Japanese troops in operation Market Garden?

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Sheldrake
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Re: Japanese troops in operation Market Garden?

#16

Post by Sheldrake » 04 Mar 2014, 21:03

ki sanak wrote:
i dont know,even i will be surprised if there were a single japanese fought in european theatre
I know of one: Roy Suzuki

http://www.theobservationpost.com/blog/?p=503

The Americans had a few too in the 34th Division.

OpanaPointer
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Re: Japanese troops in operation Market Garden?

#17

Post by OpanaPointer » 04 Mar 2014, 21:28

Sheldrake wrote:The Americans had a few too in the 34th Division.
Oh, snap. 8-)
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Stephen_Rynerson
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Re: Japanese troops in operation Market Garden?

#18

Post by Stephen_Rynerson » 05 Mar 2014, 13:07

gebhk wrote:I am not saying that it is likely just that we should not reject it out of hand without adequate information.
I don't see anyone saying it should be rejected out of hand, but Operation Market Garden is probably among the five most exhaustively documented Allied offensives in Western Europe, so when someone makes an extraordinary claim about some aspect of it and nobody else on a site like this has heard the claim before, that seems like a red flag, particularly when the original source being cited appears to only make a single off-hand reference to the subject.

Rob Stuart
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Re: Japanese troops in operation Market Garden?

#19

Post by Rob Stuart » 05 Mar 2014, 13:28

A few Japanese Canadians fought in Europe too. David Tsubota was captured at Dieppe in 1942. Brothers Minoru and Harry Tanaka fought in NW Europe in 1944-45, and Ninoru died in the Netherlands in February 1945 when his tank was hit. Their father had been at Vimy Ridge in WW1 and also served in WW2.

But to revert to the original question, it's highly unlikely that any Japanese fought with the Germans in Europe. I would guess that any Japanese men of military age who were in Europe in 1939 would have gone home by December 1941. And I don't buy the theory that Japanese servicemen captured by the Russians in 1939, of which there could not have been many, would have been in the Western USSR in 1941 where they could be liberated by the Germans. Surely they would have been repatriated by then, or kept in camps in the Soviet Far East. And in the unlikely event that a handful of Japanese fought with the Germans, why would they be involved only in MARKET GARDEN? Even if somehow that was their first battle, surely they would have been involved in subsequent ones and we would have heard of them. Odd things like this tend to be noted by historians. For example, one supposes that the Japanese ambassador in Berlin would have said something about them in at least one PURPLE message to Tokyo read by the US and that some historian would have flagged this by now. Where is the picture from Signal of smiling Japanese with their MG42 on the western front? It would be pretty strange if German propaganda had not talked up the presence of Japanese soldiers fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with German soldiers, would it not?

Dunnigan
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Re: Japanese troops in operation Market Garden?

#20

Post by Dunnigan » 14 Mar 2014, 05:35

I'll definitively say there were NO Imperial Japanese units at Market Garden. Any speculation or conjecture on their presence is pure bunk.

The interesting thing, however, is that one Japanese Civilian was detained in the Hartenstein tennis court prison area along with other German POW's and Foreign collaborators including Swiss and Dutch civilians. This is according to Margry's Operation Market Garden: Then and Now

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