9th Division (Kanazawa Division)

The 9th Division (第九師団, Dai-ku Shidan) was formed on October 1, 1898, with its headquarters at Kanazawa Castle, Ishikawa Prefecture. Its call sign was the "Warrior Division" (武兵団). The division recruited from the Hokuriku region (Ishikawa, Toyama, Fukui).

In the Russo-Japanese War the division took part in the Siege of Port Arthur, suffering massive casualties in repeated frontal assaults on fortified Russian positions, and then fought at the Battle of Mukden. It took part in the January 28 Incident at Shanghai in 1932. In September 1937 it was sent to China with the Shanghai Expeditionary Army, suffered extremely heavy casualties in the Battle of Shanghai, and took part in the Battle of Nanjing, where its troops were implicated in the Nanjing Massacre. It then fought at Xuzhou and Wuhan in 1938, returned to Japan in 1939, and from 1940 was permanently stationed in Manchukuo.

In July 1944 the 9th Division was assigned to the 32nd Army for the defense of Okinawa, where it was regarded as the strongest formation in the garrison and a key element of the defensive plans drawn up by the army's senior staff officer, Colonel Hiromichi Yahara. In December 1944, however, Imperial General Headquarters transferred the division to Taiwan, over the objections of the 32nd Army, and it was not replaced.

The 9th Division therefore did not take part in the Battle of Okinawa (April–June 1945). Its removal forced the 32nd Army under Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima to redeploy its remaining forces and is often cited as a factor in the decision to abandon defense at the beaches. The division ended the war in Taiwan without having seen combat in the Pacific War.