Not every convicted Japanese war criminal in World War II was as
heartless and remorseless as you might think.
Tomoyuki Yamashita was a top-ranking general in the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second
World War and showed great remorse for the atrocities committed under his leadership.
He led the massive charge in the Malayan Campaign and played a major role in the fall of Singapore,
for which he was given the nickname “The Tiger of Malaya.” From there, he commanded hundreds of
thousands of Japanese troops in the Philippines. Here, his troops committed horrible war crimes,
which, following the Japanese surrender in 1945, ultimately led to Yamashita’s trial and execution.
His conviction, however, was heavily contested during and
after his trial and paved the way for a new legal precedent in war tribunals.
In today’s video, we’re going to discuss
Yamashita’s military career and his highly controversial trial.
Tomoyuki Yamashita’s military career started long before World War II. He graduated 18th in
his class in the Japanese Imperial Army Academy in 1905. Just three years later, he was promoted to
the rank of lieutenant, and in 1916, to captain and married the daughter of a retired general.
Following World War I, Yamashita became an expert on Germany and was sent to live in Bern for three
years, serving as an assistant military attache. Upon returning to Japan in 1922,
he was given the rank of major, only to be promoted again in 1926, to major general.
Despite his success, Yamashita wasn’t necessarily adored by everyone in the Imperial Army. In fact,
he became somewhat of a political rival to Hideki Tojo, the general of the
Imperial Army and Prime Minister of Japan throughout most of the Second World War.
The tensions between Yamashita and Tojo may have been part of the reason he was posted to Vienna,
Austria, in 1927. Still, he climbed the ranks, rising first to colonel and then to major-general.
In 1936, Yamashita created a new and powerful enemy in Japan:
the Emperor. After a faction of the Imperial Army failed a coup on February 26th,
Yamashita appealed to Emperor Hirohito to give leniency to the traitorous officers.
This was not well received by Emperor, who lost trust in Yamashita. As a result,
Yamashita wanted to resign from the army, and he would have, had his superiors convince him not to.
Instead, he was relegated to a post in Korea, where he reflected on the
events that led him there. He even picked up the study of Zen Buddhism.
His character mellowed out considerably, and he became a man of discipline.
In November 1937, Yamashita scored yet another promotion,
this time to the rank of lieutenant-general.
He tried to leverage his new power to convince the Japanese leaders to end their ongoing war
with China and maintain a good relationship with Britain and the United States. He was ignored,
of course, and relegated once again to an unimportant post somewhere in Manchuria.
However, Yamashita did not stay unimportant forever. His knowledge of Germany (and fascism)
landed him a six-month clandestine mission in Germany and Italy. And it was during this
1941 mission that Yamashita went to Berlin, where he met Hitler and Mussolini in person.
In November 1941, Yamashita was given command of the Twenty-Fifth Army,
which was stationed in French Indochina and preparing for an attack on Malaya.
The Malayan campaign began the following month, and Yamashita played a major role.
The objective of the campaign was to seize control of Malaya, which comprised modern-day
Malaysia and Singapore. Malaya was a stronghold for British and Commonwealth forces within Asia,
especially Singapore. Losing Malaya to the Japanese would be a major upset for the British.
Going into the campaign, the Japanese were vastly outnumbered, with only
70,000 troops waging war against Britain’s 138,000.
Yamashita knew that the only way to win the campaign would be through a “driving charge.”
He’d have to attack hard and fast,
destroying as much of the British defense as he could in a short amount of time.
To this end, Yamashita was successful. His offensive culminated in the fall
of Singapore in February 1942, the largest British surrender in history.
80,000 British, Indian, Malayan, and Australian troops surrendered to Yamashita’s
30,000 in Singapore alone, and 130,000 Allied soldiers were taken prisoner overall.
By the end of the campaign, more than 15,000 British and Commonwealth troops had been killed,
compared to 9,600 Japanese. Winston Churchill called it the “worst disaster” in British
military history. This campaign's success earned Yamashita the nickname “The Tiger of Malaya.”
Within Japanese-occupied Singapore, Yamashita’s men committed untold atrocities.
We don’t know the full extent of their depravity, but the two most
well-remembered war crimes they committed were the Alexandria Hospital and Sook Ching massacres.
The Alexandria Hospital massacre occurred just one day before Singapore fell.
Japanese forces invaded a British hospital after bayonetting a lieutenant guarding the
facility who had waved a white flag at them. Once in the hospital, the Japanese butchered 50
wounded soldiers, including men who were receiving surgery, and slaughtered doctors and nurses too.
They then rounded up some 200 survivors and walked them 400 meters to an industrial area.
Those who fell along the way got the bayonet. These were held in poorly ventilated rooms
overnight, and killed in the morning. Only five men survived the ordeal – by playing dead.
The Sook Ching massacre started just a few days after the hospital massacre and lasted
about three weeks. It was essentially a purge of anything “anti-Japanese.”. By “anything,”
they really meant anyone. The Japanese slaughtered civilians of all races but
targeted the Singaporean Chinese because, according to Japanese historian Hirofumi Hayashi,
“[they] were regarded as anti-Japanese even before the Japanese military landed.".
The Japanese set up stations all over Singapore where civilian men and some women and children,
most of whom were ethnically Chinese, were sent to be screened. Any person
found to be “anti-Japanese” was executed. It’s hard to know exactly how many people
were murdered in this fashion, but estimates put the number between 25,000 and 50,000.
Unlike Alexandria, the Sook Ching massacre was premeditated.
An order came from the headquarters of the 25th Army instructing the troops to execute 50,000
Chinese. However, the order came from senior officers in Yamashita’s staff, not Yamashita.
Remember that for later.
Following his success in Malaya and Singapore, Yamashita was sent to Manchukuo.
This was no more than a thinly veiled banishment ordered by Yamashita’s rival Tojo, who was now
the prime minister. As a result, Yamashita missed out on two years of action in the Pacific theatre.
After the downfall of Tojo’s government in June 1944, however, Yamashita was taken off the bench.
Yamashita arrived in the Philippines in September 1944 when the Japanese were at their wit's end.
He was put in charge of 262,000 troops and instructed to hold their occupied territory,
including the capital city, Manila.
Unfortunately for Yamashita, this was already a lost cause; Philippine and
American troops were recapturing territory left, right, and center.
Before long, with the Allies closing on Manila, Yamashita was forced to retreat.
However, Yamashita never declared Manila an open city.
Doing so would have meant his forces would give up and let the Allies enter Manila unopposed.
Declaring open cities helps decrease civilian casualties and infrastructural damage.
Yamashita opted simply to evacuate the city. But one rear admiral of the Japanese Imperial Navy,
Sanji Iwabuchi, wasn't ready to give up the fight, blatantly ignoring Yamashita’s orders.
He re-occupied Manila with 16,000 troops and essentially turned the city into a battleground.
This resulted in what became known as the Manila Massacre.
Between February and March 1945, Iwabuchi’s troops slaughtered at least 100,000
Filipino civilians, and as many as 500,000. Women and children were used as human shields against
Allied artillery fire. There were mass rapes, mass executions, and pregnant women were disemboweled.
The Manila Massacre was one of the most horrific Japanese atrocities ever.
Yamashita surrendered to the Americans shortly after Japan surrendered in September 1945.
He was immediately thrown in jail to await trial, which began on October 29th.
Yamashita was tried on charges of war crimes by an American tribunal in Manila.
As the top commander of the Japanese in the Philippines, Malaya and Singapore, the
Americans were hell-bent on punishing Yamashita for everything the Japanese did in these places.
But Yamashita’s trial was not as straightforward as the trials of other Axis leaders were.
As badly as the prosecution wanted him to face the music for the Manila Massacre,
it was well understood that those crimes fell on the shoulders of the Imperial Navy, not the Army,
and thus couldn’t be blamed on Yamashita. However, the Imperial Army under Yamashita
did commit other war crimes in the Philippines, including the Palawan and Batangas massacres,
in which the Imperial Army systematically executed Filipino civilians and Allied POWs.
This was when the trials got interesting.
The defense argued that Yamashita couldn’t be held responsible for these crimes because he
didn’t order them. In fact, there is no record of Yamashita having ever ordered his men to
commit war crimes. On the contrary, such orders weren’t in line with Yamashita’s personality.
According to Japanese historian Akashi Yoji, following the fall of Singapore,
Yamashita’s orders were “no looting; no rape; no arson.” He also said that soldiers caught
doing any of those things would face severe punishment. So would their direct superior.
Yamashita was appalled by his men’s behavior in Singapore, and summarily executed every
perpetrator he caught. Yamashita also apologized to 650 survivors of Japanese war crimes while he
was still in Singapore. All of this was before Yamashita arrived in the Philippines before he
was captured and tried. He didn’t apologize under fear of execution; He did so of his own volition.
Even British POWs directly under his watch were generally treated well,
which often put Yamashita at odds with other Japanese commanders.
Yamashita stated in his trial that he had no knowledge of the war crimes committed
under his command and that it would have been impossible for him to see and prevent everything
because he was commanding over a quarter of a million troops. His defense argued that,
even if he did know what his troops got up to during and after battle, he wouldn’t have been
able to do anything about it due to the dismal state of Japanese communications at the time.
In his opening statement, Yamashita’s lawyer said,
“The Accused is not charged with having done something or having failed to do something,
but solely with having been something… American jurisprudence recognizes no such principle so far
as its own military personnel are concerned… No one would even suggest that the Commanding
General of an American occupational force becomes a criminal every time an American
soldier violates the law...one man is not held to answer for the crime of another.”
Yamashita added that he would have punished his troops if he found out
they were involved in atrocities, just as he had done in Singapore.
What he really felt he was being charged with was losing the war.
In the end, Yamashita’s defense was unsuccessful. He was found guilty based on a brand new legal
idea of command responsibility, where those at the top of the chain of command bore
responsibility for the war crimes of their underlings. Yamashita’s conviction set a new
precedent in war-related legal proceedings and became known as the Yamashita Standard.
Yamashita’s lawyer tried to appeal the decision and even took the matter to
President Truman and the Supreme Court. Both refused to grant Yamashita clemency.
Supreme Court Justice W.B. Rutledge even wrote:
“More is at stake than General Yamashita's fate. There could be no possible sympathy for him if he
is guilty of the atrocities for which his death is sought. But there can be and should be justice
administered according to the law. It is not too early, it is never too early, for the nation
steadfastly to follow its great constitutional traditions, none older or more universally
protective against unbridled power than due process of law in the trial and punishment of men,
that is, of all men, whether citizens, aliens, alien enemies or enemy belligerents.”
Yamashita was hanged at Laguna Prison Camp, just outside Manila, on the 23rd of February 1946.
So what do you think? Should Yamashita have been executed? Do you think the Yamashita Standard is
fair? Do you believe Yamashita felt remorse for the crimes committed under his command? How should
Yamashita be remembered? As a war criminal or a remorseful officer? Tell us down in the comments.