Story Highlights
- Historical event
- 26 July 1879
- It is interesting that Japanese marshals were entitled to wear a specially designed katana (samurai sword).
On this day Japanese Field Marshal Shunroku Hata was born – one of only five of Imperial Japanese Army officers with a marshal’s rank during World War II.
Indeed, two of them were imperial princes, and the other three with this highest title, along with the said Marshal Hata, were Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi and Marshal Hajime Sugiyama.
It is interesting that Japanese marshals were entitled to wear a specially designed katana (samurai sword).
Marshall Shunroku Hata is particularly interesting because he found himself in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing. In fact, his army group was based in a castle in Hiroshima.
Marshal Hata had around 400,000 men under his command. He survived the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima in 1945. Indeed, he lived for quite a long time after World War II (more than any other Japanese marshal).
He was the last Japanese marshal when he died at the age of 82 (not one marshal was created in the meantime).
