How young Japanese soldiers?

EMTSATX

Banned
I don't know a lot about the Pacific Theater. I have been under the impression that Japan still had large numbers of armies in the field when the war ended.

How young were they sending troops in the field? Not had Downfall happened, but in other areas. I take it they didn't have a Hitler youth equivalent?
 
From memory there was the Greater Japanese Youth Movement (or similar) which was their version of the Hitler Youth. I'm not sure whether they were ever sent into combat though.
 
The literature on Op Downfall has some information on the military manpower. Losses of soldiers were not so severe as with Germany or Britain, so there was not a need to fill the existing units with children.
 
I believe at the lowest in 1945 the age for conscription was 15 for males and 17 for females. But that was for the defense of the homelands. Normally they recruited from age 20.

But Japan didn't lack manpower for the army, they lacked everything else.
 
Top