Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

General Yamashita and Justice Rutledge

2003; Wiley; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/sch.2003.0022

1540-5818

John M. Ferren,

Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

General Yamashita and Justice Rutledge JOHN M. FERREN* At 2:30 in the morning on February 23, 1946, in a small country village south of Manila in the Philippines, Japanese Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita was told, “It’s time.” Not three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court had denied his request for review—with Justices Wiley Rutledge and Frank Murphy dissenting—General Yamashita, the “Tiger ofMalaya,” was hanged.1 Yamashita had earned his title by taking Singapore from the British in January 1942 with only 30,000 men to the Brits’ 100,000. Clearly, Yamashita was a brilliant strategist. But he was no “tiger.” Although he was “a heavily muscled bear ofa man,” he was a calm soul, a lover ofnature. He had outspokenly op­ posed war with the United States and Great Britain, and thus the Tojo faction rising in Japan despised him. The Japanese high com­ mand had needed Yamashita in Malaya, but straightaway thereafter Hideki Tojo assigned him to an outpost in Manchukuo for the next two and a half years.2 When Saipan fell in July 1944 and Tojo and his cabinet resigned, the successors in power recalled Yamashita to defend the Philippines—a hopeless proposi­ tion, he discovered. Named the Philippines’ military governor, Yamashita took control of Japan’s 14th Area Army on October 9, 1944, when American invasion was imminent.3 Less than two weeks later, General MacArthur landed on Leyte Island midway along the Philippine archipelago while the Pa­ cific fleet was crippling the Japanese navy in Leyte Gulf. Yamashita devised a plan to defend the Japanese occupation on the large northern island of Luzon in the mountains around Manila. Atthat time he had but 100,000 troops, the Americans more than 400,000.4 On January 9, 1945, MacArthur reached Luzon and advanced toward Manila. Yamashita had not declared Manila an “open city” outside the battle zone; because he depended on sup­ plies stashed there. He left a skeleton force in Manila to inhibit the American advance while his main forces withdrew. Although Yamashita had gained effective control over GENERAL YAMASHITA AND JUSTICE RUTLEDGE 55 General Douglas MacArthur and aides waded ashore on the island of Leyte on October 20, 1944 after Amer­ ican forces overthrew Japanese occupation of the Philippines, As military governor of those islands, General Tomoyuki Yamashita planned Japan’s vigorous but unsuccessful defense of the occupation. There is still no proof that he knew of the gruesome atrocities committed by his doomed troops in Luzon. the air force and ordered it out of the capi­ tal city, he had not been able to assume au­ thority over the navy, which left 20,000 forces in Manila after informing Yamashita—now in mountain headquarters—that 4,000 would re­ main. Contrary to Yamashita’s orders, more­ over, his subordinates, in discussions with the Japanese naval commander, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, did not effectively negotiate a timely naval retreat from Manila. Although on paper Iwabuchi reported to Yamashita, he complied instead with Vice-Admiral Desuchi Okuchi’s order to remain in Manila, destroy all naval facilities, and “fight MacArthur ‘to the death.’” As a result, MacArthur— arriving on February 3—trapped the imperial navy.5 In his headquarters 125 miles to the north of Manila, Yamashita had not been able to learn how rapidly the Americans were advanc­ ing, but by mid-February he realized the sit­ uation and, for the second time, ordered the Japanese navy out of Manila. It was too late. By March 3, Japan’s naval and residual army forces there, including Admiral Iwabuchi, were dead. In holding out as long as they could before the Americans wiped them out, how­ ever, Iwabuchi’s navy—filled with liquor and ordered to take enemy lives—had spread out as a drunken mob to rape, torture, shoot, and burn. “Young girls and old women were raped and then beheaded; men’s bodies were hung in the air and mutilated; babies’ eyeballs were ripped out and smeared across walls; patients were tied down to theirbeds and then the hospi­ tal burned to the ground”—until MacArthur’s forces, fighting Japanese sailors hand-to-hand, ended the atrocities.6...