Takushiro Hattori
Takushiro Hattori was an Imperial Japanese Army officer and government official. During World War II, he alternately served as the chief of the Army General Staff's Operations Section and Secretary to Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. After the war ended, he served as an adviser on military matters to the postwar Japanese government.
Early life
Takushiro Hattori was born on January 2, 1901, in Tsuruoka, a city in the Japanese prefecture of Yamagata. Upon completing his education at the Imperial Military Academy in 1922, he enrolled in the Japanese Army War College from which he graduated in 1930. In 1935, he traveled to Africa, where he acted as the Japanese military's observer during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. After returning to Japan, he joined the Army General Staff Office and was placed in charge of mobilization.By the late 1930s, Hattori was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and became head of the Kwantung Army's Operations Section. In that capacity, he served as one of the driving forces behind the events that triggered the unsuccessful Battle of Khalkhin Gol against the Soviet Union.
World War II
Upon his promotion to colonel and chief of the operations section of the Army General Staff in 1941, Hattori played a key role in planning the Japanese conquest of Western territories during the early years of the Pacific War. In December 1942, he briefly resigned from that position and became Secretary to the Minister of the Army, Tojo, who was at the same time the Prime Minister. In October 1943, Hattori returned to the Army General Staff to reassume his prior position as chief of operations and planned the Operation Ichigo. He subsequently remained in this position until a conflict with the Army's Military Affairs Bureau resulted in his transfer to a regimental command in China.Later life
In occupied Japan after the war, Hattori was associated with the G2 Division, which was responsible for demobilization and for writing the war history of Douglas MacArthur under Major General Charles A. Willoughby.After the foundation of the National Police Reserve, the first postwar military institution in Japan, Hattori became the leading former officer of the so-called "Hattori Group," which attempted to become the general staff of the new force. Hattori was never commissioned into the force or its successor, the Japan Self-Defense Force, but some of his associates, such as Colonel Kumao Imoto, served in it.
In 1953, he wrote Dai Toa Senso Zenshi, a large-scale military history of the Pacific War.