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.”

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in World War II magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

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.” *

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to