The Imperial Army's final Kwantung Army commander
After the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, he ordered the Kwantung Army to surrender.
Otozō Yamada was a Japanese Imperial Army general who served from the Russo-Japanese War to the end of the Second World War, building his career in command, military administration, and training. As commander of the Kwantung Army from 1944, he recognized that troops and equipment had been stripped for the Pacific war, yet hastily organized formations collapsed rapidly when the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria. Taken into Soviet custody after Japan's surrender, he was sentenced to twenty-five years at the Khabarovsk war-crimes trial over responsibility for bacteriological warfare and returned to Japan in 1956.
Career Timeline
- 1903Graduated from the Army Academy, cavalry officer
- 1912Graduated from the Army Staff College
- 1934–1937Director of the General Staff's General Affairs Bureau, commandant of the Army Academy
- 1937–1939Commander of the 12th Division, 3rd Army, and Central China Expeditionary Army
- 1939–1944Inspector-General of Military Training, member of the Supreme War Council
- 1944–1945Commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, ambassador to Manchukuo
- 1949–1950Defendant at the Khabarovsk war-crimes trial, sentenced to 25 years
- 1956Repatriated from Soviet custody