A brilliant, fighting General like Tomoyuki Yamashita, comes along rarely.

Dubbed the, “Tiger of Malaya” for his remarkable exploits as commander of the Japanese Imperial Army that invaded Malaya and took Singapore in 69 days, his subsequent history ended in ignominy and ultimately death by hanging.

My first encounter with his exploits began when researching the history of the Fall of Singapore. Under Yamashita, the Japanese conquered all the territory spanning a distance of more than six hundred miles from their point of landing in Kota Bharu in the north-east of the Malayan peninsula to the heart of Singapore Island.

The achievement was made the more remarkable given that the Japanese were outnumbered by at least two to one in troop numbers. The fall of Singapore was regarded by many historians as

Britain’s greatest military defeat.

The photograph below records that fateful afternoon on 15 February 1942 at the Ford Motor Works when he sat opposite his British counterpart, General Percival at the signing of the surrender document. If a picture tells a tale at all, this one records much more. Two lives encapsulating two nations, the hapless, crushed Percival and the contained, dignified Japanese General feeling his opposite number’s pain.

Following the surrender, General Yamashita’s taste of victory was short-lived. His personal feud with the notorious Prime Minister Tojo, saw the great general sidelined to an undistinguished command of a garrison in Manchuria. There would be no returning hero’s welcome in Tokyo.

When Tojo was sacked in July 1944, Yamashita was recalled from his isolated outpost, granted a belated audience with the Emperor, promoted to full General and given command of ground forces in the Philippines in October of that year. It was to be a poisoned chalice for by that stage of the war, Japan was in retreat.

Soon after Yamashita arrived, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Leyte. Following the allied landings at Luzon, the Japanese General freed more than four thousand prisoners-of-war and retreated to Baguio, by this stage coordinating largely hit-and-run operations. Moving further inland to Bangbang, he was still conducting guerrilla activities when Japan formally surrendered.
Yamashita was captured on 2 September 1945. On 26 September 1945, he was charged with war crimes in the Philippines. The indictment against him was turgidly particularised as failing to discharge his duty as commander to control the operations of those under his authority and permitting them to commit atrocities against the people of the United States, its Allies and dependencies, particularly the Philippines.

General MacArthur created a War Crimes Board to investigate allegations of military misconduct during the Japanese occupation. As a result of its investigations, General Yamashita was put on trial before a military commission made up of five officers from the United States, none of whom was superior to or even of the same rank as the accused.

Yamashita took the stand and summarised his position as follows:

I believe that I did the best possible job I could have done. However, due to the above circumstances, my plans and my strength were not sufficient to the situation, and if these things happened, they were absolutely unavoidable. I absolutely did not order, nor did I receive the order, to do this [commit atrocities] from any superior authority, nor did I ever permit such a thing, and I will swear to heaven and earth concerning these points. That is all I have to say.

This stance was consistent with his handling of discipline during the Malayan campaign. Under Yamashita’s regimen, any soldier found to have committed rape or murder was executed on the spot. That atrocities occurred in the Philippines before he assumed command is undoubted, just as is clear that any that happened afterwards were against his express orders.

Nevertheless, Yamashita was convicted. An appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States of America having been dismissed by a majority of six to two, he was hanged on 23 February 1946.
Mr Justice Rutledge, dissenting, wrote that the requirements of proof of knowledge of the crimes and their particulars had not been met. The process departed “from the whole British–American tradition of common law and the Constitution.”

His Honour concluded the judgment by citing Thomas Paine:

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Surrender 15 February 1942 General Yamashita faces his counterpart General Percival