Terauchi, Count Hisaichi (1879–1945)

Japanese field marshal in World War II; commander of the Southern Army from September 1941 to the end of the war, with headquarters in Saigon.

He was not a strategist and frequently persisted in reinforcing operations which had no chance of success. Totally indifferent to human life, he sacrificed his troops and wasted no sympathy on prisoners. He was responsible for building the Burma railway, in which 17,000 prisoners of war died. He died from a stroke September 1945.