to hold his positions. (For a divisional commander to retreat without orders or permission from his superior was unheard-of in the Japanese Army.) After ignoring army orders for several weeks, Satō was removed from command of 31st Division on 7 July 1944. Satō refused an invitation by Mutaguchi to commit seppuku and demanded a court martial to clear his name and publicly expose Mutaguchi's incompetence. At the prompting of Lieutenant General Masakazu Kawabe, commander of Burma Area Army, doctors declared that he had suffered a mental breakdown and was unfit to stand trial on 23 November 1944. He was ordered to retire, but was recalled to active duty immediately and assigned to the staff of the Sixteenth Army, which was a garrison force in Java. In May 1945, he was attached to the staff of the Sendai-based Northeastern Area Army, which was assigned to defend the Tohoku region of Japan against possible Allied invasion. Postwar After the surrender of Japan, Satō was often vilified in the press as a coward and was accused of causing the Japanese defeat in Burma. For his part, Satō continued to insist until his death in 1959 that the actions he took were necessary to save the lives of his men, and that the charges of insanity made against him for withdrawing from the battle were unjustified. Satō devoted his efforts to assisting surviving members of his former command, and he created a group of ex-army men who erected a monument to the fallen of the Imphal Campaign in Matsuyama, Ehime and in Shonai, Yamagata. References External links Notes 1893 births 1959 deaths Japanese military personnel of World War II Japanese generals People from Yamagata Prefecture