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13-744: The General Defense Command ( 防衛総司令部 , Bōei Soshireibu ) was a headquarters organization and general army of the Imperial Japanese Army , established to control all land and air units stationed within Japan proper , Korea and Taiwan during World War II . The General Defense Command was established on July 5, 1941 under the direct command of the Emperor via the Imperial General Headquarters . For administrative, recruiting and accounting purposes, Japan

26-560: A general or lieutenant general . There is much confusion between the similarly numbered Area Armies and Armies in historical records, as many writers often did not make a clear distinction when describing the units involved. The Japanese Army ( 軍 , gun ) corresponded to an army corps in American or British military terminology. It was usually commanded by a lieutenant general . Field army Specific field armies are usually named or numbered to distinguish them from "army" in

39-792: A numerical name, such as the British Army of the Rhine , Army of the Potomac , Army of the Niemen or Aegean Army (also known as the Fourth Army). The Roman army was among the first to feature a formal field army, in the sense of a very large, combined arms formation, namely the sacer comitatus , which may be translated literally as "sacred escort". The term is derived from their being commanded by Roman emperors (who were regarded as sacred), when they acted as field commanders . While

52-750: The Imperial Japanese Army General Staff in Tokyo . As a result, Japanese forces were re-organized into three separate overseas operational commands: ( Manchuria , China and Southeast Asia ), with the Japanese home islands forming a fourth. Towards the end of World War II, the home island command (i.e. the General Defense Command ) was restructured geographically into the First General Army in

65-476: The Roman comitatensis (plural: comitatenses ) is sometimes translated as "field army", it may also be translated as the more generic "field force" or "mobile force" (as opposed to limitanei or garrison units). In some armed forces, an "army" is or has been equivalent to a corps-level unit . Prior to 1945, this was the case with a gun ( 軍 ; 'army') within the Imperial Japanese Army , for which

78-751: The east, Second General Army in the west, and the Air General Army in charge of military aviation . With the official Japanese surrender in September 1945, all of the general armies were dissolved, except for the First General Army, which continued to exist until November 30, 1945, as the 1st Demobilization Headquarters . Area Armies ( 方面軍 , Hōmen-gun ) in Japanese military terminology were equivalent to field armies in western militaries. Area Armies were normally commanded by

91-931: The efforts of several Japanese armies in the campaign against Imperial Russia . In terms of a permanent standing organization, the Japanese Army created the Kantōgun , usually known in English as the Kwantung Army, to manage its overseas deployment in the Kwantung Territory and Manchukuo from 1906. Subsequent general armies were created in response to the needs of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II , in which increased overseas deployment called for an organizational structure that could respond quickly and autonomously from

104-612: The formation equivalent in size to a field army was a hōmen-gun ( 方面軍 ; 'area army'). In the Soviet Red Army and the Soviet Air Forces , an army was subordinate in wartime to a front (an equivalent of army group ). It contained at least three to five divisions along with artillery, air defense, reconnaissance and other supporting units. It could be classified as either a combined arms army (CAA) or tank army (TA); and while both were combined arms formations,

117-458: The former contained a larger number of motorized rifle divisions while the latter contained a larger number of tank divisions . In peacetime, a Soviet army was usually subordinate to a military district . Modern field armies are large formations which vary significantly between armed forces in size, composition, and scope of responsibility. For instance, within NATO a field army is composed of

130-499: The new First General Army and Second General Army . Armies of the Imperial Japanese Army Army ( 軍 , gun ) was a term in the Imperial Japanese Army used in different ways to designate a variety of large military formations that corresponded to the army group , field army , and corps in the militaries of Western nations . The General Army ( 総軍 , Sō-gun ) was the highest level in

143-652: The organizational structure of the Imperial Japanese Army. It corresponded to the army group in western military terminology. Intended to be self-sufficient for indefinite periods, the general armies were commanded by either a field marshal or a full general . The initial General Army was the Japanese Manchurian Army , formed from 1904 to 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War as a temporary command structure to coordinate

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156-418: The sense of an entire national defence force or land force. In English , the typical orthographic style for writing out the names field armies is word numbers , such as "First Army"; whereas corps are usually distinguished by Roman numerals (e.g. I Corps) and subordinate formations with ordinal numbers (e.g. 1st Division). A field army may be given a geographical name in addition to or as an alternative to

169-508: Was divided into six army districts, each with a garrison force equivalent to an army corps : The General Defense Command was also responsible for anti-aircraft defenses, and for organizing civil defense training. On April 8, 1945, in preparation for Operation Downfall (or Operation Ketsugō ( 決号作戦 , Ketsugō sakusen ) in Japanese terminology), the General Defense Command was dissolved, and its duties assumed by

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