Yamanashi Hanzo

Yamanashi Hanzo, 1929.

Yamanashi Hanzō ( Japanese 山 梨 半 造 ; born April 6, 1864 in Sagami Province , Japan ; † July 2, 1944 in Kamakura , Kanagawa Prefecture ) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and a politician.

Life

Yamanashi Hanzo was born in April 1864 in Osumi District in Sagami Province, now Hiratsuka in Kanagawa Prefecture. In 1886 he graduated from the eighth year of the Army Officer School and in 1892 the eighth year of the Army University . He was transferred to the 4th Infantry Brigade and fought in the ranks of the 2nd Army in the First Sino-Japanese War . After the war he served in various administrative and staff positions before he was sent to the German Reich as a military attaché from 1898 to 1902 .

During the Russo-Japanese War he was first deputy chief of staff of the 2nd Army and later chief of staff of the 3rd division . Immediately after the end of the war he went to Austria-Hungary as a military attaché and stayed there until 1907 before briefly returning to this post in the German Reich and then returning to Japan.

In 1911, Yamanashi's promotion to major general took place and, as a result, he took command of the 30th Infantry Brigade. The following year he took over this position in the 1st Infantry Brigade. After various administrative posts in the Army General Staff , he received a field command in World War I and led the 18th division during the siege of Tsingtau . In 1916 Yamanashi was promoted to lieutenant general and in 1921 to full general.

From June 9, 1921, Yamanashi served successively in the cabinets of Prime Ministers Hara , Takashi and Kato as Minister of the Army . With the dissolution of the Kato cabinet on September 2, 1923, he gave up the post of Army Minister. After the Great Kanto earthquake of September 1, 1923, he was the monitoring officer of the declared state of emergency in the Tokyo region and remained so until the post was abolished in November of that year. From November 16, 1923 to August 20, 1924 he was Commander-in-Chief of the Tokyo Defense Command . Until August of the following year he was the commander of the police force in the Tokyo area.

In 1927, Yamanashi retired from military service and subsequently served as Governor General of Korea until 1929 . A series of corruption scandals resulted in Yamanashi being the least popular governor general of Japan's Korea . As a result of the corruption cases, a number of Yamanashi's close associates were sentenced to prison terms while he escaped being recalled from his post. Following his recall, he retired into private life and died on July 2, 1944 at his home in Kamakura at the age of 80.

literature

• Alvin D. Coox: Nomonhan. Japan Against Russia, 1939. Stanford University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8047-1835-0 .
• Trevor N. Dupuy : Encyclopedia of Military Biography. IB Tauris & Co, 1992, ISBN 1-85043-569-3 .
• Dennis L. MacNamara: The Colonial Origins of Korean Enterprise. 1910-1945. Cambridge University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-521-38565-2 .

Web links

Commons : Hanzō Yamanashi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• New York Times: Japan's New War Minister. Edition of June 11, 1921. Retrieved June 15, 2012.

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