The Emperor’s surrender broadcast was followed by bitter recriminations in Japan, particularly in the military, and unrest throughout the Japanese Empire. There were suicides, although nowhere near as many as expected. Probably no more, proportionally, than there had been in Germany after its defeat. Order broke down in the Japanese Army and Navy as soldiers and sailors turned on those responsible for enforcing the system of brutality against them. When a report appeared in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper about an abusive officer being lynched by his men, sixteen of the eighteen letters to the editor received by the paper supported the men.1

Australian Associated Press reported a case of Japanese soldiers holding their own war crimes trial on the transport back to Japan from Bangkok, finding thirty-three officers guilty of beating and punishing their subordinates unnecessarily and making excessive use of their authority.2 The officers’ baggage was thrown overboard and they were beaten so severely that thirty needed to be hospitalised. Army and navy stores were freely plundered. Kamikaze pilots who had been ready to fly suicide missions only a week before joined in the looting. Veterans found themselves stigmatised, particularly when reports of Japanese atrocities were published for the first time. The military, the nation’s pride, had become its shame. It had not only lost the war but had dishonoured itself in doing so.

Preparations began immediately for the impending Allied occupation. There were fears Allied troops in Japan would kill, rape and plunder on a huge scale, just as the Japanese had done in China – fears perhaps most obviously held by veterans of the China campaigns. On 18 August, the Home Ministry sent secret orders to regional police chiefs to prepare ‘comfort facilities’ for Allied troops, based on the infamous Japanese military brothels.3 These, however, would need to be staffed by volunteers. The forward-thinking Prince Konoe became involved in the project but the government did not manage it directly. Instead, senior ministers met with ‘entrepreneurs’ able to find women to staff the brothels and gave them 50 million yen. The entrepreneurs, delighted to be of service, gathered outside the Imperial Palace and gave three shouts of Tennō Heika Banzai! Not, perhaps, the discreet outcome the government had hoped for. Ultimately, enough young women were found to staff the brothels based on two inducements. One was the same patriotic message of self-sacrifice which had inspired Japanese men to sacrifice their lives in battle, the other was the simple promise of food and shelter.

Outside Japan, some 6.5 million Japanese soldiers and civilians had to be repatriated from the erstwhile Japanese Empire. This was probably the largest ever movement of people by sea, and possibly largest ever co-ordinated movement of people in history.4 Even defeated, Japan’s soldiers were still scattered from Korea to Papua New Guinea, often on remote islands or deep in the jungle. Many of them refused to accept the reality of surrender and held out; some kept the promise of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere alive by joining Indonesian, Malayan and Vietnamese independence movements, and others could simply not be found. Furthermore, Japan had not been able to keep its troops supplied with food and medicine, and many soldiers, prisoners of war and civilians were near starvation or badly sick from tropical diseases.

The Allies knew the condition of the prisoners and civilian internees was generally poor, but otherwise they had little information about them. On 28 August, Allied aircraft dropped leaflets on the known camps. On one side was an English message to the prisoners: ‘To all Allied prisoners of war – the Japanese forces have surrendered unconditionally and the War is over.’ It advised them to wait at their camps for relief to reach them. And if they were starved or underfed, it told them not eat to large quantities of solid food.5

Over the next several weeks, Allied soldiers reached the POW and internment camps, including those in Manchukuo and Japan itself. The prisoners were given bread – many had not tasted it for three years. The Australian government knew the prisoners and internees would have essential information about Japanese war crimes, and issued questionnaires to them. Evatt also decided to send his war crimes investigator, Justice Sir William Flood Webb of the Queensland Supreme Court, to gather information.

Born in 1887, Webb was the son of a storekeeper who went to school first in Brisbane, then Warwick.6 His teachers recognised his ability and coached him to a job in the Queensland public service. He studied law to advance his career and was called to the bar. He was favoured by the Labor governments of T.J. Ryan and Ted Theodore, appointed Solicitor-General of Queensland, and then a justice of the Queensland Supreme Court. He was appointed Chief Justice in 1940, and then Chairman of the Australian Industrial Relations Council by the federal Labor government in 1942.

The Allies had formed the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) in London in October 1942 with the goal of investigating war crimes and gathering evidence. On 7 October 1942, President Roosevelt confirmed that these investigations and trials would be an Allied war aim. As 1942 turned to 1943, the war shifted decisively in favour of the Allies, making it look increasingly likely that they would prevail and be able to bring their plans for the prosecution of war crimes to reality.

Eager to play an important role in the process, Australia applied to join the UNWCC on 8 December 1942 as an original member. Over April to July 1942, an Australian Army inquiry headed by Brigadier A.R. Allen had already investigated and produced a report on the massacre of surrendered Australian soldiers at Tol Plantation in New Britain in January 1942. On 30 January 1943 the army began issuing orders for evidence of war crimes to be collected. On 31 March, Minister for the Army Frank Forde wrote to Prime Minister Curtin requesting ‘the appointment of a judicial authority who would take the evidence and submit a full report on this matter’.7 The Prime Minister, in turn, referred this task to Evatt as Minister for External Affairs. Evatt selected Webb, and on 23 June 1943 commissioned him to investigate Japanese war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war in Papua New Guinea.

Australian troops had contained the Japanese advance at Milne Bay and along the Kokoda Track by September 1942, and as Australian and American units advanced into Japanese-occupied territory over the next few months they found ample evidence of Japanese atrocities against captured Allied soldiers and Papua New Guineans. Particularly at Milne Bay, where special Japanese naval parties had been sent ashore to ruthlessly suppress resistance through terror. There Allied units found thirty-six dead Australian soldiers and fifty-nine dead Papuan villagers, many horribly mutilated. Women had been raped, tied down, slashed open with bayonets, or impaled. One woman had seventy used condoms scattered around her. Australian prisoners were bound to trees and used for bayonet practice, or bound and tied to leashes and used as running targets. None had died quickly. Paul Ham wrote in Kokoda that ‘the prolonged torture and apparent pleasure with which they dispatched their victims suggests that the Australians were fighting, not soldiers, but a criminally insane mob of serial murderers and rapists.’8 At the battle, the Australians had taken six or seven prisoners. The Japanese had killed all theirs.

Webb interviewed Australian and American servicemen and civilians throughout North Queensland and Papua New Guinea, and gathered captured Japanese documents and reports of the interrogation of Japanese prisoners. In March 1944 he issued a 450-page report, along with affidavits from 471 witnesses. The report included accounts of the massacres of surrendered Australian soldiers at Tol and Waitavalo plantations in New Britain, the torture and killing of captured soldiers and Papua New Guineans at Milne Bay, the execution of eleven missionaries at Buna, Popondetta and Guadalcanal in August 1942, the practice of using live Australian and American prisoners for bayonet practice in the Owen Stanley Range, mutilation of the dead and cannibalism, and the execution of Australian bomber pilot Flight Lieutenant W.E. Newton VC at Salamaua on 29 March 1943.

The Australian government, concerned about the families of servicemen in Japanese captivity, did not release the report to the public. In November 1944, Evatt made a statement to the House of Representatives summarising the inquiry and its findings and confirming the government had grounds for prosecuting Japanese war criminals based on: ‘evidence of massacre, torture and maltreatment of Australians, both military personnel and civilians, and of the New Guinea natives, as well as evidence of numerous lesser breaches of the rules of warfare. These rules, had been solemnly laid down in the Geneva Conventions of 1906 and 1926 and the Hague Convention of 1907, all of which Japan signed and ratified, and the Prisoners of War Convention 1929, which Japan signed and which it publicly undertook shortly after the war broke out to observe on a basis of reciprocity.’9

Evatt decided to commission Webb to produce another report, this time with a mandate to investigate any war crimes committed by Japanese forces against Australians regardless of location. Webb accepted the commission on 24 February 1944, conducted hearings with 112 witnesses between 14 August and 20 October, and delivered a 104-page report on 31 October. While the hearings were being held American submarines rescued twelve Australian prisoners of war who had been on the transport Rakuyō Maru, torpedoed and sunk off Hainan on 12 September. They gave evidence of widespread killing and mistreatment of prisoners of war on the Burma–Siam Railway. Other witnesses reported the torpedoing of the hospital ship Centaur by a Japanese submarine off Brisbane on 14 May 1943, as well as further crimes in Papua New Guinea.

The Second Webb Report was forwarded to the UNWCC, and Webb himself was sent to London shortly afterwards to address the UNWCC directly. Over January and February 1945, he presented specific cases to the UNWCC’s Facts and Evidence Committee, after which the committee listed for arrest seventy-three individuals and all the members of ten units, and listed for further investigation an additional eighteen individuals or units yet to be identified. Webb also conferred with the British government on appropriate trial procedures, and advised that he favoured relaxing the rules of evidence to allow hearsay and documents. The British agreed, confirming that the royal warrant being prepared reflected this. Webb returned to Australia and his regular duties with the Queensland Supreme Court until summoned again by Evatt.

The Australian government issued the terms of reference for the third Webb inquiry on 3 September 1945. It also appointed Justice Alan Mansfield of the Queensland Supreme Court and Judge Richard C. Kirby of the New South Wales District Court to assist Webb. The terms were similar to those for the second inquiry, but were expanded to include war crimes against not only Australians, but also any citizen of an Allied nation, and three further war crimes were added to the thirty-two already defined. Two of them, cannibalism and mutilation of the dead, fitted within the other class-B and -C war crimes. But the third gave Webb and his co-inquirers the power to investigate class-A war crimes, specifically the ‘planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing’.10 This represented a significant broadening of Webb’s role.

The three commissioners were then dispatched to former Japanese-occupied areas in the Philippines, the Netherlands East Indies and British Borneo by air. They found that most of the prisoners had been released and returned home, but were nonetheless able to take statements from 248 witnesses, including Australian and Indian prisoners of war and Dutch and British civilian internees. Additionally, 12,000 of the questionnaires issued to released Australian prisoners of war and civilian internees were filled out and returned.

As many as 25,000 Japanese Army and Navy personnel were arrested on suspicion of war crimes, but fewer than 6,000 were charged.11 There were so many suspects only a minority could be brought to trial. As the Chairman of the UNWCC, Lord Wright of Durley, put it, ‘the majority of war criminals will find safety in their numbers’.12

Amid all this, the Emperor showed little sign of feeling any personal responsibility, either for the war or Japan’s ignominious defeat. On 9 September, he wrote a letter to his eldest son, who had been sent away from Tokyo because of the air raids. He explained to the twelve-year-old Crown Prince Akihito why, in his view, Japan had lost and he had been forced to surrender. The letter was long on self-justification and short on self-reflection. Unlike his grandfather, the Meiji Emperor, Hirohito wrote, he had not been blessed with great generals and admirals. And those generals he did have had failed to appreciate the technological advantages enjoyed by the British and Americans. In the end, he had had no choice but to accept the Potsdam Declaration in order to protect the sacred regalia of the Imperial house. Moreover, he wrote, had the war continued, most of his subjects would have died.13 Hirohito’s mention of the sacred regalia before the potential deaths of millions seems to reflect his obsession with them.

The Japanese government took a similar line. From the start, it held a seemingly contradictory position whereby the Emperor had the power to end the war, yet otherwise bore no responsibility for it. Seven hours after the surrender broadcast, on the evening of 15 August, Prime Minister Suzuki gave a radio address where he told the people of Japan, ‘His Majesty gave the sacred decision to end the War in order to save the people and contribute to welfare and peace of mankind.’14 He praised the Emperor’s benevolence and assured him of the nation’s sincere apologies. It was not clear what the people were meant to be apologising for.

This address was one of Suzuki’s final acts as prime minister. On 17 August, he resigned. In an unusual move, Hirohito appointed his uncle-in-law, Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, to replace him. Never before had a member of the Imperial family served as prime minister; it had always been considered unwise to tie the monarchy too closely to government policy. Now, however, the situation was exceptional. Higashikuni took the same line as his predecessor. On 28 August, he announced that ‘repentance of a hundred million’ was the key to rebuilding Japan. Speaking of the Emperor, he said that ‘we deeply regret to have caused him so much anxiety’.15

It was a truly extraordinary pronouncement. People who had lost their sons, fathers, husbands, brothers and uncles in a war fought in the Emperor’s name, who had had their homes and possessions burned in bombing raids, and who were now reduced to eating a starvation diet of pancakes and dumplings made of barley flour bulked up with husks and sawdust, were expected to apologise to the Emperor for upsetting him. It was a remarkable request, but the Japanese government, then busying itself with destroying incriminating documents, did not seem to think it unreasonable.

While Hirohito mused on defeat, the US prepared to occupy Japan. Its two main goals were to ensure that Japan posed no further threat to America and its allies and to transform it into a democracy. These were, of course, interlinked. MacArthur arrived in Tokyo on 30 August. He had been warned against coming before his army, as there were three Japanese divisions in and around the city and nobody knew exactly how they would react. But as usual, he could not be dissuaded. As they approached the airfield, MacArthur’s aides went to strap on their side-arms. He told them not to: if the Japanese were going to attack them then handguns would be useless. As MacArthur strode down the plane’s steps smoking his foot-long corncob pipe and wearing his aviator sunglasses, he looked every inch the Hollywood American general. When he and his aides were driven into the city, they were met with an alarming sight – the roads were lined with thousands of Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets. They stood calmly with their backs to the road as MacArthur’s car drove past; it wasn’t clear whether this was a snub or a guard of honour.

MacArthur was a well-informed choice for his new role (as he assured the readers of his memoir), being both familiar with the Orient and no stranger to military occupation. He had served as a junior officer in the engineers in the Philippines between 1903 and 1904, and as a brigadier general he spent the winter of 1918–19 as part of the American force occupying the Rhineland following the end of the First World War. He was critical of both these efforts and was determined to do better in Japan. Part of his plan was to rely on the government and the Emperor to administer the country. When Germany had surrendered in May, the Allies abolished the German government and divided the country into occupation zones. In Japan, the government was to be kept in place. But it would answer to MacArthur. ‘Your authority is supreme,’ President Truman had told him.16

MacArthur established himself in the imposing grey Dai-ichi Life Insurance Building, one of the few large structures in central Tokyo left undamaged by bombing. Arguably no American had ever held more power, but he settled easily into his new position. Officially he was the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, or SCAP, and over time SCAP became the name for the American administration in Tokyo. From there, the term became adopted more widely. For example, the broken English used by the Japanese to talk to American troops became known as ‘SCAPanese’. To the Japanese MacArthur was the Gaijin Shōgun, or Foreign Shogun, and his appointment marked a reversion to the pre-1868 system of government where the Shogun was the effective ruler of Japan and the Emperor was cloistered away in Kyoto.

Japan had never been ruled by a foreigner before, so the situation was potentially volatile. But MacArthur and the Japanese quickly took to each other. He was, in many ways, well suited to Japan, and the Japanese were well suited to him. MacArthur was so caught up in his own destiny he was practically incorruptible, and so self-assured that he felt no need to pander to anyone, either in Tokyo or Washington. He had no malice towards the Japanese and he sought no revenge. He was a distant, aloof figure who showed little emotion and rarely left his Tokyo bubble or mixed with ordinary Japanese. But this was just the type of leader the Japanese had come to expect. MacArthur’s age (he was in his late sixties during the occupation) and his string of military victories also lent him authority. And, not unimportantly, he looked the part.

While the American occupation forces in Japan (and later those of Australia, Britain and other Commonwealth nations) were responsible for outbreaks of robbery, murder and rape, it was on a far smaller scale than the Japanese had feared, and MacArthur personally took a hard line against the mistreatment of Japanese civilians. Immediately upon arrival, he ordered in thousands of tonnes of food. To ordinary Japanese he was therefore a magnanimous figure, triumphant in battle and gentle in victory, a perfect embodiment of the warrior spirit of Bushidō. And the Emperor had told them to do what he said.

The general had two immediate tasks: the organisation of the formal surrender ceremony scheduled for 2 September and the arrest of the main political and military leaders suspected of war crimes. By 14 August, the US government had already drafted a surrender instrument and communicated to the UK, China and the Soviet Union its plans to have a formal ceremony where representatives from their governments would sign it. The British accepted the plan, nominated Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, and communicated this to the Dominions.

This triggered another minor dispute between Evatt and the American and British governments. The Australian government argued for separate representation of the Dominions in their own right at the ceremony. This was, on the face of it, not unreasonable. Australia and New Zealand had been in the war against Japan for far longer than the Soviet Union, and Australia had been America’s principal ally in the South-West Pacific. Without waiting for a British response to their proposal, the Australian government nominated General Thomas Blamey as its representative on 14 August, and communicated the decision to London. New Zealand, naturally, agreed, and nominated Air Vice Marshal Leonard Monk Isitt as its own representative. There was a brief squabble, upon which Australia escalated its request (or demand) directly to the American Secretary of State and MacArthur. MacArthur assented and went further, also accepting the inclusion of delegates from Canada, France and the Netherlands.

Understandably, finding delegates on the Japanese side was even harder. Sending the Emperor was out of the question. Likewise Prime Minister Higashikuni, being a member of the Imperial family, was also out. Prince Konoe, minister without portfolio in the Higashikuni cabinet, was powerful enough to decline. So Shigemitsu Mamoru, the foreign minister, ended up representing the government. He had taken over the office from Tōgō Shigenori on 17 August, having been an opponent of the militarists and a member of the Konoe–Kido group pushing for the end of the war. Shigemitsu had lost a leg in a bomb attack by a Korean independence activist in Shanghai in 1932, and so walked on a wooden one with the aid of a cane.

Finding a delegate from the Japanese Army was harder still. In the end, it fell to an unwilling Umezu, who threatened to commit seppuku in protest. Only the personal intervention of the Emperor compelled him. Shigemitsu and Umezu were joined by nine other delegates – three each from the army, navy and foreign ministry.

The ceremony took place in Tokyo Bay on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri. One of the US Navy’s largest and most modern battleships, it made for a formidable display of American military power. And in a symbolic touch, it was named after President Truman’s home state. The Allies made a further show of force by filling the bay with their warships and having aircraft fly in formation overhead, impressing on the Japanese the futility of further resistance.

The Japanese delegates left Tokyo at 5 am, travelling under the utmost secrecy in case militarist rebels should attempt to disrupt their mission. On either side of the road, Tokyo and Yokohama lay in ruins. ‘The ghastly sight of death and desolation was enough to freeze my heart,’ wrote Kase Toshikazu, a Japanese Foreign Ministry delegate. He reflected on just how closely Japan had come to annihilation: ‘The waste of war and the ignominy of surrender were put on my mental loom and produced a strange fabric of grief and sorrow.’17 As they approached the port where they would board a boat to take them to the Missouri, they passed soldiers of the US Eighth Army disembarking to begin the occupation of Japan.

There is a well-known photograph of the Japanese delegates grouped together on the deck of the Missouri. At the front is Shigemitsu, leaning heavily on his cane, having struggled to climb the stairs with his wooden leg. Next to him is Umezu, looking as unreadable as always (the Allies called him ‘Stoneman’). The others were standing behind.

Kase looked around and saw journalists clustered ‘monkey-like’ on scaffolding and against railings. Under their intense and hostile gaze he felt like a guilty schoolboy awaiting the headmaster. He saw rising sun flags painted on the wall with tally marks next to them, and realised with a shock that they were a record of destroyed Japanese ships and planes.

MacArthur was waiting for them. ‘I had received no instructions as to what to say or what to do,’ he recalled. ‘I was on my own, standing on the quarterdeck with only God and my conscience to guide me.’18 He had brought with him British General Arthur Percival and American General Jonathan Wainwright. Percival had surrendered the British forces at Singapore in February 1942, and Wainwright had surrendered American forces in the Philippines a few months later. Both men looked gaunt and haggard from three years in Japanese captivity.

Shigemitsu sat down at the table, took up the pen, and hesitated, unsure where to sign. An aide directed him. He signed the Instrument of Surrender at 9.04 am; Umezu signed next, then MacArthur, who gave one of his pens to Percival and one to Wainwright. The representatives of the nine allies followed, led by Admiral Chester Nimitz for the United States. The process went smoothly save for one hitch – Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave of Canada, blinded in one eye by a First World War injury, signed on the wrong line of the Japanese version.

MacArthur then gave a lengthy speech on the importance of peace. Kase was impressed, describing MacArthur as ‘a shining obelisk in the desert of human endeavour that marks a timeless march onward toward an enduring peace’.19 Naturally, MacArthur quoted Kase in his memoir.

Following the principal ceremony at Tokyo Bay, others were held throughout the Pacific. From Tokyo, Blamey flew to Morotai to receive the surrender of Lieutenant General Teshima Fusataro of the Japanese 2nd Army on 9 September. After receiving Teshima’s sword and signing the instrument, he gave a speech that left his listeners in no doubt of his position towards the Japanese:

In receiving your surrender I do not recognise you as an honourable and gallant foe, but you will be treated with due but severe courtesy in all matters. I recall the treacherous attack upon our ally, China, in 1938 [sic; he meant 1937]. I recall the treacherous attack made upon the British Empire and upon the United States of America in December 1941, at a time when your authorities were making the pretence of ensuring peace. I recall the atrocities inflicted upon the persons of our nationals as prisoners of war and internees, designed to reduce them by punishment and starvation to slavery. In the light of these evils, I will enforce most rigorously all orders issued to you, so let there be no delay or hesitation in their fulfilment at your peril.20

In Japan, the new occupation authorities moved quickly to arrest major war criminals. On 11 September, SCAP announced that it had ordered the arrest of thirty-nine suspects, including everyone who had been a member of the Tōjō cabinet at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. This included the recently replaced Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori, who had opposed the war even though it was his signature on the declaration, along with Tōjō himself.

The former prime minister had been living quietly in his house in suburban Tokyo since his fall from power in July 1944. But as soon as the news that his arrest had been ordered was out it was immediately mobbed by American and Japanese journalists. A little past four in the afternoon, American soldiers surrounded it. Tōjō appeared at the window, yelled something in Japanese, slammed the window shut and disappeared. Shortly afterwards there was a gunshot. The soldiers broke down the door and found Tōjō in his study, where he had shot himself in the chest. Ironically, he had used an American handgun, perhaps taken from a downed airman. A suicide note lay on the table.

But the bullet had missed his heart, and he was alive and conscious enough to give a rambling statement to the Japanese reporters. Different papers reported different words, but the sentiment was the same. One account ran: ‘I am sorry for the peoples of Greater East Asia. I shoulder the whole responsibility. I hope they will not go amiss in dealing with the situation. The Greater East Asia war was a just war. With all our strength gone, we finally fell. I did not want to stand before the victor to be tried as the vanquished. This is my own case. I wanted to kill myself at one stroke. I first thought of using my sword to kill myself, but instead I used a revolver, for fear I might fail and revive.’21

As it turned out, he did fail and revive. Taken away promptly in an ambulance, he was saved by MacArthur’s personal doctor with a transfusion of blood from an American soldier. He recovered enough the next day to thank his captors for their care.

In the whole episode, Tōjō had done himself no favours. Many people had expected him to kill himself when the war ended, as Anami and others had done. After all, it was Tōjō who published the Field Service Code which drummed the doctrine of ‘death before capture’ into every Japanese soldier. When he didn’t commit suicide, they assumed he was going to take some role in defending Japan in whatever court or tribunal the Allies would foist on them. His suicide attempt shortly before his arrest made him look like a coward, a man who was willing to live with defeat provided he didn’t have to bear the consequences of it, and his failure to kill himself properly was met with scorn. Writer Takami Jun wrote in his diary: ‘Cowardly living on, and then using a pistol like a foreigner. Why did General Tōjō not die right away as Minister for War Anami did? Why did General Tōjō not use a Japanese sword as Minister for War Anami did?’22

Most Japanese people had little sympathy for their wartime leaders. Throughout September and October, editorials and letters to the editors of newspapers (now subject to American rather than Japanese censorship) freely called for their arrest and prosecution. The Higashikuni cabinet even briefly considered holding its own trials, but MacArthur vetoed the idea. It was possibly a lost opportunity.

MacArthur was not only thinking of the trial of Japan’s leaders in Tokyo. Shortly after the arrests of Tōjō and the others, he ordered the arrest of two of the most infamous (to the Allies) Japanese commanders, General Yamashita Tomoyuki and Lieutenant General Homma Masaharu. Yamashita, the ‘Tiger of Malaya’, had inflicted on the British Empire what was possibly its worst ever military defeat at Singapore. Homma, the ‘Beast of Bataan’, had done likewise to the Americans in the Philippines. Homma had been the overall commander of the troops responsible for the Bataan Death March in April 1942, where some 5,000 to 18,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war were shot or bayoneted. After Malaya, Yamashita had been placed in command of Japanese forces in the Philippines when, between February and March 1945, thousands of Japanese Army and Navy troops sacked and burned the city of Manila, raping thousands of women and girls and massacring as many as 100,000 Filipino civilians.

For MacArthur, the Bataan Death March and the Sack of Manila were personal. He had lived in the Philippines on and off for many years, he had been a field marshal in the Philippine Army, and he knew and loved the city of Manila and its people. Bataan was his defeat, and the men who suffered in the march, Filipino and American alike, were his men. Furthermore, he had a very traditional view of the role of the soldier, based on chivalry. To him, soldiers who mistreated and killed civilians and prisoners brought the entire profession of soldiering into disrepute. His profession.

However, neither Homma nor Yamashita made for a particularly satisfactory villain. Homma’s American defence lawyers found him to be a cultured, erudite, mild-mannered man with a distaste for violence. He had travelled extensively in Europe and America, spoke fluent English, held pro-Western views, and had opposed going to war against Britain and the United States. He had even served with the British Army on the Western Front in the First World War and been awarded the Military Cross. In his defence, he maintained he had consistently issued orders for the good treatment of prisoners and civilians and had had no knowledge of the atrocities at Bataan. Additionally, he’d had no power to transfer or dismiss his subordinates, who were appointed directly by Tokyo. Yamashita, for his part, pointed out that he had only been given command in the Philippines once Japanese forces were dispersed throughout the country and therefore outside his control, and throughout his career he had consistently given orders for the humane treatment of both civilians and prisoners.

The Allies had originally been working on the assumption that the prosecution of war criminals would be co-ordinated centrally by the UNWCC. To this end, Evatt and Webb had spent two years busily presenting hundreds of pages of evidence to the committee. On 3 October, however, MacArthur announced that Yamashita would be brought to trial immediately before an American military court in Manila.23 On 6 October, Lord Wright advised Evatt that it would not be necessary for the UNWCC to list suspects before the Allies could try them.24 The original plan had allowed for suspects to be sent to the country where their alleged crimes were committed so they could be tried there in accordance with the Moscow Declaration. But it had become apparent that this was impractical, and so the Allies began holding ad hoc class-B and -C trials in the areas where their armies were.

On 18 June 1945, the British government had issued a royal warrant (a type of executive order) allowing for the trial of war criminals in both the European and Pacific theatres of war, wherever British forces were operating.25 On 17 September, the British commenced trials of the staff of the Belsen concentration camp in Germany. America indicted Yamashita on 25 September. The Australian War Crimes Act 1945, allowing for the Australian trials to commence, was pushed quickly through parliament in October and the first trials commenced in November.

Yamashita’s trial began on 29 October 1945, Homma’s on 3 January 1946. Both were charged with being responsible for the atrocities carried out by the officers and men under their command, based on the doctrine of command responsibility. Both resolutely maintained their innocence, and both were robustly defended by their American lawyers. One member of Homma’s defence team criticised MacArthur’s influence over the trial, saying ‘no man should be placed in the position of being in essence accuser, prosecutor, defense counsel, judge, jury, court of review, and court of final appeal. He should particularly not be placed in this position where he is a military commander who was defeated by the accused in a campaign out of which the charges arose.’26 The court threw out the argument, but Homma’s lawyers were undaunted. Another criticised the relaxation of the rules of evidence and the admission of hearsay, saying it would be ‘shocking to anyone trained in Anglo-American law to see a man sentenced to death after trial by affidavit and deposition’.27

At Yamashita’s trial, his defence argued that ‘the Accused is not charged with having done something or having failed to do something, but solely with having been something’. On the idea of holding a commander responsible for the actions of their troops, they went on to say, ‘American jurisprudence recognizes no such principle so far as its own military personnel are concerned . . . No one would even suggest that the Commanding General of an American occupational force becomes a criminal every time an American soldier violates the law . . . [O]ne man is not held to answer for the crime of another.’28

In spite of their lawyers’ best efforts, Homma and Yamashita were both convicted and sentenced to death, Yamashita by hanging, and Homma, perhaps as a concession to the arguments made in his defence or in response to an appeal by his wife, by shooting. MacArthur reviewed both their sentences and approved them. Admitting it was not easy to pass judgement on a defeated foe, he wrote he could find no mitigating circumstances in Yamashita’s case. He reiterated the responsibility of all soldiers to protect the weak and unarmed and uphold the reputation of the military profession, and wrote that he intended to follow through with his pledge to hold those responsible for atrocities to account. ‘No new or retroactive principles of law, either national or international, are involved,’ he wrote. ‘The case is founded upon basic fundamentals as immutable and as standardized as the most natural and irrefragable of social codes.’29

With regards to Homma, MacArthur again wrote of the ‘repugnant duty of passing final judgement on a former adversary’.30 However, ‘no trial could have been fairer than this one, no accused was ever given a more complete opportunity of defense, no judicial process was ever freer from prejudice . . . [I]f this defendant does not deserve his judicial fate, none in jurisdictional history ever did.’

Yamashita was hanged on 23 February 1946, Homma shot on 3 April.

Their trials established the principle of command responsibility, and for this reason are the only class-B and -C trials in the Pacific to be considered significant today. They raised an interesting question – how far up the chain of command did command responsibility go?

‘Soldiers of an army invariably reflect the attitude of their general,’ wrote MacArthur in respect of Homma, bringing the atrocities of the Bataan Death March home to him.31 Did this mean that subjects of an empire could also be said to reflect the attitudes of their emperor?