokyo 2003, p. 26 f.

Web links

Commons : Akira Mutō  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Richard Fuller: Japanese Generals 1926–1945. 2011, p. 140.

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