
Hisaichi Terauchi (8 August 1879 – 12 June 1946) was a Field Marshal of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Biography[]
Hisaichi Terauchi was born on 8 August 1879 in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the son of Prime Minister Masatake Terauchi. He joined the Imperial Japanese Army in 1900 and fought in the Russo-Japanese War before serving as a military attache to the German Empire. In 1919, he was promoted to Colonel, and in 1935 he became a full General, at which point he had aligned himself with the Kodoha faction of Japanese politics. In 1935, he led the Taiwan Army of Japan, and from March 1936 to February 1937 he served as Minister of the Imperial Japanese Army, succeeding Yoshiyuki Kawashima and preceding Kotaro Nakamura. In late 1941 he was given command of the Japanese Southern Army and occupied all of the United States, United Kingdom, and Netherlands' possessions in his area of operations. In 1942 he ordered the construction of the Burma Road, leading to 50,000 Allied prisoners dying in hard labor, despite his reputation as one of the most highly-regarded Japanese officers. On 10 May 1945 he suffered from a stroke and personally surrendered to Louis Mountbatten in November 1945 in Saigon before dying of another stroke while at a POW camp in Malaya.