was an Imperial Japanese Army officer and interpreter. He was born in 1918 in Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan. He was one of the officers in charge of the construction of the "Death Railway" which ran between Thailand and Burma and included the famous bridge over the River Kwai, and is known for the use of forced labor of Allied prisoners of war, though the majority of the labor (and resultant deaths) was incurred by romusha, or local civilians pressed into labor. He died in 2011.