1947: Hisakazu Tanaka, Hong Kong occupier
March 27th, 2012 Headsman
On this date in 1947, Hisakazu (or Hisaichi) Tanaka was shot by the Chinese Koumintang for war crimes committed during the Japanese occupation of China.
Tanaka headed the Japanese Twenty-Third Army from March 1943 through the end of the war; for the last year or so of that period, he was also the last governor of Japanese-occupied Hong Kong.
Captured in Canton at the end of the war, Tanaka was tried by the Allied occupiers for permitting the execution of a downed American airman on April 6, 1945. That unnamed airman had been tried in wartime Japan for targeting civilians during his bombing raid, a judgment that Tanaka’s tribunal vociferously disputed.
Though he drew a hanging sentence for that offense, it was not carried out: instead, the doomed general was handed over to the Chinese nationalists to answer for the depredations of his 23rd army.
No surprise, the outcome there was pretty much the same.
On this day..
- 1915: Pandit Kanshi Ram, Ghadar plotter - 2020
- 1940: The Sass Brothers, Weimar burglars - 2019
- 1728: Five at Tyburn - 2018
- 1634: John Bartendale survives hanging and burial - 2017
- 1894: Walter Smith - 2016
- 1889: Mark Francis and James Turney - 2015
- 1878: The Brassell boys - 2014
- 1811: Adam Lyal, highwayman - 2013
- 1677: Giles Bland - 2011
- 2009: Two thieves in Riyadh - 2010
- 1836: Goliad Massacre - 2009
- 2001: Robert Lee Massie, who spent a lifetime dying - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,China,Death Penalty,Execution,History,Hong Kong,Japan,Occupation and Colonialism,Public Executions,Shot,Soldiers,War Crimes
Tags: 1940s, 1947, hisaichi tanaka, march 27, world war ii
