Torashiro Kawabe
Torashiro Kawabe (1890-1960) was a lieutenant general and vice chief of staff of the Imperial Japanese Army, who played an important role in ensuring Hirohito's surrender decision was carried out. After the war, he worked with U.S. intelligence and had a role in creating the Japanese Self-Defense Force. His brother was Gen. Masakazu Kawabe.
Early career
He was a military attache to the Soviet Union in 1932-1934. In Japan, as opposed to other countries, the post of military attache was prestigious and career-enhancing, often not restricted to intelligence about the country where the incumbent was stationed, but with a broader intelligence role. He then moved to senior staff posts in the Kwangtung Army, commanded a regiment of the Imperial guards, and then returning to Imperial General Headquarters in 1937.
Increasingly specializing in aviation, he moved among air staff and training, commanding air units, and additional tours as a military attache in Germany and Hungary. [1]
WWII
Surrender of Japan
While Army Minister Korechika Anami continued, on August 13, to fight acceptance of the Byrnes note offering modified surrender terms, insisting it would destroy the kokutai at a 9 AM Supreme War Council. Only three of the fifteen attendees supported the position of Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo that any alteration of the Byrnes communication would continue the war, but Prime Minister Suzuki agreed and said he would tell the emperor his views of and that of the minister. A naval doctor attending Suzuki observed Anami would commit suicide if Japan surrendered, and Suzuki responded "Yes, I know, and I am sorry."[2] Kawabe, however, wrote "Alas, we are defeated. The imperial state we have believed in has been ruined." Kawabe obtained the signature of many Tokyo-based officers, including Anami, to honor the Imperial decision.[3]
Postwar
He was among the Japanese ex-officers and nationalists, immediately after the war, created an informal network intended to preserve, as far as possible, the Imperial system and eventually to reestablish the military. Subsequently, the Central Intelligence Agencyreferred to these as "underground" groups, although not in the sense that they were resistance organizations.
Most US contacts with the underground groups were combat rather than intelligence specialists. With the exception of Seizo Arisue and a few key others, most of the links established by U.S. authorities to the Japanese “underground” groups, as the CIA called the Japanese networks, were to highranking officers with operational and combat experience. Kawabe joined with Arisue in providing the services of former Japanese Army personnel to occupation authorities, particularly G-2. Kawabe’s last headquarters assignment gave him informal authority over many groups and individuals within the army. His network was made up primarily of former high-ranking army general staff members and their subordinates. These individuals were in networks of subordinate organizations, called kikan, that would carry out actual operations. [4]
References
- ↑ Ammenthorp, Steen, "Kawabe, Torashiro", The Generals of World War II
- ↑ Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (2005), Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan, Harvard University Press, ISBN 9780674022416, p. 37
- ↑ Max Hastings (2008), Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 978-0-307-26351-3, p. 508
- ↑ Petersen, Michael (2006), Chapter 8: The Intelligence that Wasn't: CIA Name Files, the U.S. Army, and Intelligence Gathering in Occupied Japan, Researching Japanese War Crimes Records, National Archives and Records Administration Interagency Working Group (IWG)