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was a general in the
Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...
.


Biography

Born in what is now part of the city of Nantan, Kyoto prefecture, as the fourth son of a farmer, Ushiroku attended military preparatory schools in Osaka, and graduated from the 17th class of the
Imperial Japanese Army Academy The was the principal officer's training school for the Imperial Japanese Army. The programme consisted of a junior course for graduates of local army cadet schools and for those who had completed four years of middle school, and a senior course f ...
in 1905. He served in combat very briefly at the very end of the
Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
as a junior lieutenant with the IJA 38th Infantry Regiment. He graduated from the 29th class of the
Army Staff College Staff colleges (also command and staff colleges and War colleges) train military officers in the administrative, military staff and policy aspects of their profession. It is usual for such training to occur at several levels in a career. For exa ...
in 1917. He served on staff of the
Kwantung Army ''Kantō-gun'' , image = Kwantung Army Headquarters.JPG , image_size = 300px , caption = Kwantung Army headquarters in Hsinking, Manchukuo , dates = April ...
, staff of the
IJA 3rd Division The was an infantry division in the Imperial Japanese Army. Its call sign was the . History The 3rd Division was formed in Nagoya in January 1871 as the , one of six regional commands created in the fledgling Imperial Japanese Army. The Nagoya ...
, staff of the
IJA 5th Division The was an infantry division of the Imperial Japanese Army. Its call sign was the . The 5th Division was formed in Hiroshima in January 1871 as the , one of six regional commands created in the fledgling Imperial Japanese Army. Its personnel we ...
, Railway Section of the
Imperial Japanese Army General Staff The , also called the Army General Staff, was one of the two principal agencies charged with overseeing the Imperial Japanese Army. Role The was created in April 1872, along with the Navy Ministry, to replace the Ministry of Military Affairs ...
, military attaché to Europe, and back with the Kwangtung Army in Manchukuo, where he was assigned to the protection of the
South Manchurian Railway The South Manchuria Railway ( ja, 南満州鉄道, translit=Minamimanshū Tetsudō; ), officially , Mantetsu ( ja, 満鉄, translit=Mantetsu) or Mantie () for short, was a large of the Empire of Japan whose primary function was the operatio ...
. In August 1931, became Chief of Staff of the IJA 4th Division. Ushiroku was promoted to
major general Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of ...
in March 1934 and was in charge of the Personnel Bureau of the General Staff from August 1935. Following the attempted coup d'etat by elements of the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1936 February 26 incident, he was ordered to report directly to Army Minister
Hisaichi Terauchi Count was a '' Gensui'' (or field marshal) in the Imperial Japanese Army, commander of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group during World War II. Biography Early military career Terauchi was born in Tokyo Prefecture, and was the eldest son of ...
to oversee the purge of rebel sympathizers from sensitive posts. Following the July 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, he expressed his opposition to further expansion of the Army into China. However, in August 1937 he was promoted to lieutenant general and in October became commander of the [IJA 26th Division. At the time, this was a garrison force to provide security for central Manchukuo and from July 4, 1938, it was attached to the Mongolia Garrison Army in Inner Mongolia. In 1939, he was reassigned to command the Japanese Fourth Army, IJA 4th Army, which was again a garrison force guarding the northern borders of Manchukuo. These assignments kept him sidelined in the
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
until October 1940, when he became commander of the
Southern China Area Army The was a field army of the Imperial Japanese Army during Second Sino-Japanese War. History The Japanese South China Area Army was formed on February 9, 1940 under the control of the China Expeditionary Army. It was transferred to direct contro ...
, which was responsible for garrisoning Japanese-occupied Guangdong Province and controlling military operations in neighboring
Guangxi Province Guangxi (; ; alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam ( ...
. In December 1940, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun. In July 1941, Ushiroku was promoted to chief of staff of the
China Expeditionary Army The was a general army of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1939 to 1945. The China Expeditionary Army was established in September 1939 from the merger of the Central China Expeditionary Army and Japanese Northern China Area Army, and was headq ...
. In August 1942, he was promoted to full general and withdrawn to Japan to command the
Central District Army The was a field army of the Imperial Japanese Army responsible for the defense of the Japanese home islands during the Pacific War. It was one of the regional commands in the Japanese home islands reporting to the General Defense Command. Comman ...
. This was a field army responsible for the defense of the
Japanese home islands The Japanese archipelago (Japanese: 日本列島, ''Nihon rettō'') is a group of 6,852 islands that form the country of Japan, as well as the Russian island of Sakhalin. It extends over from the Sea of Okhotsk in the northeast to the East Chin ...
. He remained in this post until February 1944. In February 1944, he was hand-picked by Prime Minister
Hideki Tojo Hideki Tojo (, ', December 30, 1884 – December 23, 1948) was a Japanese politician, general of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and convicted war criminal who served as prime minister of Japan and president of the Imperial Rule Assistan ...
to serve as Vice Chief of the General Staff a member of the Supreme War Council (Japan), Inspector-General of Army Aviation and Chief of the Army Aeronautical Department within the Army Ministry, as he had been a close protégée of Tojo from his early days in the Army. In these roles, Ushiroku pushed for the use of
suicide attacks A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout histor ...
by
infantry Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and mar ...
to disable or destroy American armor due to Japan's inability to mass-produce effective anti-tank weapons by this stage of the war.Chen, WW2 Database After the collapse of the Tojo cabinet following the loss of Saipan, Ushiroku returned to Manchukuo to take command of the
Japanese Third Area Army The was a field army of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, based in southern Manchukuo and active in combat against the Soviet Union in the very final stages of the war. History The Japanese 3rd Area Army was formed on October 29, 1 ...
to oppose the Soviet invasion. Although his forces were composed mostly of undertrained or overaged reservists with obsolete weapons, he refused orders to retreat, and launched a counterattack along the
Mukden Shenyang (, ; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ), formerly known as Fengtian () or by its Manchu name Mukden, is a major Chinese sub-provincial city and the provincial capital of Liaoning province. Located in central-north Liaoning, it is the prov ...
- Port Arthur railway, buying time to allow many Japanese civilians to flee. By 13 August 1945, his formations were largely shattered, and a mutiny by the
Manchukuo Imperial Army The Manchukuo Imperial Army ( zh, s=滿洲國軍, p=Mǎnzhōuguó jūn) was the ground force of the military of the Empire of Manchukuo, a puppet state established by Imperial Japan in Manchuria, a region of northeastern China. The force was pri ...
at Shinkyō ended his attempts to regroup. He surrendered to the Soviet army on 21 August 1945. He spent more than a decade as an internee in the Soviet Union. Ushiroku returned to Japan on 26 December 1956. Ushiroku served as Chairman of the Japan Veterans Association until his death in 1973. His grave is at the
Tama Cemetery in Tokyo is the largest municipal cemetery in Japan. It is split between the cities of Fuchu and Koganei within the Tokyo Metropolis. First established in April 1923 as , it was redesignated Tama Cemetery in 1935. It is one of the largest green ...
in Fuchu, Tokyo.


Family

Ushiroku's elder brother, Shintaro Ushiroku (1873-1959) was a noted entrepreneur and industrialist in
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
. He started with a building materials manufacturing business and later founded a number of companies, including Toho Artificial Fiber, Taiwan Brick, Takasago Beer, Beitou Ceramics, and Taiwan Paper Mill. He was selected as an advisor to the Taiwan Governor-General's Council. After the war, he emigrated to Brazil. Ushiroku's eldest son, Torao Ushiroku (1914-1992), was a diplomat and ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the
Republic of Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its ea ...
.


References

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External links

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Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ushiroku, Jun 1884 births 1973 deaths People from Kyoto Prefecture Imperial Japanese Army generals of World War II Members of the Kwantung Army Grand Cordons of the Order of the Rising Sun Siberian internees