Sugiyama Hajime

Sugiyama Hajime, 1944

Sugiyama Hajime ( Japanese 杉山 元 , also read Sugiyama Gen ; * January 1, 1880 in Kokura , Fukuoka Prefecture , Japanese Empire ; † September 12, 1945 in Tokyo ) was a Gensui of the Imperial Japanese Army and several times Army Minister . During his first tenure as Minister of the Army, he managed the outbreak and escalation of the Second Sino-Japanese War . As Army General Staff from October 1940, he advocated the expansion of Japanese rule to Southeast Asia and a preventive strike against the United States .

Life

Sugiyama Hajime was born into a former samurai family in Kokura in January 1880 . In 1901 he graduated from the Army Officer's School and entered the Japanese Army with the rank of sub-lieutenant . He later served in the Russo-Japanese War . In 1910 he graduated from the Army University and then served in various positions in the Army General Staff. He served as a military attaché in the Philippines and Singapore in 1912 and again in British India in 1915 . During this time he visited the German Reich and during the First World War he dealt with the use of aircraft for military purposes.

On his return to Japan, Sugiyama was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was given command of the 2nd Air Battalion in December 1918. He was active as a strong advocate of military aviation and, after being promoted to colonel in 1922, was the first to receive the post of commander of the Army Air Force .

In May 1925, Sugiyama was promoted to major general and in June 1930, after promotion to lieutenant general, he was appointed Deputy Minister of the Army in Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi's cabinet . In March 1933 he again took over command of the Army Air Force and in November 1936 he was promoted to full general.

Sugiyama was the nationalist Tōsei-ha , a faction within the armed forces led by General Ugaki Kazushige , close. This was in competition with the more radical Kōdō-ha Sadao Arakis . While the Kōdō-ha advocated a north-facing policy and a war against the Soviet Union , the Tōsei-ha advocated a south-facing expansion policy. After Sadao withdrew from active politics due to illness, the Tōsei-ha was finally able to prevail and from the mid-1930s onwards increasingly became the dominant force in Japanese politics.

A year after the attempted coup on February 26, 1936 , Sugiyama was inspector general of military training in August of the same year and on February 9, 1937, moved from there to the post of Minister of the Army in the cabinet of Hayashi Senjūrō . During his tenure there was an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge from which a war with China developed. On June 3, 1938 Sugiyama had to hand over the office of Minister of the Army to Itagaki Seishirō . In December of that year he received the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Northern China Regional Army and in August 1939 moved to the same post in the Mongolian Garrison Army , but only kept this post until the following month.

After his return to Japan he became head of the Yasukuni Shrine and on September 3, 1940 replaced Kotohito Kan'in, who was retiring for reasons of age, as Chief of the Army General Staff. In this influential post he campaigned heavily for war against the western colonial powers and the United States. He promised Japan a quick success in the event of war, but was scolded by Tennō Hirohito on September 5, 1941, just two months before the outbreak of the Pacific War , for having promised a victory over China within three months as Minister of the Army in 1937. In this context, the Tennō questioned his confidence in a quick victory over the Western powers.

In 1943, Sugiyama was given the ceremonial rank of gensui, the Japanese equivalent of a field marshal. Due to the lack of success in the war and the receding fronts in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, Sugiyama was dismissed from his post on February 21, 1944 by Tōjō Hideki, who was serving as Prime Minister . Instead, he was once again given the post of inspector general of military training, which is regarded as prestigious in the army. After Tōjō's dismissal as Prime Minister on July 22 of that year, Sugiyama was reappointed Minister of the Army under the new Prime Minister Koiso Kuniaki . With the dissolution of the Koiso cabinet on April 7, 1945, Sugiyama resigned from the post.

Instead, he became the first commander in chief of the newly established 1st Main Army , which was to take over the defense of the Japanese main islands against an expected Allied invasion .

Sugiyama Hajime committed suicide ten days after Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945, after he had made what he saw as the necessary preparations for the demobilization of troops under his command, which the Allies had called for. He shot himself four times in the chest with a revolver at his desk. His wife also committed suicide at his home. His grave is in the Tama Cemetery in Fuchū , Tokyo.

literature

• Herbert P. Bix: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Harper Perennial, New York 2001, ISBN 0-06-093130-2 .
• Trevor N. Dupuy : The Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography. HarperCollins, New York 1992, ISBN 0-7858-0437-4 .
• Richard B. Frank: Downfall. The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Penguin, 1999, ISBN 0-14-100146-1 .
• Saburo Hayashi and Alvin D. Coox: Kogun. The Japanese Army in the Pacific War. The Marine Corps Association, Quantico, Virginia 1959.

Web links

Commons : Sugiyama Hajime  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Herbert P. Bix: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. 2001.
2. ^ Richard B. Frank: Downfall. The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. 1999.

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