The Trial ofGeneral

Tomoyuki Yamashita

Introduction

• Tomoyuki Yamashita was a man who was born to join the military scene. Yamashita earned his title as the “Tiger of Malaya” by taking Singapore from the British in January 1942 with only 30,000 men to the Brits’ 100,000. The battles he has fought and the wars that he has won has brought him to a trail that found him guilty to many the things he has done.

Who is Tomoyuki Yamashita?

• The Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita was born on November 8th , 1885 in a small village of Osugi Muraon on the Japanese islands of Shikoku.

• Growing up as the son of the local doctor of Osugi, the family’s expectation for Yamashita was to be a doctor but he did not do well in school so he did not have any hope of carrying his fathers career.

• Even though Yamashita did not do well in school, his family inspired him to become apart of the military since he had good health and stamina.

• At the age of 15 he decided to enlist into Imperial Japanese army and entered the Hiroshima Military Academy in 1900.

How did Yamashita become a General?

• Tomoyuki Yamashita graduated Hiroshima Military Academy in 1908 with full honors and the ranked the highest in his class.

• He was well known for being hard working so he decided to study at Staff College as a captain and graduated in 1916. Years later in 1921 he became a Military Attache in Switzerland and Germany.

• After, he served at Tokyo Imperial Headquarters from the years of 1921 through 1926 and got promoted to go to Austria and joined the Military Attache in Vienna.

• Around 1940, Yamashita was given command of the 4th Infantry Division in fighting in Northern China, until he got called back to Tokyo and got promoted to become full time General and be a part of the Hideki Tojo’s war cabinet.

• Yamashita was actually a very calm person, a lover of nature. He has outspokenly opposed war with the United states and Britain, and so the Tojo faction rising in Japan despised him.

The battle of Malaya

• *Japanese soldiers at a destroyed British base.

The battle of Malaya

• For the invasion of Malaya, Imperial headquarters offered Lt.Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita five divisions. In a rare display of logistical prudence, however, Yamashita accepted only four and used but three because he correctly believed he could not adequately supply more.

• This battle was a great achievement for Gen. Yamashita because his troops were all poorly supplied, and were all greatly outnumbered. He relied on utilizing resources from the British army after they had captured their bases.

The battle of Malaya

The battle of Malaya• As the soldiers landed on shores of Malaya, Japanese soldiers

did not wait on the beaches while sailors unloaded their supplies. Instead, they immediately headed inland carrying just enough bread and rice to last them a few days. Rather than waiting to secure and then provision their beachhead, soldiers of the Japanese force, tasked with invading Malaya and capturing Singapore in December 1941, planned to rely on their opponent for the supplies needed to conduct operations. Much of the food and fuel used during the invasion would come from captured British stocks.

• Unlike many other Japanese campaigns, however, Yamashita's march through Malaya to Singapore was provided with some logistical and engineering assets not usually found accompanying a Japanese army.

The battle of Malaya• The invading force had three transportation battalions. Each battalion had

three or four companies, with 30 or 40 trucks in each company. A repair section supported each battalion. Yamashita also received eight independent motor transport battalions, each comprising about 800 officers and men with 150 Nissan 1 1/2-ton trucks.

• Almost as soon as the campaign began, the Japanese began to acquire supplies of all sorts from the retreating British, and not all of it was as dull as rice.

• On the first day, Royal Air Force personnel at Kota Bharu burned buildings and supplies, but left untouched bombs, gasoline and runways for use by Japanese aircraft. At other airfields, explosions intended to crater runways to make it unuseable were only partly successful. The Japanese easily repaired the damage using native labor and large stocks of material that the British had failed to destroy. The ease with which Yamashita's men seized British stores and facilities meant that there was no need to bring forward equipment and supplies. Following on the heels of the surrender of Kota Bharu, the British abandoned Sungei Patani Kuantan airfield. Those two fields alone provided the Japanese with between 100,000 and 200,000 gallons of badly needed 90-octane fuel.

The Battle of Malaya

• At Alor Sitar in northwest Malaya, where the British claimed to have destroyed all that was of value, Japanese soldiers found, to their delight, piles of bombs and one thousand drums full of high-grade ninety-two octane petrol were piled high. Japanese aircraft landed that very day their infantry occupied the field, loaded up with British fuel and bombs, and flew off to attack the British.

• Conquerors of Alor Sitar reported capturing 50 field guns, 50 heavy machine guns, 300 vehicles and sufficient ammunition and provisions to supply an entire division for a full three months.

The battle of Malaya• The Japanese had been so successful in seizing British supplies, the Japanese had

collected 13 airplanes, 330 pieces of artillery, 550 machine guns, 50 armored cars and Bren-gun carriers, 3,600 cars and trucks, and 800 locomotives and rail cars. The captured weapons were immediately put in storage and later issued to native armies willing to support Japan's war efforts against their former British masters.

• Japanese finally arrived outside Singapore on January 31 and launched their attack on February 8. During their advance they had gathered 1,000 rounds for each of their field guns and 500 rounds for each of their heavy guns. Three thousand vehicles, many of them captured, hauled ammunition toward the front lines for constant pressure on the British.

• Once the city had fallen, the Japanese found Singapore's forts almost completely destroyed. The British army left nearly 450 mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons which were found intact in Singapore, which the Japanese collected and used for future battles. The Japanese also gathered up 30,000 rifles and enough ammunition to provide each rifle with 550 rounds.

The battle of Malaya• Gen. Yamashita was in charge of this battle, and was given the title “the Tiger

of Malaya.”• His brilliant strategies of forging supplies from the British and using their own

weapons against them was how he was able to succeed in winning a battle in which his men were greatly outnumbered, and also poorly equipped with only 1 month supply of food and ammunition to begin with, but managed to overcome their finite resources by winning battles all over their enemy airfields and taking all the supplies they could from the enemy’s base.

• Japan's philosophy of relying on the fruits of victory succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in Malaya, and would again in Burma and the Philippines. In each case, local resources helped the Japanese defeat the Allies.

• The part of why the campaign through Malaya was so successful was the Japanese ability to utilize resources abandoned by the fleeing British forces.

The Trial

The Charges

• These were the first war-crimes trials to result from World War II, and dealt-virtually for the first time- with a commander’s responsibility for atrocities committed by his troops in violation of the law of war established by international conventions.

• Major General R. J. Marshall, whose deputy chief of staff, reported- acknowledging that there was no legal precedent for the charge- Yamashita would be tried criminally for “negligence in allowing his subordinates to commit atrocities.”

• Charges on Yamashita represents:– “While leading the Japanese Army between October 9th – September 2nd

of 1945, at Manila and other territories of the Philippines island, Yamashita had unlawfully disregard and failed to discharge his duty as commander to control the operations of his people, giving them the opportunity to commit brutal atrocities and other high crimes against the people of United States, its allies, its dependencies, and particularly the Philippines; and he, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, thereby violated the law of war.”

The Trial• Even before the war ended, the United States and its allies had

prepared to charge war crimes against the Japanese• When the Allies signed a war-crimes agreement in London, the

department had forwarded to General Macarthur a list of suspected war criminals and put the burden on him not only to round them up and to identify and capture others but also to initiate a plan for bringing them all to trial.

• Eventually, the Secretary of War and the Attorney General, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded that military commanders had authority to try suspected war criminals before military commissions established under regulations the commanders themselves promulgated.

• Immediately after Japan’s surrender on September 2, President Truman pressed MacArthur to get on with War-crimes prosecutions.In the September of 1945, General MacArthur announced that the first war crime charges will be against General Tomoyuki Yamashita

• On the 25th of September, Yamashita was imprisoned as a war criminal

The Trial

• On the 8th of October, the United states arraigned Yamashita

• Tomoyoku Yamashita then pleaded NOT GUILTY– But at the time, the United States has served the bill of a specific

sixty-four item charge against Yamashita and those under his command which included a large amount of murders, attempted murders and rapes

• In Respond– Yamashita defended himself stating that the bill did not indicates

him ordering or even knowing that these brutal crimes were committed

• The trial officially opens on October 29th, summing the new amount of charges of 123 crimes against Yamashita, yet not one mentioned a direct link to Yamashita.

The Trial• In the beginning of the trial, both prosecution and

defense emphasized the issue of command responsibility.

• The prosecution explains the atrocities were so widespread, numerous and notorious that Yamashita should have known or must have known.

• The fact that Yamashita was at Baguio and was cut off from Manila at the time when the atrocities happened was ignored.

• Because Yamashita was the commander of the Japanese forces and therefore was guilty to every crime committed by every soldier assigned to his command.

In Result • In result, On December 7th of 1945, Yamashita was sentenced to

death• On February 27th, 1946 at Los Banos, Laguna Prison Camp,

Yamashita states his final words (translated), • “As I said in the Manila Supreme Court that I have done with my

all capacity, so I don't ashame in front of the gods for what I have done when I have died. But if you say to me 'you do not have any ability to command the Japanese Army' I should say nothing for it, because it is my own nature. Now, our war criminal trial going on in Manila Supreme Court, so I wish to be justify under your kindness and right. I know that all your American and American military affairs always has tolerant and rightful judgment. When I have been investigated in Manila court I have had a good treatment, kindful attitude from your good natured officers who all the time protect me. I never forget for what they have done for me even if I had died. I don't blame my executioner. I'll pray the gods bless them. Please send my thankful word to Col. Clarke and Lt. Col. Feldhaus, Lt. Col. Hendrix, Maj. Guy, Capt. Sandburg, Capt. Reel, at Manila court, and Col. Arnard. I thank you.”

• After his final statement, Yamashita was hung.