The Takenaga incident was a surrender by an Imperial Japanese Army battalion that occurred on 3 May 1945, near the end of the Pacific War.

The Takenaga incident was a surrender by an Imperial Japanese Army battalion that occurred on 3 May 1945, near the end of the Pacific War. The battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Masaharu Takenaga, surrendered to the Australian Army in eastern New Guinea. This was extremely unusual for the Japanese Army, where surrender was seen as highly dishonourable.

Australian soldiers attacking the Japanese Army in Wewak District, June 1945
In the New Guinea campaign, the Eighteenth Army of Japan were left behind the Allied front, and although their position was of no strategic value, they still continued to fight. After United States forces crushed the 18th Army's counteroffensive in the Battle of Driniumor River, the Japanese were left alone. However, when the Australian Army took over the New Guinea campaign in the second half of 1944, they decided to do a thorough cleanup of the remaining Japanese forces.
The strength of the Japanese forces was greatly weakened, as their naval supply lines had been cut and they had lost most of their existing supplies at Driniumor River. While the usual size of a Japanese Army division in wartime was 20,000 troops, at the start of May, 1945, this had been reduced to only around 1000.
Takenaga's unit was no exception: while it was a battalion in name, in terms of numbers it was on the scale of a platoon, and at that one with only around half the usual number of infantry. The rest of the unit was made up of former mountain artillery from the 41st Division, whose squads were disbanded when all of their guns were destroyed at Driniumor River, and marines, among others. Takenaga himself was an artillery specialist, and had been moved to the 239th Infantry Regiment from his post as commander of the 3rd Battalion, 41st Mountain Artillery Regiment. The 18th Army had predicted that their food and medicine would run out by September, 1945, and that their weapons would become unusable by the end of the year. The situation was so dire that in July the 18th Army gave the order (18th Army Order No. 371) that the entirety of its forces should adhere to gyokusai, or honourable death without surrender, a move unprecedented even among the Imperial Army. One second lieutenant reflected that in the final stages of the campaign, the army had stopped being an army and had become a band of beggars.
The severity of the situation that the Japanese Army faced in New Guinea is demonstrated by the incidents of cannibalism that occurred there. Some commentators think that Takenaga's unit was among those where cannibalism was practised.