Masayuki Kimura (14 April 1892 – 17 September 1972) was a Major-General of the Imperial Japanese Army who commanded an army in Burma during World War II.
Biography[]
Masayuki Kimura was born on 14 April 1892 in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, Japan. Kimura enrolled in the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1910 and graduated in 1914, and he graduated from the Army War College in 1922. Kimura was stationed in Manchuria during the 1920s with an infantry regiment, and he was promoted to Major in 1929 and Colonel in 1934. Kimura fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War as a regimental commander, and he was later dispatched to French Indochina in 1941 to prepare for the invasion of British Burma. Kimura led the IJA 58th, 124th, and 138th Infantry Regiments in the long war with the British Army in the jungle, and his forces were bombed by the US Air Force in Khreum in July 1944. Kimura surrendered to the British in August 1945 after the Japanese surrender, and he was paroled. Kimura's war crimes accusations were dropped, and he died in Niihama in 1972 at the age of 80.