General Tomoyuki Yamashita

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By February 6, facing mounting casualties, MacArthur purged himself of his grand delusion and ordered his soldiers to use their artillery. He still forbade tactical bombing. Once the earlier prohibitions against using heavy artillery on important buildings was rescinded, the Sixth Army began applying its full might against the Japanese. As fighting raged from building to building and strongpoint to strongpoint, the battle slowly consumed the city.

Later, Yamashita protested that the naval troops and service units still in Manila were not supposed to be there. During his court-martial, Yamashita testified that even before MacArthur had invested Manila he had given orders for his troops to pull back into the mountains to the north and east. The bulk of the Japanese forces complied, he said, though some army service troops and almost the entire contingent of Iwabuchi’s naval force stayed behind.

The U.S. Army’s own reconstruction of the battle several years later somewhat supported Yamashita’s view. In fact many of the service troops in Manila were simply trapped there by MacArthur’s relentless attacks. But others, particularly Iwabuchi’s naval troops, had refused to leave. It was those die-hards who faced Krueger’s troops.

By February 23, the Sixth Army had forced most of Manila’s defenders into the Intramuros, the 150-acre ‘walled city,’ a three-square-mile area near Manila Bay, where many government buildings stood. The retreating Japanese left thousands of murdered and mutilated Filipino civilians in their wake. Holed up with them were 4,000 more civilians who could not escape.

When the Americans began the task of reducing Iwabuchi’s final stronghold, the slaughter was terrific. Still denied air power by MacArthur, the soldiers resorted to massive doses of artillery to give them the edge. Inside the walls of the old Spanish city, Japanese soldiers and sailors went on a vindictive rampage, burning and looting indiscriminately. When the last shot had been fired, Intramuros was razed to the ground, as were the stout government buildings where the Japanese had sought final refuge. Included in the destruction was MacArthur’s six-room penthouse above the Manila Hotel.

The carnage MacArthur witnessed was incredible. Almost all of Iwabuchi’s 16,000 troops, including their commander, were dead. More than 1,000 American soldiers were also killed, and another 5,500 were wounded. But the greatest toll was taken on Manila’s defenseless population. More than 100,000 souls, including most of those trapped in Intramuros, had been wiped out. Thousands more were wounded or missing.

The fall of Manila did not end the Philippine campaign. Yamashita was still to the north of Manila with the bulk of his remaining army, and there were many bitter campaigns ahead. For the remainder of the war, Yamashita’s soldiers fought a series of fierce delaying actions along Luzon’s Cordillera Mountains. It was not until the last day of the war that Yamashita stopped fighting. And then, on September 2, with nowhere else to go, Yamashita surrendered. ‘If I kill myself,’ the general explained,’someone else will have to take the blame.’ The blame was not long in coming. On October 8, 1945, five weeks after Japan unconditionally surrendered, Yamashita was arraigned before a military commission in Manila and charged with war crimes. MacArthur had drawn up the charges, appointed the military commission, and set the rules for the trial.

Yamashita was charged with failing to ‘discharge his duty as commander to control the operations of the members of his command’ between October 2, 1944, and September 2, 1945. In the same specification Yamashita was accused of ‘permitting them to commit brutal atrocities and other high crimes against the people of the United States and its allies and dependencies.’ The prescribed punishment was death. Yamashita’s defense was simple. He claimed he was not there. During his trial at the high commissioner’s residence in Manila, Yamashita testified that he had ordered his troops to leave Manila to the Allies. But because of the stranglehold MacArthur had placed around his garrisons in Manila, he was unable to make sure the orders were carried out.

Yamashita denied any involvement in the atrocities that took place in Manila. ‘I positively and categorically reaffirm that they were against my wishes and in direct contradiction to all my expressed orders,’ he told the court-martial panel. ‘They occurred at a time and place of which I had no knowledge whatsoever.’

It was to no avail. MacArthur had already made up his mind. Yamashita was defended by a battery of competent trial attorneys. His case was even appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. During the first week of January 1946, the high court listened to arguments from both sides. The defense claimed that Yamashita could not have received a fair trial under the mandates dictated by MacArthur. The prosecution argued that the destruction of Manila by Japanese troops under Yamashita’s command was all the evidence needed to convict him. In a 7­2 decision, the high court ruled Yamashita’s conviction and death sentence were just and fitting. The two dissenting justices called it ‘a legalized lynching.’

MacArthur would hear none of it. On February 11, 1946, he wrote: ‘This officer, of proven field merit, entrusted with high command involving authority adequate to responsibility, has failed this irrevocable standard; has failed his duty to his troops, to his country, to his enemy, to mankind; has failed utterly his soldier faith. The results are beyond challenge.’

On February 21, 1946, Lt. Gen. W.D. Styer, commander of the Western Pacific forces, ordered Colonel John H. Fonvielle, commanding officer of the Philippine Detention and Rehabilitation Center near Manila, to carry out MacArthur’s order. Two days later, Yamashita dropped through the gallows floor, unrepentant to the end. ‘Before my God I have told the truth,’ he announced through an interpreter when the sentence of execution was read. ‘I do not believe that I have sinned. I think that I–my soul–will live forever.’

Yamashita swung below the gallows for 25 minutes, swaying to and fro in the early morning breeze. Raroad, the executioner, remembered how the lights suddenly went out–because someone had thrown a circuit breaker–and how the taut rope stood out ‘evilly, connecting the crossbeam and the platform. ‘Yamashita, general in the Imperial Japanese Army and its commander of the Philippine Islands, had been hanged by the neck until dead.’

This article was written by Nat Helms and originally appeared in the February 1996 issue of World War II magazine. For more great articles subscribe to World War II magazine today!

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Tags: Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, World War II

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