List of governors of the Nanpō Islands

This article lists the governors of the Nanpō Islands (南方諸島, Nanpō-shotō), a collective name for the groups of Japanese islands within Tokyo Metropolis, consisting of the Izu Islands, the Bonin Islands and the Volcano Islands.^[1] The islands are located to the south of the Japanese home islands.^[2]

Location of the Nanpō Islands (black) in the Pacific Ocean.

Detailed map of the Izu Islands (black).

The list encompasses the period from the founding of the first permanent settlement of Westerners on Chichijima (one of the Bonin Islands) in 1830^[3] (under the auspices of the British, which claimed the islands in 1827^[4]), until the return of the islands to Japanese sovereignty in 1968 (following the U.S. occupation after World War II).^[5][6]

Officeholders

Source: ^[7]

† denotes people who died in office.

Westerners' settlement (1830–1862, 1863–1874)

Chief Islanders

• 1830–1848: Matteo (Matthew) Mazarro†
• 1848–1862, 1863 – 10 April 1874: Nathaniel Savory† (acting to 1853; magistrate 1853–1859)

Japanese suzerainty (1862^[8]–1863, 1876^[9]–1945)

Governors

• 18 January 1862 – 7 April 1862: Mizuno Chikugo no Kami Tadanori
• August 1862 – May 1863: Sakunosuke (Sakusuke) Obana

Chief Commissioner

• December 1876 – November 1880: Sakunosuke (Sakusuke) Obana

Commanders, Ogasawara Corps

No.	Portrait	Commander	Took office	Left office	Time in office	Defence branch
1		Kuribayashi, TadamichiGeneral Tadamichi Kuribayashi 栗林 忠道 (1891–1945) [lower-alpha 1]	27 May 1944	c. 26 March 1945 †	303 days	Imperial Japanese Army
2		Tachibana, YoshioLieutenant general Yoshio Tachibana 立花 芳夫 (1890–1947) [lower-alpha 2]	c. 26 March 1945	13 December 1945	262 days	Imperial Japanese Army

U.S. occupation (1945–1968)

Military Governors, Bonin, Volcano and Marcus Islands (in Tokyo)

• 1 January 1947 – 9 April 1951: the Commanders-in-Chief, Far East Command

Military Governors, Bonin Islands (in Pearl Harbor)

• 9 April 1951 – 26 July 1968: the Commanders-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet

Deputy Military Governors, Bonin – Volcano Islands (on the Marianas; Saipan, then Guam)

(the Commanders Naval Forces Marianas [to 1956 Commanders Marianas Area])

• August 1945 – 1946: George D. Murray
• 1946 – August 1949: Charles Alan Pownall
• August 1949 – 1950: Edward Coyle Ewen
• 1950 – 1951: Osborne Bennett Hardison
• July 1951 – 1954: Ernest Wheeler Litch Jr.
• February 1954 – 27 October 1955: Marion Emerson Murphy
• 13 February 1956 – 1957: William Bronley Ammon
• 1957 – 1960: William L. Erdmann
• 17 January 1960 – 1961: Waldemar F. A. Wendt
• September 1961 – January 1963: John Starr Coye Jr.
• January 1963 – 1964: Thomas Aloysius Christopher
• 1964 – 1966: Horace Virgil Bird
• 1966 – 25 June 1968: Carlton Benton Jones

Officers-in-Charge, Bonin Islands

• 6 October 1945 – 8 October 1946: Presley Morehead Rixey (Commander of Bonin Occupation Force)
• 8 October 1946 – June 1947: Vernon Bertram Hagenbuckle
• June 1947 – April 1951: ....

Military Government Representatives, Bonin – Volcano Islands

(Officers-in-Charge, U.S. Naval Facility Chichi Jima, Bonin Islands)

• April 1951 – June 1952: Frederick Alfred Pobst
• June 1952 – 21 July 1953: John Walter Kelsey Jr.
• 21 July 1953 – October 1955: Clayton Ernest "Jack" Frost
• October 1955 – March 1958: Earl Dean Bronson
• May 1958 – June 1960: Thomas Gordon Rice
• July 1960 – June 1963: Vernon Ward Weatherby
• July 1963 – January 1964: John Robert Thorndyke
• February 1964 – July 1964: Ronald Lee Farrar
• July 1964 – December 1965: James Hamilton Reynolds
• December 1965 – 25 June 1968: Dale Wayne Johnson

See also

• United States Military Government of the Ryukyu Islands
• United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands
  • List of U.S. governors of the Ryukyu Islands

Notes

1. Commander of the 109th Division; killed in action in the Battle of Iwo Jima.
2. Commander of the 1st Independent Mixed Brigade, 109th Division; assumed the command of the 109th Division upon the death of Kuribayashi.

References

1. Ajiro Tatsuhiko and Warita Ikuo, Waga kuni no kōiki na chimei oyobi sono han'i ni tsuite no chōsa kenkyū (The geographical names and those extents of the wide areas in Japan), Kaiyō Jōhōbu Gihō, Vol. 27, 2009.online edition
2. Yoshida, Reiji (12 July 2018). "Ogasawara Islands: Remote witnesses on the front lines of Japanese history". The Japan Times Online. ISSN 0447-5763. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
3. Chapman, David (2016). The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present: Narrating Japanese Nationality. London: Routledge. p. 27. ISBN 978-2015049366.
4. Cholmondeley, Lionel Berners (1915). The History of the Bonin Islands from the Year 1827 to the Year 1876. London: Constable & Co. Ltd. Retrieved 9 September 2014.
5. Agreement between Japan and the United States of America Concerning Nanpo Shoto and Other Islands, 5 April 1968
6. Schlueter, Roger (31 July 2015). "U.S. returned hard-won islands to Japan to strengthen ties". Belleville News-Democrat.
7. "Bonin and Volcano Islands". worldstatesmen.org. B. Cahoon. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
8. Rüegg, Jonas (2017). "Mapping the Forgotten Colony: The Ogasawara Islands and the Tokugawa Pivot to the Pacific". Cross-Currents, vol. 6(2). pp. 440–490. Retrieved 24 November 2018.
9. Language and Citizenship in Japan, edited by Nanette Gottlieb, Chapter 10, p. 176