Railway
Under it were the Railway Ministry, SMR (South Manchurian Railway), East Chinese Railway, Northern Chinese Railway Company, Central Chinese Railway Company, Southern Asian Railway facilities amongst Civil Merchants shipping transports. It also worked with the Imperial Japanese Navy Shipping Services. The section was commanded by Okikatsu Arao, SÅsaku Suzuki and other Army officers.
The section comprised the First (Operations) and Third (Transportation and Communications) bureaux, the 2nd (Operations) and 10th (Shipping and Railways) sections. To conduct operations on rivers and at sea the Japanese Army produced many kinds of vessel, i.e. landing craft, motorboats, gun boats, landing ships etc.
In the Pacific War, they built aircraft carriers and submarines. Besides the Army engineer units for river-crossing, the Japanese Army had their own shipping force to transport troops at sea which sometimes acted in concert with Japanese Navy vessels to transport their forces.
It was a large force which employed 300,000 soldiers (Army Shipping Units) at maximum and managed 30% of Japanese transport ships. For the Japanese Army, the Pacific War was not only a battle on the ground, but also at sea. Many Japanese soldiers fought on board against enemy submarines, PT boats and airplanes. At last, they rode on a Kamikaze special-attack boat and dashed into the enemy ship.
Read more about this topic: Imperial Japanese Army Railways And Shipping Section
Famous quotes containing the word railway:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)