Terauchi Hisaichi, Field Marshal Count

Terauchi Hisaichi, Field Marshal Count (1879–1946),Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) officer, the eldest son of Field Marshal Terauchi Masatake, a one-time war minister and prime minister from whom he inherited the title of count in 1919. He was about to retire into obscurity when the purges which followed the coup d'état of February 1936 (in which he was not involved) left him the IJA's senior general. The following month, despite his political inexperience, he was appointed war minister in the cabinet led by Hirota Koki. When that fell, he was appointed, in February 1937, inspector-general of military training, one of the top three offices in the IJA hierarchy, and the following August, just after the start of the China incident, he became commander of the North China Area Army.

In accordance with the decision of the Imperial Conference on 5 November 1941 (see Japan, 3) to enter the war on the Axis side, Terauchi was appointed to command the Southern Expeditionary Army, comprising Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Twenty-Fifth Armies and 3rd and 5th Air Divisions, and on 4 December he set up an advance HQ at Saigon. Singapore fell in February 1942 and that June Terauchi moved his HQ there and made the former governor-general's residence his own.

Terauchi was less a strategist than a skilful co-ordinator of his commanders and staff officers, in whom he had complete trust, permitting them unusual freedom of action. On one of the rare occasions he asserted himself he dismissed General Kuroda Shigenori, Fourteenth Army's commander in the Philippines, over a strategic disagreement, and replaced him with General Yamashita. Terauchi also made no secret of his displeasure when the prime minister, General Tōjō (whom Terauchi disliked), announced the transfer of the four northern Malay states to Thailand in July 1943 without consulting him. Terauchi was also strongly opposed to the transfer of his HQ to Manila, which Tōjō ordered in May 1944. He obeyed but then moved his command post to Dalat 225 km. (140 mi.) north-east of Saigon. He suffered a cerebral haemorrhage the following year and was unable to attend the surrender ceremony in Singapore on 12 September 1945. Instead, he surrendered personally to Mountbatten in Saigon on 30 November 1945. In March 1946 Mountbatten arranged for him to be transferred to a bungalow in Rengam, near Johore Bahru, Malaya, where he died that June.

Terauchi's high reputation for good relations with his subordinate commanders and staff officers, his magnanimous personality, and his seniority (he was given the honorary rank of field marshal in June 1943), resulted in his being the only senior general in the IJA to hold the same post throughout the war. So high was his reputation that, after Tōjō's resignation in July 1944, Terauchi was seriously considered as his possible successor, but the idea was dropped as he was considered too important as the Southern Expeditionary Army's supreme commander.

Akashi Yogi/ and Ian Nish