Photos WW2 Japanese Forces

[BravoZulu]

Cruiser Ōyodo anchored in Kisarazu: ADM Soemu Toyoda (left; C-in-C of the Combined Fleet), CDR Haruo Kuwahara (middle; assistance staff officer) and RADM Sakae Terayama (right, fleet engineer); May/June 1944.

 

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Troops of the Japanese 15th Army preparing to cross into Burma, late Dec 1941.
Australian War Memorial

 

[BravoZulu]

Officer of the 23rd Division praying at the grave of a fellow soldier, one of the 11,958 men killed in the division at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, September 1939

 

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Three Japanese Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers with torpedoes aboard scream extremely low into the target at Guadalcanal. At this height, the bombers are well set up for a launch of their “fish” and at the same time, as witnessed by the explosions above them, somewhat safe from AA fire.

 

[uktabber]

There's actually 4 G4M bombers in that photo, look close.........

 

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Japanese 77mm artillery piece, Guadalcanal, 1943.

 

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Japanese troops on elephant in Burma, Burma campaign, 1944

 

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Gasmask parade in Tokyo in 1936.

 

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apanese Navy Pilot Lieutenant Zenji Abe posing in front of a A6M2 Zero fighter onboard Akagi, late 1941/early 1942
While on the Akagi, Lt. Abe took part in the Pearl Harbor attack, the Darwin Australia raid, and the Indian Ocean Raid
Transferred to the Jun'yō before the Battle of Midway, he took part in the Aleutians campaign including the attack on Dutch Harbor
After a brief stint on Hiyō, he was based on Bougainville where he participated in the Guadalcanal campaign
Returning to Jun'yō in early 1944, Abe’s plane was damaged by USN fighters in September 1944 forcing him to crash-land on the island of Rota in the Marianas where he was stranded with the Japanese Garrison there until WW2 ended
In September 1945, Abe and the Japanese Garrison from Rota were taken to a POW camp on Guam until he was returned to Japan in November 1946, he had been reported “killed in action” to his wife and family
Abe visited the USS Arizona memorial in 1991, he died on April 6, 2007 in Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo, He was 90 years old

 

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IJA Type 4 Ke-Nu light tank

 

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A Japanese type 97 "Chi-Ha" medium tank on the captured island of Corregidor, Philippines, in May, 1942.

 

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An ethnic Chinese from Formosa during his service in the Imperial Army on the Philippines.

 

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Japanese POWs disembark at Sydney Harbour in 1943.

 

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A new Mitsubishi G3M "Nell" attracts a crowd of Japanese and natives at the airbase at Kavieng, 1942.

 

[Junglejim]

Three Japanese Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers with torpedoes aboard scream extremely low into the target at Guadalcanal. At this height, the bombers are well set up for a launch of their “fish” and at the same time, as witnessed by the explosions above them, somewhat safe from AA fire.

View attachment 269799

That is some balls of steel flying. Any lower and your crash, any higher and get it. The middle plane must be the new guy

 

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WWII. Invasion of Burma. c December 1941 – May 1942. Japanese troops in action with the Type 92 heavy machine gun.

 

[BravoZulu]

Destroyer Mikazuki ("Crescent Moon") under air attack from USAAF B-25s, near Cape Gloucester, New Britain, 28 July 1943

The destroyer Mikazuki was a Mutsuki-class destroyer laid down for the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1925 and completed in 1927. In the photograph she is shown under air attack from USAAF B-25 "Mitchell" bombers from the 3rd Attack Group 5th Air Force, near Cape Gloucester, New Britain, on 28 July 1943. On the previous day, 27 July, Mikazuki had run aground on a coral reef while running a troop transport mission to Tuluvu, leaving her virtually defenceless. She was destroyed in the subsequent attack with the loss of 8 crew members.

 

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An official Japanese picture of a captured Chinese soldier, Nanjing, China, Dec. 1937. With or without uniforms, thousands of Chinese soldiers at Nanking were brutally executed.
Dec. 13, 1937, Japanese troops captured the city of Nanjing, then the capital of the Chinese republic led by Chiang Kai-shek and went on a six-week campaign of carnage and slaughter that would be forever remembered as the “Rape of Nanjing.” Reports document widespread rape and the indiscriminate killing of civilians; some death tolls estimate over a quarter of a million people were killed. The incident, though, still rankles Sino-Japanese relations. Japanese nationalists contend that the death tolls are inflated and the majority killed were resisting Japanese occupation. To this day, pages in Japanese school history textbooks can incite heated protests on the streets in China. Then and now, the Nanjing massacre remains one of the darkest events of the last century.
Ishaan Tharoor - Time Magazine

 

[NebrHogger]

My Hungarian friend sent these - a Japanese war correspondent embedded with Hungarian forces on the eastern front.
No word if he made it out before Zhukov's tanks rolled over Italians and Hungarians around Stalingrad.

 

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A Type 94 tankette of the IJA.
This was yet another derivative of the British Carden-Loyd Mk. VI which inspired many nations to develop their own "tankettes" in the 1930s.