Shigeru Fukudome
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Shigeru Fukudome (1891-1971) was a Japanese vice admiral and Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.
Graduating from the Japanese Naval Academy in 1913, and later the Naval Staff College in 1926, Fukudome was first assigned to the Combined Fleet in 1940 to April 1941 (where he would conduct aerial torpedo exercises with Yamamoto in the early 1940 in preparation for the attack at Pearl Harbor) in preparation and again from May 1943 to March 1944, serving as Chief of Staff under Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and his successor Admiral Mineichi Koga.
On March 31, 1944, while traveling from Palau to deliver plans for the Japanese counterattack against the Marianas Islands code named "Z-Plan" to Japanese headquarters near British North Borneo, Fukudome was captured by Filipino guerillas after his plane crash landed in a rain storm near Cebu (Admiral Koga, who had been traveling in a separate plane was killed on the same day).
After Koga's death in March 1944, Fukudome became commander-in-chief of the 6th Air Base and 2nd Air Fleet in Formosa. During the last days of the war, Fukudome was in command of the 10th Air Fleet in Singapore where he would later be tried for war crimes. Following his release, Fukudome would act as a member of a 12-man commission to advise the Japanese government on the reorganization of the Japanese Self-Defense Force before his death in 1971.
[edit] References
- Parrish, Thomas and S. L. A. Marshall, ed. The Simon and Schuster Encyclopedia of World War II, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.
