109th Division (Imperial Japanese Army)
military unit
The 109th Division (第109師団, Dai-hyakukyū Shidan) was an infantry division of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) that specialized in banzai charge, combined arms, counterattack, defensive fighting position, jungle warfare, maneuver warfare, and military engineering for coastal defence and fortification.
Its call sign was the Courage Division (膽兵団, Tan Heidan). It was formed on 24 August 1937 in Kanazawa as a square division, simultaneously with the 108th division. The nucleus for the formation was the 9th division headquarters. It was subordinated from the beginning to the Japanese Northern China Area Army.
First formation
The 109th Division was sent to North China in October 1937. It closely cooperated with the 108th division, contributing to the Beiping–Hankou Railway Operation and the capture of the Linfen city. Later it also provided a garrison for the Shanxi province. The division was eventually dissolved 24 December 1939. From the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War until its return to Japan in November 1939, the 109th Division suffered 944 killed, 2,363 wounded, 289 dead from illnesses, and 50,600 fallen ill.
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This entry incorporates text from “109th Division (Imperial Japanese Army)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.