Ushiroku was promoted to major general in March 1934 and was in charge of the Personnel Bureau of the General Staff from August 1935. Following the attempted coup d'etat by elements of the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1936 February 26 incident, he was ordered to report directly to Army Minister Hisaichi Terauchi to oversee the purge of rebel sympathizers from sensitive posts. Following the July 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, he expressed his opposition to further expansion of the Army into China. However, in August 1937 he was promoted to lieutenant general and in October became commander of the IJA 26th Division.[1] At the time, this was a garrison force to provide security for central Manchukuo and from July 4, 1938, it was attached to the Mongolia Garrison Army in Inner Mongolia.
In 1939, he was reassigned to command the IJA 4th Army, which was again a garrison force guarding the northern borders of Manchukuo. These assignments kept him sidelined in the Second Sino-Japanese War until October 1940, when he became commander of the Southern China Area Army, which was responsible for garrisoning Japanese-occupied Guangdong Province and controlling military operations in neighboring Guangxi Province. In December 1940, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.[2] In July 1941, Ushiroku was promoted to chief of staff of the China Expeditionary Army. In August 1942, he was promoted to full general and withdrawn to Japan to command the Central District Army. This was a field army responsible for the defense of the Japanese home islands. He remained in this post until February 1944.[3]
After the collapse of the Tojo cabinet following the loss of Saipan, Ushiroku returned to Manchukuo to take command of the Japanese Third Area Army to oppose the Soviet invasion. Although his forces were composed mostly of undertrained or overaged reservists with obsolete weapons, he refused orders to retreat, and launched a counterattack along the Mukden-Port Arthur railway, buying time to allow many Japanese civilians to flee. By 13 August 1945, his formations were largely shattered, and a mutiny by the Manchukuo Imperial Army at Shinkyō ended his attempts to regroup. He surrendered to the Soviet army on 21 August 1945. He spent more than a decade as an internee in the Soviet Union. Ushiroku returned to Japan on 26 December 1956.
Ushiroku served as Chairman of the Japan Veterans Association until his death in 1973. His grave is at the Tama Cemetery in Fuchu, Tokyo.
Family
Ushiroku's elder brother, Shintaro Ushiroku (1873-1959) was a noted entrepreneur and industrialist in Taiwan. He started with a building materials manufacturing business and later founded a number of companies, including Toho Artificial Fiber, Taiwan Brick, Takasago Beer, Beitou Ceramics, and Taiwan Paper Mill. He was selected as an advisor to the Taiwan Governor-General's Council. After the war, he emigrated to Brazil. Ushiroku's eldest son, Torao Ushiroku (1914-1992), was a diplomat and ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Republic of Korea.
