After Japan's surrender, Umezu Yoshijiro signed the surrender agreement on behalf of the Japanese Army aboard the USS Missouri. At the Tokyo trial, he refused to plead guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment as a Class A war criminal, and died of bowel cancer two months after being imprisoned. After he left, the U.S. military found a note with five words written on it"There is no calendar in the window".From these five words, it can be seen that he has despaired of life.
About Umezu Mijiro.
Umezu Yoshijiro was born in January 1882 into a poor family, and after his father died of illness when he was 7 years old, Umezu Mijiro followed his mother to remarry. Poverty and discrimination have made him introverted, knowing that if he wants to change his destiny, he can only change his destiny with knowledge.
In order to save money, he chose to enter the army junior school, which does not pay tuition, and after graduation, he entered the Japanese Army Non-commissioned Officer School and the Army University for Xi, both of which he graduated with excellent grades.
At the age of 24, he went to China to participate in the Russo-Japanese War, was seriously wounded in the battle against Lushun, and after the war, he was awarded the Order of the Golden Eagle of the fifth degree and a life annuity of 350 yuan per year.
Umezu Yoshijiro was an academic officer who served as an embassy in Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland, and although he was not directly involved in the war, the First World War gave him a good subject to study.
In 1919, Umezu Mijiro was introduced to Kiyoko Kiba, his only partner in his life, and married him, and lived a stable life for a few years after marriage. In 1925, his wife, Kiyoko Kiba, died of tuberculosis, and since then, Umezu Mijiro has been alone without a wife. In the years that followed, Umezu Yoshijiro also held a number of important positions, and the military rank was also promoted from Nakasa to major general.
Umezu Yoshijiro was a typical militarist, quick-witted, calm-minded, often with unique advice, and he was very martial and believed that a soldier should aim to become a general, rather than go into politics and become prime minister. It can be seen from this that Umezu Mijiro is a typical soldier.
During the Anti-Japanese War.
In 1934, Umezu Yoshijiro served as the commander of the Chinese garrison, and in February of the following year, he took advantage of the Sun Yongqin incident and the killing of a pro-Japanese journalist to promise the people various unreasonable conditions with a tough attitude.
In July, the Japanese army forced He Yingqin to sign the "He-Mei Agreement" under military and diplomatic pressure, which opened the door to the Japanese army's attack on North China
In August 1935, Umezu Mijiro was transferred back to Japan. In February of the following year, the famous "226 Incident" occurred in Japan, and Umezu Mijiro performed in this incident and was deeply appreciated by the Japanese Army, which also made him the vice minister of the Japanese Army.
Since Umezu Yoshijiro was not the Minister of the Army, he could not attend some important military meetings and could only stay in the Ministry of War to handle government affairs. But he was not reconciled, and after serving as the deputy minister of the army, he demanded that all documents must pass through his hands before they could be handed over to the minister of war. Later, there was infighting in the Japanese Army, and Umezu Mijiro weakened Ishihara's power through the art of scheming, so as to establish himself in the Ministry of War.
After the outbreak of the 77 Incident, there was a dispute between "expansion" and "non-expansion" within the Japanese army, and Umezu Yoshijiro supported the non-expansion in the early days, believing that it was sufficient to simply mobilize the Kwantung Army and the Korean army. After that, the situation changed, and Umezu Mijiro became the middle force of the "expansion faction".
After the July Seven Incident, Umezu Mijiro repeatedly planned the Japanese army's military operations in Chinese mainland, occupying cities such as Beiping and Tianjin, as well as military operations in southern China.
Later, Umezu Yoshijiro served as the commander of the Kwantung Army, and through his efforts, he completely brought the Kwantung Army to its heyday, thus making enough political capital for him to succeed Hideki Tojo as the chief of the Japanese General Staff.
After Umezu Mijiro became chief of the General Staff, the war situation deteriorated rapidly and rapidly, and the decline was difficult to save, and Umezu Mijiro also thought of some means to save the army, but it was still unable to save the Japanese army from a complete defeat, and the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely dealt a blow to Japan's determination to resist, and the Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his surrender when he saw that the defeat was assured.
In the face of defeat, Umezu Mijiro, Anami Yuki, Toyoda Vice Takeshi and other senior Japanese generals were still unwilling, believing that they had the strength to resist to the end and could not surrender easily, but their proposal was rejected by Emperor Hirohito. Several Japanese leaders did not dare to disobey the emperor's orders, and signed armistice documents one after another, thus eliminating the possibility of army rebellion.
After the end of the war.
On September 2, 1945, Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Aoi and Chief of Staff Umezu Mijiro went to the USS Missouri** to sign the surrender agreement. MacArthur signed on behalf of the allies, Nimitz on behalf of the United States, and Xu Yongchang on behalf of China. Britain, the Soviet Union, France, France, Australia and other countries signed the armistice agreement one after another.
After the end of the war, the Allies soon liquidated the Japanese war criminals, and Umezu Mijiro, as the chief of the Japanese army's general staff, naturally became the chief war criminal. During the Tokyo trial, Umezu Mijiro always refused to admit his guilt, always defended his crimes, and believed that his trial was very unfair, but it was difficult for him to escape punishment no matter how he defended.
In the end, Umezu was sentenced to life imprisonment, and the main reason why he was not sentenced to death was that he was in the advanced stage of intestinal cancer, which allowed him to escape the Japanese punishment, otherwise it would have been appropriate to be sentenced to death for his crimes.
Three months after the Tokyo trial, Umezu Mijiro died of cancer.
To sum up: Umezu Mijiro was born poor, knowing that if he wanted to change his fate, he could only rely on his own hard work to learn Xi, and after embarking on the road to study, he redoubled his efforts to learn Xi, so as to bring him to the peak of life. If you put aside his war crimes, it is indeed clear that if you want to change your fate, you can only rely on yourself.
Umezu Mijiro is an out-and-out war criminal, who committed unforgivable crimes against the Chinese during World War II, and must be deeply rooted in the pillar of historical shame.