was a Lieutenant-General in the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor ...

, who commanded the Japanese First Area Army from September 1944 until the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. He died as a prisoner in the Soviet Union.

Life

Kita Seiichi became an infantry officer in 1907 and was military attaché to England in 1927. He served in several staff positions in China, until March 9, 1940, when he became commander of the IJA 14th Division, based in Northern China. In the late 1930s he was placed in command of the Japanese special intelligence services operating in

north China North China, or Huabei () is a geographical region of China, consisting of the provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. Part of the larger region of Northern China (''Beifang''), it lies north of the Qinling–Huai ...

, which had the role of managing contact with local Chinese collaborators. As part of this, he tried to recruit such figures as former warlords

Cao Kun General Cao Kun (; courtesy name: Zhongshan () (December 12, 1862 – May 15, 1938) was a Chinese warlord and politician, who served the President of the Republic of China from 1923 to 1924, as well as the military leader of the Zhili clique in ...

and

Wu Peifu Wu Peifu or Wu P'ei-fu (; April 22, 1874 – December 4, 1939) was a major figure in the struggles between the warlords who dominated Republican China from 1916 to 1927. Early career Born in Shandong Province in eastern China, Wu init ...

to head the collaborationist regime the Japanese established in the region. It was on Major General Kita's suggestions that the puppet Provisional Government of the Republic of China was eventually established in December 1937. Thus he became known as the foremost Japanese "puppeteer" in north China. On October 15, 1941, he was appointed Commander of the 6th Army based in Hailar until March 1, 1943, when he took over the command of the 12th Army. In February 1944, he was recalled to Japan and was attached to the General Staff. On September 26, 1944, he became Commander of the First Area Army, with which he fought unsuccessfully against the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

, when the Soviet Union invaded Manchukuo at the end of the war. Together with his surviving soldiers, he became prisoner of war in Siberia. He was never repatriated and is thought to have died in a prison camp in 1947 or 1952.

References

generals.dk

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kita, Seiichi 1886 births 1947 deaths Imperial Japanese Army generals of World War II Japanese people who died in prison custody Prisoners who died in Soviet detention Siberian internees