Yanagawa Heisuke

Yanagawa Heisuke

Yanagawa Heisuke ( Jap. 柳川平助 * 2 October 1879 Nagasaki Prefecture ; † 22. January 1945 ) was a Japanese lieutenant general of the army in the Russo-Japanese War , the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War .

Yanagawa attended the Army Officer School and graduated in 1901. During the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05 he served in Manchuria and took part in the 1919 Versailles peace negotiations . In 1912 he graduated from the Army University .

From August 1, 1934 to December 2, 1935, Yanagawa commanded the 1st Division as Lieutenant General . He then became commander in chief of the Taiwan Army . Although he retired from the service in 1936, he was recalled to command the 10th Army from October 1937 to February 1938 . During Yanagawa's service, the 10th Army participated in the successful conquest of Shanghai and Nanking , but also in the Nanking massacre .

After the end of World War II , Yanagawa was charged by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Tōkyō . However, he was not convicted because he had died of a heart attack in January 1945.

literature

• Benjamin Lai: Shanghai and Nanjing 1937 . Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2017, ISBN 978-1-47281-749-5 (English).
• Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II . Basic Books, 2012, ISBN 978-0-46506-836-4
• Spencer Tucker: Who's Who in Twentieth Century Warfare . Routledge, 2003

Individual evidence

1. ^ Tucker, p. 362
2. ↑ ^{a b} Lai, p. 15

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Yanagawa is the family name, Heisuke the first name.