Japanese Thirteenth Area Army

The Japanese Thirteenth Area Army (第13方面軍, Dai-jyūhachi hōmen gun) was a field army of the Imperial Japanese Army during the final stages of World War II.

Japanese Thirteenth Area Army
ActiveFebruary 1, 1945 - August 15, 1945
CountryEmpire of Japan
BranchImperial Japanese Army
TypeInfantry
RoleField Army
Garrison/HQNagoya
Nickname(s)秀 (Shū = “excellence”)

History

The Japanese 13th Area Army was formed on 1945-02-01 under the Japanese First General Army as part of the last desperate defense effort by the Empire of Japan to deter possible landings of Allied forces in central Honshū during Operation Downfall (or Operation Ketsugō (決号作戦, Ketsugō sakusen) in Japanese terminology). The Japanese 13th Area Army was responsible for the Tōkai region of Japan and was headquartered in Nagoya.

It consisted mostly of poorly trained reservists, conscripted students and home guard militia. In addition, the Japanese had organized the Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps — which included all healthy men aged 15–60 and women 17–40 — to perform combat support, and ultimately combat jobs. Weapons, training, and uniforms were generally lacking: some men were armed with nothing better than muzzle-loading muskets, longbows, or bamboo spears; nevertheless, they were expected to make do with what they had.[1]

The 13th Area Army was demobilized at the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945 without having seen combat.

List of Commanders
NameFromTo
Commanding officerLieutenant General Tasuku Okada1 February 194515 August 1945
Chief of StaffMajor General Masuzo Fujimura1 February 19455 July 1945
Chief of StaffMajor General Yoshizo Shibata5 July 194522 October 1945
gollark: Also, filenames are not fixed-length, thusly things.
gollark: I want to avoid actually writing parsing code as much as practical.
gollark: Specifically, moving the per-file headers to go *after* the files or perhaps entirely removing them, and length-prefixing both actual file content and the per-file metadata.
gollark: <@309787486278909952> Given various difficulties with implementing another implementation of the decompressor, I'm thinking about some changes.
gollark: I have an idea for how to make them run even faster but I don't know if anyone would actually use it.

References

Books
  • Drea, Edward J. (1998). "Japanese Preparations for the Defense of the Homeland & Intelligence Forecasting for the Invasion of Japan". In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-1708-0.
  • Frank, Richard B (1999). Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-41424-X.
  • Jowett, Bernard (1999). The Japanese Army 1931-45 (Volume 2, 1942-45). Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-354-3.
  • Madej, Victor (1981). Japanese Armed Forces Order of Battle, 1937-1945. Game Publishing Company. ASIN: B000L4CYWW.
  • Marston, Daniel (2005). The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84176-882-0.
  • Skates, John Ray (1994). The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb Downfall. New York: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 0-87249-972-3.

Notes
  1. Frank, Downfall, p. 188–9. Bauer and Coox, OLYMPIC VS KETSU-GO.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.