Kazushi Sugita

Military career

Due to his experience as a military attaché at the Japanese Embassy in the United States c. 1936, Sugita was opposed to starting a war against the United States, but he did not have the ear of the higher officers. He participated in the Malayan campaign as an intelligence officer for the general staff of the Twenty-Fifth Army. On 15 February 1942, during surrender negotiations at the conclusion of the campaign, he served as General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s interpreter of English, and drafted the text of the surrender document of Singapore with British Lieutenant-General Percival.

Later in 1942, during the Guadalcanal campaign, he was sent to the battlefield by Imperial General Headquarters (IGH), assisting the efforts of the 2nd Division. With the formation of the Eighth Area Army, he was transferred to Rabaul. He filed a report with IGH that the Japanese position in Guadalcanal was untenable. Although he was regarded as a “negative staff officer,” IGH decided to withdraw forces from the island. Sugita prepared a withdrawal plan on behalf of Kumao Imoto, who was fighting a case of dengue fever but who as the superior officer is generally credited with the successful evacuation of Japanese troops carried out between 14 January and 7 February 1943 (Operation Ke).

Feeling that IGH were dismissive of intelligence reports, Sugita formed an informal group to devise strategy. During the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (2–4 March 1943), Colonel Sugita, as part the plan to establish a headquarters staff in Lae, was traveling with a Japanese convoy of sixteen ships aboard the destroyer Tokitsukaze, which was hit by an Allied air attack. Sugita and other survivors were transferred to the destroyer Yukikaze and returned to Rabaul.