Was Yamashita unjustly executed ?

Japanese WW2 general Tomoyuki Yamashita was hanged Feb. 23, 1946 in The Philippines for alleged war crimes. While soldiers under his command did commit some war crimes in China, Malaya, & the Philippines, he vehemently denied any knowledge of them. He reminded the court that he had a command as large as MacArthur's or Lord Mountbatten's, & could not account for the actions of every one of more than 250 K men.

Not one man, nor officer under his command attributed any criminal order to him, and such acts were not consistent to his personal beliefs.

The American lawyer who defended him, Col. Harry E. Clarke Sr. reminded the court that men under the command of MacArthur, Mountbatten, & other senior Allied commanders, had committed war crimes & atrocities, but their commanders were not held liable, & that Yamashita had no history of ordering, condoning, or ignoring such acts, & that his history of conducting the attempted defense of the Philippines showed no such actions. Rear Adm. Sanji Iwabuchi carried out a defense of part of Manila, causing the deaths of many Filipino civilians, but he was not under yamashita's command. (Y did not intend to try to defend Manila.)

However, the tribunal found Y guilty & condemned him to death. Clark protested that he'd actually been found guilty of being a senior enemy commander for the losing side, & not anything worthy of even inprisonment, let alone, death. Clarke continued appealing to every possible authority for clemency or pardon, as he sincerely believed in Y's innocence, but all in vain.

This conviction and execution set a precedent of holding a commander accountable for his/her mens' criminal conduct, even if the commander had no knowledge of such acts til after the fact, & even if he'd moved to punish the offenders. This is known as the "Yamashita Standard" & is still used in the Geneva Conventions & the International Tribune. It was applied in the trials of commanders in the Balkan wars involving the parts of the old Yugoslavia & Serbia.

It appears that the Yamashita affair & the precedent it set are all part of taking revenge !

 

I don't doubt that, had the South somehow come back & won the American Civil War, Sherman, Grant, Sheridan, and Lincoln woulda all been hanged.

And I can't think of any Allied commander whom the Axis wouldn't've executed had they won.

American doctors worked heroically to keep Tojo alive after he shot himself just before being arrested. An American dentist later made him a new set of dentures, into which the words "Remember Pearl Harbor" had been carved in Morse code.

Tojo accepted & bore almost all responsibility for Japan's entry into the war, & was finally hanged Dec. 23, 1948.

But the US allowed Masanobu Tsuji, who was definitely a war criminal who planned the invasion of Malaya & recommended that POWs either be executed or made into slaves, & encouraged atrocities against the Chinese. he successfully hid in China after the wor til 1948 when he was allowed to return to Japan, where he was twice elected to their Diet. He went to Laos in 1961 on a mission for the govt. & there disappeared. He was declared dead in 1968. He's still considered a hero in Japan.

 

For the record, there were more Japanese executed for war crimes than there were nazis. I believe there are several reasons for this. One was that China & Australia tried more Japanese, while the USA was the main prosecutor of nazis.

Another reason is that many of the individual concentration camp guards & einsatzgruppen members were not identified, while most of the Japanese perps were, with notable exceptions being many of the guards of the Bataan death march.

Another is that the principle of "just following orders" was successfully used by more than one nazi.

And the Japanese committed more atrocities against the Chinese than they did any other people. Most of those perps were identified. However, the commander of the japanese that committed the "rape of Nanking", Gen. Cho, escaped human justice, as he committed ritual seppuku on Okinawa.

Though it happened when I was just a few months old, I still disagree with the execution of Gen. Yamashita, especially when a KNOWN WAR CRIMINAL, Col. Tsuji, was permitted to skate !

 

For a time, Jubal Early's Shenandoah force was in position to threaten DC, but a fed force commanded by Gen. Lew Wallace (who later wrote Ben-Hur) fought the Rebs hard at the Monocacy River. While the feds had to give way to Early's larger force, he was delayed long enough for reinforcements to reach DC & deter Early from attacking it. Had Early, a very-competent general, been able to attack DC, history might be drastically-different !

I believe, and hope the Yamashita Standard is fading out. After all, Gen. Westmoreland was not held responsible for Lt. Calley's My Lai massacre. (But then, Gen. W was not on the losing side !)

 

How could Y be held responsible for things he didn't order or even know about? I doubt if anyone told him, "I killed a wounded British soldier yesterday to save medical supplied for us", etc.

Atrocities were committed on both sides, although the Japanese committed far-more of them. Our boys roasted more than one enemy in a pillbox without giving them a chance to surrender. ( Late in the war, more & more Japanese surrendered !) Often, when enemies were routed from a pillbox or other shelter, our boys either shot them or flamed them, even if the enemies were unarmed. While not the norm, it DID occur. (Now, I'm NOT excusing the Japanese atrocities whatsoever, especially those against the Chinese or Australians.)

But it was inexcusable to allow Col. Tsuji to skate, while hanging Yamashita. (Just Google Tsuji to see some of his story!)

Most of the players in the Yamashita thingie are now dead, so I hope the principle fades from use !

 

Another Japanese who appears to have been unjustly executed was Gen.Masaharu Homma, Japanese commander of the invasion of the Philippines. His orders to his army was to treat the Filipinos as friends, especially civilians, & to treat POWs properly. However, his men did commit some war crimes against Filipinos & POWs, but Homma shouldn't've been held responsible, given his orders to his men, etc.

Homma was not a very good general, & his conquest of the Philippines went much more-slowly than expected, Also, his friendly treatment of Filipinos earned him the emnity of his superior, Gen. Hisaichi Terauchi. (Later, a POW, but died of a stroke before he could be charged with criminal activity) Terauchi, a poor general himself, sent negative reports of Homma to Tokyo. Gen. Hajime Sugiyama, Army chief-of-staff,(Shot himself dead 10 days after Japan surrendered) removed Homma from command after Corrigedor finally fell, & he was forced to retire in 1943.

Homma had assigned the removal of the surrendered Allies on Bataan to Gen. Yoshitake Kawane,(Not tried) who organized the so-called "Bataan Death March". Homma's orders to him had been to treat the POWs properly, but neither he nor Kawane knew there were so many of them, so Kawane ordered his men to get them to Camp O'Donnell ASAP however they could, after he discovered there were 50,000 more of them than he had first believed. However, Homma was held responsible, becoming known as the "Beast of Bataan" by the march survivors. This led to the deck being stacked against Homma after he was arrested & tried.

At least, Homma was shown some "mercy", as he was shot by a firing squad insteada being hanged.

 

Well, actually, Y was hanged, while Homma was shot.

On the American side, let's look at the My Lai, Vietnam massacre. (I was in Nam as a Navy corpsman about 3 months after that event.) The only officer convicted ofr 14 officers charged was 2nd Lieut. William Calley. Maj. Gen. Koster, the unit's overall commander, & Capt. Ernest Medina, the commander at the actual site, were acquitted. Lt. Col. Frank Barker, the task force leader, was killed in a mid-air collision not long after the massacre. Calley didn't serve that long in prison before being paroled.

Gen. Westmoreland, the overall American commander, wasn't held responsible whatsoever for the incident.

Why were Gens. Westmoreland & Koster treated differently than Yamashita and Homma were, when men under their commands obviously committeed war crimes ? I believe that many Allies wanted revenge against the Japanese for causing the Pacific war, and especially for the crimes committed against the Chinese, Filipinos, & Australians. While the USA was the main winner in the Pacific, she certainly wann't the loser in the Vietnam war, which had no actual winner of the war itself. No one had any revenge in mind.

Again, I hope Americans have learned from those incidents, & there's no more holding commanders responsible for the actions of some under their command who act inappropriately on their own.

 

Most of those stories are now dismissed by experts; treasure hunters using modern equipment have been unsuccessful. The story likely originated with some Japanese war criminals hoping to get a lighter sentence or get off scot-free.

 

I still totally disagree with the "Yamashita Principle". If I had committed rapes & murders while I was in Nam, why should Gen, Westmoreland or even the captain of my ship be held responsible for MY acts, which would've been committed without any prior knowledge by them, especially if I'd done nothing to raise their suspicions ?

 

I firmly believe that, had the Axis won WW2, a great many Allied officers & politicians woulda been executed, as the Axis was inherently evil. Hitler had a death list he made for British to be killed if he'd successfully invaded the British Isles.

But we, and Australia, were supposed to be above such revenge killings. While I firmly believe in the execution of anyone found guilty of committing a war atrocity, I do NOT believe Yamashita was guilty of such.

I believe he was guilty of being a highly-competent general who led the swift, successful invasion of Malaya & Singapore, & who managed to hold on to parts of Luzon til the war ended. It was known that, while in command in China, he issued orders for "No arson, rape, looting, or murder", promising harsh punishment for any soldier & his superior who disobeyed, & no punishment for any superior who executed a soldier for disobeying that order.

In a regular US, Australian, or Filipino court, he woulda easily been completely acquitted. But he was tried by a MILITARY court where revenge was a large factor, with MacArthur concurring with the execution order. I hope that no more such miscarriages of justice are ever carried out in the US again.

BTW, Y's chief-of-staff, Gen. Akira Muto, was hanged in 1948 for war crimes, being charged with the worst part of the Nanking massacre, & for the murders of Filipino guerillas & citizens. His guilt was fairly-apparent, as he almost certainly knew of atrocities committed by troops under his command, but did nothing to stop or punish them. (OTOH, Y had executed several troops for crimes against the Chinese civilians.)

 

Y'all likely saw the story last year about the female soldier who was raped & murdered by a fellow male soldier. Was his CO held responsible ? Of course not; he's employed by the same nation as the perp was.

While no one's gonna truthfully accuse me of being a liberal, I believe in JUSTICE, which includes clearing the innocent. At least Yamashita was given an honorable burial in Japan a few years after his death.

OTOH, the US allowed war criminal Masanobu Tsuji to skate. He was deeply involved in the Bataan Death March & the "Sook Ching", the systematic murder of Chinese in Malaya & Singapore that the Japanese believed were hostile to them after those places fell to their army. Tsuji's involvement is above question. After the war, he escaped to Thailand, Vietnam, then china, where he became an unwilling employee of Chinese intelligence, who threatened to hang him over the Sook Ching if he failed to cooperate. In 1948, the Chinese allowed him to leave.

He quietly returned to Japan, & was elected to the Diet in 1952, making him safe from prosecution at the time. In 1961, he traveled to Laos & was never publicly heard from again.

It was revealed that he worked for the CIA during the Cold War, thus escaping arrest by the US. The CIA said he was kidnapped in Vientane by Chicoms, & was still alive in 1962, but was likely whacked by the Chinese over Sook Ching & other war crimes against the Chinese.