Imperial Japanese Army
The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...
, memorialized by the Memorial Statue of the Hakkōda Death March in
Aomori
, officially Aomori City (, ), is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 264,945 in 136,781 households, and a population density of 321 people per squa ...
,
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
.
In January 1902, 210 soldiers in the 5th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion became trapped on the
Hakkōda Mountains
The are an active volcanic complex in south-central Aomori Prefecture, Japan, in Towada-Hachimantai National Park. Often called or simply , the mountains are collectively listed as one of the 100 Famous Japanese Mountains. Its highest peak, M ...
; this was the start of the Hakkōda Mountains incident. Search parties discovered Gotō. The discovery led to the rescue of the other soldiers. His arms and legs were amputated as a result of
frostbite
Frostbite is a skin injury that occurs when someone is exposed to extremely low temperatures, causing the freezing of the skin or other tissues, commonly affecting the fingers, toes, nose, ears, cheeks and chin areas. Most often, frostbite occ ...
.
After the incident, he retired from the army, returned to his hometown, became a member of the village assembly, and later died from a
cerebral hemorrhage
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain (i.e. the parenchyma), into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stro ...
.
In
Jirō Nitta
is the pen name of Japanese historical novelist . He was born in an area that is now part of the city of Suwa, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.Nitta, Jirō. Translated by James Westerhoven. Death March on Mount Hakkōda '. ''
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...