he was forced to swim to shore. Imamura adopted an unusually lenient policy towards the local population of the former Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), which was often in conflict with general opinions and plans of the senior staff of the Southern Army and Imperial General Headquarters. However, his policies won much support from the population (particularly in Java, where he and the 16th Army, placed under his command, were based) and helped to mildly reduce the difficulties of the Japanese military occupation. In late 1942, he assumed command of the new Eighth Area Army, responsible for the Seventeenth Army in the Solomon Islands Campaign and the Eighteenth Army in the New Guinea Campaign. Imamura was then based at Rabaul in New Britain. 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. 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. One infamous example highlighted how the prisoners captured in eastern Java were locked up in bamboo cattle cages and thrown overboard into shark-infested waters. 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 [disregarding and failing] 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 1–16 May 1947; he was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. Imamura served his imprisonment at Sugamo Prison, in Tokyo, until he was released in 1954. As he found that his imprisonment was too light with respect to his responsibility for the crimes of his subordinates, he had a copy of the prison built in his garden and stayed there until his death. References Books - neutral review of this book here: Notes External links |- |- |- Japanese generals 1886 births 1968 deaths Japanese military personnel of World War II Japanese people convicted of war crimes Prisoners and detainees of the Commonwealth of Australia People from Sendai South