Yoshitsugu Saito (2 November 1890 – 10 July 1944) was a Lieutenant-General of the Imperial Japanese Army who fought in World War II as the commander of the garrison of Saipan.
Biography[]
Yoshitsugu Saito was born on 2 November 1890 in Tokyo, Japan, and he served in the Imperial Japanese Army as a cavalryman at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. He had an undistinguished career, but he rose in the ranks of the cavalry, and he became a Lieutenant-General in 1942 after serving as the Kwantung Army's chief of cavalry operations. Saito was given command of the Imperial Japanese Army garrison on Saipan, and he ordered his men to fight to the last man when the United States attacked the island in 1944. On 9 July 1944, he called for a final banzai charge against the US Army against the advice of Chuichi Nagumo, and he was wounded by shrapnel. On 10 July 1944, he disemboweled himself in the act of seppuku, but an aide had to shoot him in the head to finish him off.