Lieutenant-Colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

(22 September 1885 – 16 September 1945) of 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 ...

was the commander of all

prisoner-of-war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...

(POW) and civilian internment camps in

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...

, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. A war criminal, Suga died by

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...

five days after being taken prisoner by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n forces in September 1945.

Early life

Suga was born in

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

, the first son in his family. Although the family held

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

beliefs, his younger brother Giichi converted to

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

and became a

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

: he worked at churches in Manchuria, Vancouver Island, and Chicago and became the headmaster of

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

in Tokyo. As a youngster, Suga attended the services at the Alliance Church of Hiroshima which was started by a Danish priest. Hudson Southwell, an Australian missionary interned in Borneo, later wrote: "During our time in the internment camp, Colonel Suga had often come into the church services in the women's section and sat near the back. Once he told Winsome outhwell's wifedirectly, 'I'm a Christian.' This was a startling admission for a Japanese officer to make to a prisoner during wartime."Southwell 165 Suga graduated from Meido Middle School in Hiroshima and then 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 ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, as a

Second Lieutenant Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...

. At around this time he married a woman with the given name Teru; they were to have two sons and four daughters. Suga was an affectionate father and ensured that all of his children went to university, at a time when only five per cent of Japanese went beyond the fifth or

sixth grade Sixth grade (or grade six in some regions) is the sixth year of schooling. Students are typically 11–12 years old, depending on when their birthday occurs. Different terms and numbers are used in other parts of the world. It is commonly the firs ...

. He was an expert horseman and a keen practitioner of

kendo is a modern Japanese martial art, descended from kenjutsu (one of the old Japanese martial arts, swordsmanship), that uses bamboo swords (shinai) as well as protective armor (bōgu). Today, it is widely practiced within Japan and has spread ...

. Toward the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

(during which Japan was an Allied power), Suga served in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. In 1924, he took early retirement as a

Major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

, and decided to pursue a career teaching English. He sailed to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, leaving his family in Japan, supported by his pension. Suga studied to become a certified teacher of English as a second language, at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. He supported himself by taking a series of jobs, such as dish-washing, and by fishing. He was interviewed in Seattle in 1924 by William Carlson Smith as part of Smith's research on race relations, later used for his book ''Americans in the Making'', which was published in 1939. Suga taught English as a lecturer at the Hiroshima High School of Technology (now the Department of Technology, Hiroshima University), Japan, before he was called back to active service in 1937, to serve 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 ...

. He became ill with

diabetes Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level ( hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased ap ...

and retired again in October 1941. After the Japanese

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

, Suga volunteered for service as a prison camp commander on an advice of his younger brother, believing that his language skills would prove useful. He was appointed commander of all POW and internment camps in Borneo.

Borneo

On Borneo there were Japanese-run

internment camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without Criminal charge, charges or Indictment, intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects ...

at Batu Lintang, Kuching, Sarawak,

Jesselton , image_skyline = , image_caption = From top, left to right, bottom:Kota Kinabalu skyline, Wawasan intersection, Tun Mustapha Tower, Kota Kinabalu Coastal Highway, the Kota Kinabalu City Mosque, the Wism ...

(later Kota Kinabalu),

Sandakan Sandakan (, Jawi: , ) formerly known at various times as Elopura, is the capital of the Sandakan District in Sabah, Malaysia. It is the second largest city in Sabah after Kota Kinabalu. It is located on the Sandakan Peninsula and east coast of ...

and briefly on

Labuan Labuan (), officially the Federal Territory of Labuan ( ms, Wilayah Persekutuan Labuan), is a Federal Territory of Malaysia. Its territory includes and six smaller islands, off the coast of the state of Sabah in East Malaysia. Labuan's capit ...

island. Suga was based at Batu Lintang but was often absent on business at the other camps. Suga is described in ''

Three Came Home ''Three Came Home'' is a 1950 American post-war film directed by Jean Negulesco, based on the memoirs of the same name by writer Agnes Newton Keith. It depicts Keith's life in North Borneo in the period immediately before the Japanese invasi ...

'', an account by

Agnes Newton Keith Agnes Newton Keith (July 4, 1901 – March 30, 1982) was an American writer best known for her three autobiographical accounts of life in North Borneo (now Sabah) before, during, and after World War II. The second of these, '' Three Came Home'', ...

, a female civilian internee at Batu Lintang: :A little Japanese man, onetime graduate of the

, patron of the arts, recipient of

Allied decorations; a military man with shaven head; a sick man with diabetes who eats no sugar; a soldier who likes children; a little man with a big sword; a religious dilettante, born

Shinto Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shintois ...

ist and turning

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

; a hero and a figure of ridicule; a Japanese patriot, Commander of All Prisoners of War and Internees in Borneo. Rosemary Beatty, an Australian who was a small child when she was interned at Batu Lintang, recalled Suga's acts of kindness to her and other children: :''I suppose the thing that really sticks in my mind really is Colonel Suga coming through the gates in his car and we would sneak into it and hide, and then he would drive off and find we were there. He'd take us up to his residence and serve us coffee fruit and show us magazines... He'd even give us lollies weets/candyto bring back to camp.'' Brutality by the guards at Batu Lintang increased when Suga was away; internees wondered whether he left instructions for this to happen or whether the juniors left in charge took advantage of his absence to further abuse the prisoners. The

atomic bombings The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

in Japan at

on 6 August 1945, followed by that of

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

on 9 August, precipitated the abrupt end of the war. On 15 August 1945, Japan announced its official

unconditional surrender An unconditional surrender is a surrender in which no guarantees are given to the surrendering party. It is often demanded with the threat of complete destruction, extermination or annihilation. In modern times, unconditional surrenders most ofte ...

to the Allied Powers. On 24 August, Suga officially announced to the prisoners at Batu Lintang that Japan had surrendered. Suga was a broken man: he believed that his entire family had been killed in the bombing of Hiroshima. In fact, his wife and three of his children survived the bombing though his sister Teru and brother-in-law Tamekichi Tanaka as well as his son Makoto were killed. Suga attended the official surrender of the Japanese forces in the Kuching area by their commander, Major-General Hiyoe Yamamura, on board HMAS ''Kapunda'' on 11 September 1945. Later that day Suga officially surrendered to Brigadier Thomas Eastick, commander of Kuching Force — a detachment from the

Australian 9th Division The 9th Division was a division of the Australian Army that served during World War II. It was the fourth division raised for the Second Australian Imperial Force (2nd AIF). The distinctions of the division include it being: * in front line comb ...

— at Batu Lintang camp. The following day Suga, together with several of his officers were flown to the Australian base on Labuan, to await their trials as war criminals. Suga died by suicide there on 16 September. Other officers were later tried, found guilty and executed. Southwell wrote: :''Now, with the end of the war, he awaited a military tribunal. His country had been destroyed; his army defeated; his family lost. And, apart from the despair in his heart, the

bushido is a moral code concerning samurai attitudes, behavior and lifestyle. There are multiple bushido types which evolved significantly through history. Contemporary forms of bushido are still used in the social and economic organization of Japan. ...

tradition, the code of the Japanese warrior, had deep roots. The fateful day came on September 16th, one week before his 60th birthday, traditionally a time when a family would gather round in celebration. Colonel Tatsuji Suga believed he had no-one to gather around; and he had no desire to see that day alone.''

Evaluation

As Commander of all POW and civilian internee camps, Suga was legally responsible for the many atrocities that took place in these camps, including the

Sandakan Death Marches The Sandakan Death Marches were a series of forced marches in Borneo from Sandakan to Ranau which resulted in the deaths of 2,434 Allied prisoners of war held captive by the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II at the ...

. As the war closed, Suga was given multiple orders to execute all prisoners within the camp, orders which he failed to carry out. Although Keith admired some of his personal qualities and felt that he had saved the life of her husband, who was also interned in the camp, she also recorded: "Against this, I place the fact that all prisoners in Borneo were inexorably moving towards starvation. Prisoners of war and civilians were beaten, abused and tortured. Daily living conditions of prison camps were almost unbearable." Keith added: :''At Sandakan and Ranau and Brunei, North Borneo, batches of prisoners in fifties and sixties were marched out to dig their own graves, then shot or bayoneted and pushed into the graves, many before they were dead. All over Borneo hundreds and thousands of sick, weak, weary prisoners were marched on roads and paths until they fell from exhaustion, when their heads were beaten in with rifle butts and shovels, and split open with swords, and they were left to rot unburied. On one march 2,790 POWs started, and three survived ... For these black chapters in captivity Colonel Suga, commander in Borneo, must be held responsible.'' Another internee at Batu Lintang, Australian

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

Ivan Quartermaine, said that by the time the 9th Division liberated the camp, the health of the prisoners was so poor they believed they had only "three months to live, the whole camp. We were in pretty bad shape."Robert Taylor, "Survivor tells of Borneo hell" (''The West Australian'', April 14, 2007, p.14) After liberation, he and other prisoners sought weapons from Australian soldiers, to take revenge on Japanese personnel, but were refused. On reflection, Quartermaine said, he believed that Suga was powerless in regard to the actions of the Japanese

secret police Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...

, the ''

Kempeitai The , also known as Kempeitai, was the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945 that also served as a secret police force. In addition, in Japanese-occupied territories, the Kenpeitai arrested or killed those suspecte ...

''.

After liberation the bodies were exhumed from the cemetery and sent to Labuan for reburial in a central military cemetery there. A large number of the graves of prisoners from Batu Lintang now at Labuan are unidentified: after the Japanese surrender Suga destroyed many camp records. The cemetery in Labuan is cared for by the

Commonwealth War Graves Commission The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations mil ...

. In the 1950 film adaptation of Keith's book, Suga was played by

Sessue Hayakawa , known professionally as , was a Japanese actor and a matinée idol. He was a popular star in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Hayakawa was the first actor of Asian descent to achieve stardom as a leading man ...

Notes

References

* Bell, Frank (1991) ''Undercover University'' (revised edition) Cambridge: Elisabeth Bell. (Originally published in 1990, same ISBN) * Keith, Agnes Newton (1955) ''

'' London: Michael Joseph (Mermaid Books). Originally published in 1947 by Little Brown and Company, Boston, Mass. * Long, Gavin (1963) ''The Final Campaigns'' Australia in the War 1939-1945 Series 1 (Army), Volume 7. Canberra: Australian War Memorial (Online in PDF form a

) * Mackie, John (2007) ''Captain Jack, Surveyor and Engineer: The autobiography of John Mackie'' Wellington: New Zealand Institute of Surveyors * Ooi, Keat Gin (1998) ''Japanese Empire in the Tropics: Selected Documents and Reports of the Japanese Period in Sarawak, Northwest Borneo, 1941-1945'' Ohio University Center for International Studies, Monographs in International Studies, SE Asia Series 101 (2 vols) * Southwell, C. Hudson (1999) ''Uncharted Waters'' Calgary, Canada: Astana Publishing * Wigmore, Lionel (1957) ''The Japanese Thrust'' Australia in the War 1939-1945 Series 1 (Army), Volume 4. Canberra: Australian War Memorial (Online in PDF form a

) * Hoshino, Tatsuo (1980)"Hotobashiru Hagane - The Life of the Headmaster of YMCA Giichi Suga" Tokyo, Japan: Suga GIIchi Den Kankokai: distributed by YMCA Tokyo *Hayashi, Hifumi (2016)"Agnes Keith's Borneo and Japan (1)- ''Land Below the Wind''", Meiji University Kyoyo Ronshu (Liberal Arts Essays)vol.513, Tokyo(Online in PDF form

Japanese] *Hayashi, Hifumi (2017)"Agnes Keith's Borneo and Japan (2)- ''Three Came Home and Tatsuji Suga''",Meiji University Kyoyo Ronshu (Liberal Arts Essays)vol.523, Tokyo (Online in PDF form

Japanese])

External links

"The Japanese army and its prisoners: relevant documents and bureaucratic institutions", Professor Aiko Utsumi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Suga, Tatsuji Imperial Japanese Army personnel of World War II University of Washington alumni 1885 births 1945 deaths People from Hiroshima Japanese military personnel of World War I Japanese military personnel who committed suicide Military personnel from Hiroshima Prefecture 1945 suicides Japanese prisoners of war Imperial Japanese Army officers World War II prisoners of war held by Australia