World War II
Imamura became the commander of the Sixteenth Army in November 1941, and was directed to lead that army in the invasion of the Netherlands East Indies. As his fleet approached Java, during the invasion, his transport, the Ryujo-maru was sunk by torpedoes (most probably by friendly fire) in the Battle of Sunda Strait and he was forced to swim to shore.
He subsequently assumed command of the new Eighth Area Army - responsible for Seventeenth Army (in the Solomon Islands campaign) and Eighteenth Army (New Guinea campaign) - in late 1942. Imamura was based at Rabaul, New Britain. Imamura adopted an unusually lenient policy towards the local population of the former Netherlands East Indies, often in conflict with senior staff of the Southern Army and Imperial General Headquarters. However, his policies won some support from the population and reduced the difficulties of the occupation.
Imamura was promoted to full General in 1943. Along with the naval commander at Rabaul, Vice Admiral Jinichi Kusaka, Imamura surrendered the Japanese forces in New Guinea and the southern Pacific Islands to Australian forces, representing the Allies, in September 1945.
At the end of the war, Imamura was detained at Rabaul by the Australian Army, as he and troops under his command were accused of war crimes, including the execution of Allied prisoners of war, and were to be held for a military tribunal. In April 1946, Imamura wrote to the Australian commander at Rabaul, requesting that his own trial for war crimes be expedited in order to speed the prosecution of war criminals under his command. Imamura was charged with "unlawfully to discharge his duty...to control the members of his command, whereby they committed brutal atrocities and other high crimes...". He was tried by an Australian military court at Rabaul on May 1–16, 1947; convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. Imamura served his imprisonment at Sugamo Prison, in Tokyo, until he was released in 1954.
Read more about this topic: Hitoshi Imamura
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world and/or war:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Whoever has looked deeply into the world might well guess what wisdom lies in the superficiality of men.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I certainly know that if the war fails, the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed, if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)