1. Yoshio Kodaira was a Japanese serial killer, serial rapist, and war criminal who murdered at least 8 people in the Tokyo and Tochigi Prefecture areas between 1932 and 1946.
13 Facts About Yoshio Kodaira
1. 2.
Yoshio Kodaira was sentenced to death after being convicted of killing the seven women and executed in 1949.
3.
Yoshio Kodaira is suspected to have killed other people in Japan, and confessed to committing war crimes in China in the 1920s.
4.
Yoshio Kodaira was born on 28 January 1905 in Tochigi, Tochigi Prefecture, and suffered from stuttering during his childhood.
5.
In 1923, at the age of 18, Yoshio Kodaira joined the Imperial Japanese Navy and was assigned to a marine regiment stationed in Yokosuka.
6.
In 1928, Yoshio Kodaira was stationed in China and participated in the Jinan incident, where he personally killed six Chinese soldiers.
7.
In 1932, Yoshio Kodaira retired from the military with the rank of sergeant and married shortly after he returned to Japan.
8.
On 2 July 1932, Yoshio Kodaira attacked his wife's family in a rage, killing his father-in-law and injuring six others with an iron rod.
9.
Yoshio Kodaira was arrested and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, but was released on parole in 1940.
10.
Yoshio Kodaira was living in Tokyo at the time of the Surrender of Japan in August 1945, and used the post-war situation to exploit vulnerable women for his benefit.
11.
On 6 August 1946, Yoshio Kodaira murdered a 17-year-old girl that he had been recruiting for a job since mid-June, visiting her home and meeting her mother.
12.
One of the victims was never identified, and after the fifth murder, Yoshio Kodaira is known to have committed necrophilia with the corpse.
13.
Yoshio Kodaira was executed on 5 October 1949 at Miyagi Prison in Sendai.