“Nothing has seared the hatred against the Japanese in the Filipino heart more deeply than seeing our capital city converted into a funeral pyre.”
—BRIG. GEN. CARLOS ROMULO,
FREE PHILIPPINES, FEBRUARY 22, 1945
ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 29, 1945, EXACTLY THREE weeks to the day after the general’s arraignment, spectators jockeyed for a spot in line outside the High Commissioner’s Residence. “It was first come, first seated,” noted the Los Angeles Times. “There was no favoritism.” Adding to the excitement of the opening day of trial, military police only the night before had discovered a Japanese land mine buried near the residence’s Dewey Boulevard gate; the detonator was exposed by the recent heavy rains.
In preparation for the trial, guards had moved Yamashita from New Bilibid Prison to a special cell on the second floor of the residence, which before the war had served as the bedroom of American high commissioner Francis Sayre’s two stepsons. The trial that kicked off this Monday morning promised to be a logistical nightmare, requiring an army of translators to cover languages ranging from Japanese and Spanish to Chinese dialects of Mandarin, Amoy, and Cantonese as well as Tagalog, Visayan, and other obscure Filipino dialects. The 123 specific charges against Yamashita, according to a tally compiled by Yank magazine, accounted for 62,278 tortured and murdered civilians, 144 slain American officers and enlisted men, and 488 raped women and children. Even Great Britain, which had endured the brutal German bombings known as the Blitz, counted only 61,000 dead civilians throughout the entire war.
Many local newspapers published the charges verbatim: “repeatedly raping more than 40 women and female children” ; “entire settlements were devastated and destroyed wantonly” ; “killing approximately 200 men, women and children.”
“The list goes on endlessly,” one reporter observed. “If you can shake off the sense-dulling repetition of detail and realize that each of these thousands was a separate, breathing, life-loving human being, it becomes horrible reading.”
Yamashita’s odds, most agreed, seemed poor. “From the very beginning,” Yank magazine claimed, “you couldn’t find a sucker to bet two pesos to 200 on Yamashita’s acquittal.”
The defense began the proceeding pleading for two more weeks to prepare. Captain Reel told judges that the defense had anticipated prosecutors might add one or two additional charges but had never imagined facing fifty-nine new ones, filed at four p.m. on the Friday before the start of trial. Defense of those charges would require more time to investigate. “We believe that it is unconscionable in a case of this type to practically double in the last minute the list of offenses charged.”
Judge Reynolds asked the prosecution’s opinion. “Defense Counsel is much better prepared to judge the difficulties of preparing the defense than I am,” said Major Kerr. “I can only say that the Prosecution is ready and anxious to go to trial.”
After a brief discussion in chambers, judges denied Reel’s request for a continuance, adding that at the end of the prosecution’s case, if defense still felt it needed more time, the judges would again consider the motion.
“The case,” Reynolds announced, “will proceed.”
Kerr began with his opening arguments, warning of the gruesome details he would present in the days ahead. Guards would carry some witnesses into court atop stretchers; other victims would be “permanently mutilated, physically ruined for life.” Even then, the trial would provide only a snapshot of the butchery that had unfolded in the Philippines, not a forensic accounting of every atrocity Japanese troops committed. “We Americans are a Christian nation; we are reared in the tradition of fair play and decency,” Kerr told the panel of five judges. “If the Commission finds the evidence unpleasant, as I am sure it will in many instances, it is simply because those are the facts. That is the type of case we are trying, gentlemen; it is not a pleasant proceeding.”
Despite the voluminous charges and gory details of individual massacres, he argued the case was really quite simple. Yamashita had failed in his duty to control his troops, who in turn slaughtered tens of thousands of men, women, and children.
“That is the charge,” he said. “That is the case.”
Kerr jumped into the horror right away, calling Corazon Noble as a witness at 11:08 a.m., the famed actress who was shot at the Red Cross headquarters. The twenty-six-year-old wore a black dress adorned with a single orchid. She cradled her bandaged right arm in a sling, forcing her to raise her left hand to take the oath.
“My name is Patrocinio Abad,” she began. “My screen name is Corazon Noble.”
Noble walked the court through her story, describing how her husband was killed by a trench mortar, prompting her to move into the Red Cross headquarters with her ten-month-old daughter Maria Lourdes Vera. Four Japanese troops had then barged into the building and opened fire, an account one reporter described as “hell on the loose.”
“I saw them aiming at me,” she testified, “so I hid behind a cabinet where they keep the medicines, but the cabinet was not enough to cover me, so that my elbow, my right arm was out, and the Japanese shot me through my right elbow.”
“When you were hit by the bullet what did you do?”
“I started to lie down—I laid—”
“On the floor?” the prosecutor interrupted.
“Yes, sir; and a Japanese came near me and stabbed me with his bayonet.”
“How many times did he stab you with his bayonet?” the prosecutor asked.
“Nine times.”
The cavernous courtroom was silent as journalists and spectators alike hung on her every word, described by reporters as a “bloodbath,” “a story of horror,” and a “nightmare of doom.” Not only did Noble tear up as she testified, but so, too, did First Lady Esperanza Osmeña. Reporters likewise studied the Japanese general who sat just steps away from the actress. “Yamashita appeared nervous and fidgety,” wrote the reporter for the Manila Courier. “Every now and then he would remove his horn-rimmed spectacles, put them on the table and then clamp them on again.”
“Can you tell the members of the Commission what happened to your infant child at that time?” the prosecutor pressed.
“I had her under me, and when the Japanese stabbed me I felt a pain in my arm, it was hurting me,” she said, “so I didn’t see how he bayonetted my baby, only I know that she was bayonetted through and through three times.”
“Three times?”
“Yes, sir.”
“As a result of that bayonetting, what happened to your infant child?”
“She died.”
NOBLE WAS THE FIRST of scores of similar victims who took the stand as the days turned to a week and then two weeks and then three. The bay breeze cooled the courtroom, though on afternoons when the wind was still, the air inside grew hot and sticky. Hundreds of onlookers packed the ballroom and its balconies, sitting shoulder to shoulder, anxious to experience the first war crimes trial in the Pacific. Beneath powerful klieg lights and with moving pictures rolling, a parade of widows and children, priests and gravediggers testified to the grim horror of what had happened in Manila.
The prosecution hurried to present its own case, torn by the directive to prove all 123 alleged atrocities, but also rushed by judges anxious to wrap up the trial as soon as possible, so much so that the commission worked a half day on Thanksgiving. On average half a dozen charges were covered each day, reducing massacres that at times killed hundreds to just a few pages of testimony. For those who had survived the Battle of Manila, the atrocities were well known—the Red Cross, German Club, De La Salle, and St. Paul’s College, among scores more. Other witnesses recounted the massacres in the provinces, including an estimated 25,000 killed in Batangas.
In cases where many survived, the prosecution chose to put on just a few witnesses, enough to paint in broad brushstrokes the atrocity for the record before moving on to the next one. But even in its abbreviated form, the testimony was often so ghastly that the New York Times described the trial as “foul a tale of savagery as is recorded in all history.” The Chicago Tribune agreed, comparing the testimony of one witness to Dante’s Inferno. “Not even the wholesale butchery of the Belsen prison camp in Germany was more revolting than the testimony of Francisco Lopez.”
Similar anecdotes filled the growing trial record:
“The Japanese soldier stabbed me in the back,” testified Leoncio Tolentino. “The point of the bayonet came out my breast.”
“One of my sisters is pregnant,” added a weeping Justina Manlisik. “They slashed her stomach open and when the baby come out they cut its head off.”
“They burned all parts of my body with the cigarettes, the vital parts of my body, too,” Beatriz Sapinoso told the judges.
On the morning when women testified about the rapes inside the Bay View Hotel and Alhambra and Miramar apartments, judges closed the court to the general public to protect their privacy. Sixteen-year-old Priscilla Garcia broke down, describing how her attacker sliced her vagina open with a knife to make it easier to rape her.
“Oh my God!” she cried out on the stand.
Her twenty-four-year-old sister Esther testified she had been raped more than a dozen times. “I couldn’t even think anymore,” she recalled. “They just dragged me out of the room. They kept doing that the whole night. I couldn’t resist.”
One of the most dramatic witnesses was Rosalinda Andoy, the eleven-year-old girl the Japanese bayoneted thirty-eight times in the ruins of Santo Domingo Church in the Walled City. She told the judges she had lived in a refugee home since the Japanese had killed her mother and father. “The girl’s feet,” the New York Times noted, “were dangling in wooden Filipino slippers that kept slipping off as she sat in the witness chair.” During the proceedings, Rosalinda raised her left arm to reveal ten scars; then she pointed out the four on her right arm. She then stood up and pulled her faded pink dress above her brown bloomers, revealing eighteen scars on her chest and stomach. Tears ran down her cheek, dropping, as a reporter for Time magazine noted, on her dress.
“Before your mother died did she tell you anything?”
“Yes, sir,” Rosalinda replied.
“What did she tell you?” the prosecutor pressed.
“To be always good.”
Many of the spectators wept. “Her simple honest narration moved the entire courtroom,” observed the Manila Chronicle. “American generals on the trial board,” added the New York Times, “wiped their eyes during the child’s testimony.”
Her powerful story inspired Navy Petty Officer Second Class Bernard Katz to write a poem titled simply “Rosalinda Andoy—Age 11.”
Do not weep, little one
Your tears are burning hot
They sear the very sun
They scar the human lot.
But Rosalinda was not the only child witness.
Ten-year-old Ang Kim Ling, the son of a prominent Chinese merchant in Los Baños, approached the stand, clinging to the hand of his eight-year-old sister, Elisa Ang, a scene best described by Mac Johnson of the New York Herald Tribune. “Gripping the sides of the chair, he told his story, while his sister stood behind him, fascinated by the whirling motion-picture cameras and the popping of flash-bulbs,” the reporter wrote. “Sometimes crying, sometimes biting his lips, Ang Kim Ling, through his interpreter, described how four generations of his family were killed by the Japanese.”
“After I was stabbed,” the boy testified, “I closed my eyes.”
“When you woke up did you see any of the other members of your family?”
“I saw a head, a few legs and arms laying on the ground.”
Like Rosalinda, he showed the commission his scars; so, too, did his younger sister, raising her black dress to reveal sixteen bayonet wounds. “The audience of American soldiers gasped,” Johnson wrote, “as every one wondered how the girl survived the wounds, nearly any one of which could have proved fatal.”
Several of the witnesses aimed their anger directly at Yamashita, including Chinese native Ang Be. Japanese troops had bayoneted three of her children to death behind a Shell Service Station in Manila, including her three-year-old son, whom she cradled in her arms at the time. The distraught witness lunged at Yamashita as she left the stand. “Let me get at him,” she screamed. “He is a bad man.”
Military police pounced on her amid exploding flashbulbs. “As they led her out of the courtroom,” wrote a reporter for the Manila Times, “she continued to rage and almost fainted in the arms of her attendants following the emotional struggle.”
Seventeen-year-old Julieta Milanes, whose father and fourteen-year-old brother were killed during the Japanese roundup of males in Paco, likewise accosted him. “You still have face to look at me, Yamashita. If I could only get near you! You don’t have shame!” she yelled. “You ought to be hung. You ought to be cut in pieces.”
“On the chairman’s order two prosecutors led her from the courtroom,” the New York Times reported. “Yamashita showed no expression except puzzlement.”
Another dramatic moment came during Ricardo Esquerra’s testimony. The undertaker was one of the few who had survived the Singalong death house, where saber-wielding Japanese troops had decapitated two hundred victims. Esquerra had climbed the mountain of bodies to escape.
The prosecutor asked to see his wound. Esquerra stood up and, as Robert Cromie with the hicago Tribune reported, glared at Yamashita. “You, first!” he shouted at the general. “See the scar!”
Military police on November 14 discovered that witness Fausta Espiritu of Batangas, who was assaulted by the Japanese and whose husband’s tongue was cut out, had packed her handbag with rocks. She stammered for an excuse when pressed. “I just picked them up and put them in my purse,” she said, “to throw at the dogs.”
Even neutral observers, like London Daily Express reporter Henry Keys, who visited San Agustin hours after its liberation, struggled with their emotions. “I found it hard,” he wrote of his time in court, “to tell of the hate that burned inside me.”
Santo Tomas historian Abram Hartendorp provided one of the few moments of levity amid the tales of horror when defense lawyer Colonel Clarke drilled him on food. “Was the ration supplemented by any poultry within the compound?”
“We had some ducks—but they also starved to death.”
The audience howled in laughter. “It really brought down the house,” George Mountz wrote in a letter, “and that was the end of that line of questioning.”
Each day the atrocities piled up. “The prosecution’s map of Manila on the court room wall, where pins are put daily to show the places where the population of whole neighborhoods were lined up, shot down, bayonetted, tortured and raped, is becoming thickly dotted as the reckoning against the Japanese grows,” observed Robert Trumbull of the New York Times. The parade of violence only desensitized spectators; some even dozed, Trumbull noted, while the massacres of entire families were recounted. “Revolting testimony of rape, mass murder, and obscene atrocities is becoming so common in the trial,” wrote the Chicago Tribune’s Cromie, “that it has reached the point where even the most fantastic horrors fail to register in the minds of listeners.”
Manila radio announcers read excerpts of the trial during dinner hour, while newspapers carried the blow-by-blow testimony of each witness, feeding the highlights to hungry readers unable to score one of the coveted courtroom tickets. Sensational headlines often trumpeted in bold the shocking details:
“ ”Rape Pools’ Described by City’s Prettiest Women,” one stated.
“Courtroom Tearful as Girl Speaks,” read another.
“Defense Silent as Orgy of Murder, Rape Is Told.”
Some editorials questioned how much barbarity was needed. “Perhaps enough testimony against Yamashita has already been heard,” quipped the Boston Globe, “unless it is planned to hang him more than once.”
Others pointed to the trial as evidence that Japan could not be trusted to rule itself in the future. “The Japanese soldiers in the Philippines have written a page of history as terrible as any the foulest mind could conceive,” wrote the Hartford Courant. “It is a record so base that the whole human race should feel ashamed.”
Yamashita’s lawyers meanwhile could do little more than suffer through the testimony. “Day after day, tales of bestiality and horror were recounted by Filipinos, Chinese, and occasionally Americans, until the listener wondered whether he was living on this green earth or in a bloody gash on the corpse of hell. There had to be revenge,” Reel wrote. “There had to be personal vengeance, somehow—on someone.”
Lawyers and spectators alike often shot glances at Yamashita, who perched at the defense table, his personal interpreter Hamamoto providing him with a running translation of the proceedings. “Yamashita sits through it all,” Mountz wrote in a letter, “with little or no expression on his face.” Newsweek observed the same. “His reddish eyes barely flicker behind horn-rimmed glasses,” the magazine reported. “Sometimes his head nodded drowsily as the first 200 prosecution witnesses told stories—many unprintable—of Japanese terror and orgy during the siege of Manila.”
Yamashita’s lawyers faced the challenge of how to confront witnesses who were often victims of such ghastly crimes. The lawyers in some instances simply chose not to cross-examine them. In other cases, the defense questioned the type of uniforms the perpetrators wore, trying to distinguish whether troops belonged to the Japanese army or navy. Another avenue lawyers probed was whether the victims had ties to the Filipino guerrillas, which, if so, might have given the Japanese a motive.
But the greatest challenge the defense faced centered on the incredibly loose rules of evidence. In addition to putting victims on the stand, prosecutors often submitted additional witness statements gathered during the postbattle investigations. Unlike a witness on the stand, defense lawyers could not cross examine or challenge such statements. The same proved true with captured Japanese records, some of which consisted of little more than fragments of diaries plucked from the pockets of dead enemy soldiers. How could the defense verify the information in them?
Another challenge for the defense was the allowance of hearsay testimony, which is when a witness relates what someone else told them. Such evidence is normally forbidden in American courtrooms. “Hearsay evidence was admitted. Not merely first degree hearsay from an identified source, but rumor and gossip from unidentified sources,” Reel wrote. “Third and fourth degrees hearsay was admitted.” At one point, in a moment that revealed the presiding judge’s lack of legal knowledge, Reynolds asked Colonel Clarke if such testimony would be allowed in a stateside courtroom.
The judge’s question floored members of the prosecution. “Imagine,” Mountz wrote in a letter to his father, “the Judge asking the defense counsel what the law is.”
The defense could only object, so often, in fact, that it prompted an unusual query one day from Yamashita’s former chief of staff, Muto. “Who is this Mr. Jackson?” he asked.
The defense lawyers realized that he had mistaken the word “objection” for “Jackson.” The lawyers joked that his last name was “Not sustained.”
The defense lawyers were not the only ones bothered by the evidentiary elasticity. Capt. Norman James Sparnon, who worked with the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, served as both a prosecution and a defense witness. “The trial stinks. A court that accepts hearsay evidence is a disgrace to the nation it represents,” he confided in his diary. “Was told by a member of the war crimes commission that MacArthur had issued an order to the effect ‘If the commissioners fail to bring a verdict of Guilty and the death penalty then they will have failed in their duty.’ This is of course hearsay, but if such evidence can be used against Yamashita then why not against MacArthur.”
Yamashita’s defense likewise zeroed in on what the attorneys viewed as a major hole in the prosecution’s case. Victim after victim testified to the horrific rapes, murders, and mutilations Japanese troops had committed, but none of the prosecution’s more than two hundred witnesses were able to link Yamashita directly to those crimes. “There was not one word or one shred of credible evidence to show that General Yamashita ever ordered the commission of even one of the acts with which he was charged,” defense lawyer George Guy later wrote, “or that he ever had any knowledge of the commission of any of these acts, either before they took place, or after their commission.”
Many of the news reporters who covered the trial grew sympathetic with Yamashita and his defense lawyers, recognizing that the rules of evidence and proceedings appeared tilted in favor of the prosecution. “It’s like a man being tried rightly or wrongly for rape, and finding the girl’s father is the judge,” one correspondent huffed.
Yank magazine’s Robert Schwartz walked out of the courtroom one day and never came back. “I was convinced that he was a man of unusual caliber who was being railroaded,” Schwartz wrote. “I left the trial after nine days because I felt as though I were watching a lynching.” Newsweek’s Robert Shaplen agreed, noting how one of the judges spent each day doodling, while another stared out the window. “In the opinion of probably every correspondent covering the trial, the military commission came into the courtroom the first day with the decision already in its collective pocket.”
These sentiments trickled out into the media. “There are wide differences of opinion here regarding the fairness of the hearing,” noted an article in the Los Angeles Times. “The majority of G.I.’s and Filipinos here appear to think that Yamashita has gotten too many breaks, and some of the natives fear he will get off entirely. On the other hand, an amazing number of correspondents believe that the defense has received unfair treatment and even exhibit sympathy for the accused general.” On both sides, passions ran deep. “Yamashita complains he isn’t getting a fair trial,” opined the Boston Globe, “and the complaint comes from the finest baby killer in Asia.”
MacArthur, who was in Japan overseeing the occupation, monitored the progress of his former adversary’s trial. He grew alarmed at reports that lawyers wanted more time to prepare Yamashita’s defense. “Commander in Chief disturbed by reports of possible recess in Yamashita case,” his staff cabled. “Doubts need of Defense for more time and desires proceedings completed earliest practicable date.”
The prosecution rested its case after nineteen days, turning the trial over to Yamashita’s lawyers. The defense called a string of witnesses, ranging from family friends and fellow officers to a member of the Japanese parliament, all of whom painted Yamashita as a moral officer who opposed his nation’s military aggression. Some of these witnesses, however, had no firsthand knowledge of what he was like as a commander in the field.
“Among the people of Japan he was respected as one—as a man of highest character,” testified Keichoku Yoshida, a Tokyo lawyer and friend.
“General Yamashita believed very greatly in righteousness,” added Lt. Gen. Shigetaro Amakasu. “He is a humanitarian.”
“Among the Army men, General Yamashita was known as a man of high virtue, and a man of the utmost integrity,” said Shigemasa Sunada, a twenty-five-year veteran lawmaker who represented the Japanese city of Kobe.
During his time on the stand, Muto proved a fierce defender of his former commander, highlighting the myriad difficulties Yamashita faced.
“Did General Yamashita ever issue orders for the killing of non-combatant civilians?” prosecutors asked.
“Absolutely not,” the bespectacled general fired back.
“Did your headquarters ever receive any reports that Japanese soldiers had killed non-combatant civilians?”
“I have never heard of such a thing.”
Captain Sparnon testified that out of the several hundred thousand captured Japanese records, nowhere did his outfit discover an order from Yamashita to destroy Manila. “Have you ever seen an order of General Yamashita ordering the killing of non-combatant civilians in the Philippines Islands?” defense lawyers pressed.
“No, sir, I have not.”
Prosecutors countered on cross-examination. “Your knowledge of captured Japanese documents or orders goes only to the written orders, is that not correct?”
Sparnon confirmed.
“You have no knowledge as to orders which may have been transmitted by wire or radio?” Kerr asked.
“No,” he replied. “We would not have that.”
Some of the testimony was clearly false, including witnesses who argued that the food ration for internees at Santo Tomas was comparable to what Japanese troops received. Lt. Gen. Shiyoku Kou, who was in charge of internment and prisoner of war camps, told commissioners that when he visited the camp in late 1944, internees all appeared healthy, eating fruits, vegetables, and even meat at a time when internees, in fact, survived on dog food, pigeons, and rats. Shizuo Ohashi, a civilian employee who worked at Santo Tomas from 1942 through the camp’s liberation, echoed Kou. “There were no deaths from starvations,” he told commissioners, “but there has been deaths of men over 60 years of age who died from natural causes.”
One question hung over the proceedings as the procession of witnesses testified day after day: Would the Tiger of Malaya take the stand in his own defense?
Colonel Clarke put that mystery to rest at 11:05 a.m. on November 28 when he stood before the commission and announced his next witness.
“General Yamashita,” the lawyer called out.
“The sleepy court, wearied by twenty-six days of evidence, awoke with a start,” wrote the Courier. The Manila Post described the scene as “electrified,” while the Manila Chronicle said the news threw the “courtroom into a mild turmoil.”
Against the backdrop of this excitement, Yamashita rose from the chair he had occupied daily for almost a month. He dressed this morning as he had each day, in a green field uniform with his white shirt collar turned out. Four rows of ribbons decorated his left breast and he wore gold spurs on his shined boots. The general walked slowly across the courtroom, raised his right hand, and swore to tell the truth.
“Yamashita wants no mistakes about what he says,” the general told his interpreter. “Listen carefully.”
All eyes focused on the Japanese commander as he took his seat on the raised platform in front of the crowded courtroom. “The burly general filled the witness chair and tapped his leg with his fingers as he spoke,” observed Robert Cromie of the Chicago Tribune. “He spoke in a clear, deep voice,” added Newsweek’s Robert Shaplen. “Thrusting his large, shaven head forward and half-closing his eyes against the floodlights, he stared at the ceiling and at the five American officers on the bench.”
During Clarke’s examination, Yamashita testified about the struggles he faced, from the threat of Filipino guerrillas and MacArthur’s superior forces to the lack of adequate troops, fuel, and rice, pressing issues that consumed him. “Did you ever issue any order directing that any of these atrocities be committed?”
“I definitely did not order these things,” he replied.
“Did you ever receive any report, from any sources whatsoever, that any of these atrocities had been committed?” Clarke pressed.
“No,” Yamashita said. “The first time that I heard about them was when I got the charges at New Bilibid Prison, and I was very surprised.”
Asked if he had anything to add, the Tiger grew fierce in his defense. “I have never ordered such things, and I have never condoned such actions, nor have I ever recognized such actions; and if I had known of them in advance, I would have taken every possible means to have caused them to stop. And if I had found out about them afterwards, I would have punished them to the fullest extent of military law.”
Kerr began his cross-examination of Yamashita on November 29. The prosecutor had, throughout his examination of the defense’s other witnesses, tried to show that what happened in Manila and the Philippines was not an isolated occurrence, asking questions about Japanese atrocities in Singapore and the Rape of Nanking. He asked Yamashita to look at a large map of the Philippines spiked with pushpins.
“Each red pin or disc represents a major violation of the laws of war, which according to testimony in this case was committed by your troops,” Kerr said. “According to the evidence, approximately 60,000 unarmed men, women and children were killed in the Philippine Islands by men under your command. Do you deny to this Commission that you knew or ever heard of any of those killings?”
“I never heard of nor did I know of these events.”
“Can you explain to the Commission how all of those murders could have been committed from one end of the Philippine Islands to the other for a period of over seven months without your ever having heard of it?” the prosecutor pressed.
“I absolutely know nothing about it.”
“This is your opportunity to explain to this Commission, if you care to do so, how you could have failed to know about those killings.”
Yamashita reiterated that he was under attack day and night from American forces. Not only did he arrive in the Philippines unfamiliar with the conditions there, but he also suffered from bad communications and poorly trained troops. “I found myself completely out of touch with the situation. I believe that under the foregoing conditions I did the best possible job I could have done,” he said. “If the present situation permits it, I will punish these people to the fullest extent of military law. Certain testimony has been given that I ordered the massacre of all the Filipinos, and I wish to say that I absolutely did not order this, nor did I receive the order to do this from any superior authority, nor did I ever permit such a thing, or if I had known of it would I have condoned such a thing, and I will swear to heaven and earth concerning these points.”
Kerr refused to let up. “You have no explanation to make concerning that conduct by your troops; is that correct?” the prosecutor demanded.
“The matter of having combat in Manila is in direct opposition to my ideas and is tactically unsound,” Yamashita countered.
“Then you desire to lay the blame and responsibility for these wrongs entirely upon subordinate officers and men; is that correct?”
“The persons who perpetrated these crimes should be punished and the immediate superior units should be subject to investigation and upon the findings they should receive either criminal or administrative punishment.”
“You admit, do you, that you failed to control your troops in the Philippines?”
“I have put forth my maximum effort in order to control the troops, and if this was not sufficient, then somehow I should have done more,” he said. “Other people might have been able to do more, but I feel that I have done my very best.”
“Did you fail to control your troops?” Kerr pressed. “Please answer ”yes’ or ”no.’ ”
“I believe,” he fired back, “that I did control my troops.”
The three days Yamashita spent on the stand—his testimony stretched more than fifteen hours—resonated with many of the spectators and journalists who covered the proceedings. “When the defense rested, the task of the trial commission no longer seemed simple,” wrote Time magazine. “Yamashita’s spirited defense had suddenly emphasized the lack of precedent for war crimes trials, the vagueness of the charges—violations of the rules of war. The commission had other problems. What was Yamashita—a consummate liar or a victim of circumstance? What was to be his fate? The rope or the firing squad? Prison? Freedom? Manila waited for the answer.”
AT EIGHT-THIRTYon the morning of December 5, spectators jammed the courtroom of the High Commissioner’s Residence, all anxious to hear final arguments in the case of United States v. Tomoyuki Yamashita. There was little doubt that the defense’s numerous procedural objections throughout the trial, coupled with the critical press accounts, weighed heavily upon the five jurists. That was evident in the statement President Judge Reynolds read aloud behind closed doors to the prosecution and defense. “It is directed that the final arguments be restricted entirely to the charge and bill of particulars, and the material which has been accepted by the Commission as evidence or probative material,” Reynolds told the lawyers. “That is to say: the final argument will not be utilized as a means of re-arguing any ruling, decision or policy of the Commission, implied or otherwise. Further, there will be no discussion or criticism, implied or otherwise, as to the propriety of General Styer or General MacArthur’s action in convening the commission or the regulations issued for its guidance.”
After thirty-two days and hundreds of witnesses, the trial boiled down to the question of whether a commander could be held responsible for the actions of his troops. The defense went first this Wednesday morning. Four of Yamashita’s lawyers each tackled a part of his story, from the general’s military background and the conditions he inherited in the Philippines to his struggles against Filipino guerrillas and America’s superior forces. “The prosecution contends that there was a plan in the Manila atrocities. We do not see any,” Milton Sandberg declared. “We see only wild, unaccountable looting, murder and rape. If there be an explanation of the Manila story, we believe it lies in this: Trapped in the doomed city, knowing that they had only a few days at best to live, the Japanese went berserk, unloosed their pent-up fears and passions in one last orgy of abandon.” Did prosecution the believe, Sandberg pressed, Yamashita ordered all of the rapes and massacres? “If General Yamashita is not charged with ordering the Manila atrocities, what is the charge?” the lawyer continued. “Is he charged with having failed to punish the 20,000 dead Japanese left in the city after the battle?”
Outside of orders to destroy factories, warehouses, and matériel—legitimate wartime targets—the defense argued most of the destruction in Manila resulted from the twenty-nine-day battle. Sandberg pointed out that American artillerymen fired 155 mm howitzers at point-blank range until buildings collapsed. “The battle of the south side of Manila was a house-to-house, room-to-room battle, and it was a battle of Japanese small arms against American artillery, mortar fire and flame throwers,” Sandberg said. “If the Japanese had wanted to destroy the city, why did they not do so in January, after the American landing of Lingayen? Why did they not put to the torch the vast populous sections of Manila, Quiapo, Santa Cruz, Sampaloc, San Juan, Santa Mesa—all highly inflammable, yet left virtually untouched and unharmed?”
Frank Reel argued that many of the atrocities were directed against Filipino guerrillas. “To us the guerrillas were patriots and heroes, and rightly so; but to the Japanese forces they were war criminals,” Reel argued. “They were the most dangerous form of war criminal: treacherous, ruthless, and effective.” But Yamashita’s challenges went beyond battling guerrillas. The general suffered from poor communications—cut landlines and spotty wireless—as well as a fragmented command and scattered forces. “We don’t say that these atrocities did not occur,” Reel said. “We tried through this trial to show that General Yamashita had no connection with them.”
Prosecutor Kerr in his closing statements countered that the slaughter and destruction were far too organized and widespread to have been just a few battle-crazed troops. He added that witness after witness testified to the participation of officers in atrocities. “They were led; they were commanded; they were acting as military units in a military operation,” Kerr said. “These were not wild, drunken orgies by individual soldiers on their own! Not at all!” The prosecutor likewise challenged the defense’s assertion that guerrillas goaded the Japanese to commit such crimes. How then did that explain the butchery of thousands of women and children—even babies in the arms of mothers? “The whole length of the Philippines was blanketed with one horrible atrocity after another over a period of seven months,” he argued. “Tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children were massacred under the most horrible, heartrending conditions, or subjected to the most inhuman tortures and indignities.”
Kerr read a sampling of captured Japanese orders and diaries, which detailed the slaughter of civilians: “All natives, both men and women, will be killed.”
“Burned 1,000 guerrillas to death tonight,” Kerr read from another.
“Kill even women and children who oppose the Emperor.”
“Is this warfare?” the prosecutor asked. “We have another explanation for it. We say they are the victims of Yamashita! They are the victims of the type of warfare that was conducted by Yamashita; by the troops under him.” Kerr attacked the defense’s claim that Yamashita lacked communications, pointing out testimony that had revealed he was in contact with forces in Manila throughout the battle. Along similar lines, he challenged the general’s claim that he was too busy fighting to monitor his troops. Yamashita made time for social visits in Manila, Kerr argued, yet never visited internees at Santo Tomas or prisoners in Fort Santiago.
The prosecutor likewise zeroed in on the assertion that the general was a strict disciplinarian. “If we accept that, it makes it all the more unlikely that his subordinates would have violated, as obviously they did in these many, many ways—flagrantly violated—not only the regulations of the Japanese army but the regulations and the principles of mankind, unless they had felt and had known that their conduct was approved and permitted by the accused.”
A theme Kerr wove throughout his nearly three-hour closing was that Yamashita had a responsibility, as a commander, to control the actions of all his forces, no different than the way a sea captain is liable for the fate of his ship. “It was his duty to know what was being done by his troops, under his orders, under his commands,” Kerr argued. “He failed in his mission in the Philippines; not merely to hold the Philippines for the Japanese, but he failed in his mission here to protect the Philippine people who were in his custody.” In closing, Kerr argued that if the commissioners found Yamashita guilty of failure to perform his duty, then the Tiger of Malaya should be executed. “Anything less than the death sentence would be a mockery!” he concluded. “In view of the aggravated nature of the crimes, in view of the measure of the crimes, we recommend that the sentence in the case of death be carried out by hanging.”
EARLY ON DECEMBER 7, Colonel Kenworthy, who commanded the military police assigned to guard Yamashita, visited the Japanese general in his second-floor cell at the High Commissioner’s Residence. As Yamashita polished off his breakfast, Kenworthy asked if the general was prepared to hear the verdict.
“I am ready,” Yamashita answered.
Did the general have an opinion on what decision awaited him?
“There can be only one verdict,” he said. “It was decided upon long ago.”
Spectators turned out by the hundreds that cloudy afternoon—exactly four years to the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—to learn the fate of the Tiger of Malaya, each one passing through a security checkpoint before filing inside where, as a precaution, military police had doubled the normal daily detail. The air was tense this muggy Friday, punctuated in the cavernous ballroom by the occasional cough or shuffle of feet. “Every inch of the court space was packed,” observed the Manila Courier. “Even the balconies overlooking the court were filled to capacity.”
The reporters, many of whom had grown sympathetic to Yamashita, participated in a collegial poll. Of the ten journalists who had covered the trial from gavel to gavel, eight felt Yamashita should be spared the noose. “The verdict will be not guilty,” predicted Pat Robinson of International News Service. Robert Stewart of United Press echoed him. “Hanging would be a violation of every law ever written,” he said. Anatolio Litonjua of the Philippine Press and Lowell Limpus of the New York Daily News proved the lone dissenters. “It is inconceivable that Yamashita did not know about the atrocities,” Litonjua argued. “He should get the death penalty.”
Even James Halsema, who had suffered as an internee and now worked as a stringer for the Associated Press, believed the general should go free. “The prosecution,” he wrote in his diary, “has never been able to show that Yamashita issued orders calling for the destruction of Manila or the killing of civilians or POWs.”
Reporters weren’t the only ones who felt Yamashita might survive. “The Defense were quite wonderful,” Captain Sparnon, who served with the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section and was a witness in the case, wrote in his diary after closing arguments. “There is no doubt they have done a magnificent job and I am sure Yamashita has been more than impressed by the effort made on his behalf by men of an enemy country.” Armando Malay, a Filipino reporter with the Manila Chronicle, agreed. “They have discharged such duty as diligently and as passionately as if they were defending a brother American officer.” Even members of the prosecution team were anxious. “Rumor has it,” George Mountz confided in a letter, “that they will acquit him.”
Regardless of the verdict, the news would be explosive. This was, after all, the first war crimes trial in Asia, a bellwether case that would foreshadow the fate of Japan’s leaders. The reporters all wanted to be first with the news, none more than the Associated Press. To beat the competition, reporters devised a system to speed the news. Dean Schedler, who had been one of the first reporters into Santo Tomas, took a seat in the audience. Al Valencia stood just outside the courtroom with a view of Schedler. As soon as the judge announced the verdict, Schedler would flash the news via a finger code. Valencia would relay the outcome to Halsema, who was parked at a phone with an open line connected to a fellow reporter at the wire service’s Manila office.
Yamashita entered the courtroom, as always, dressed in a green field uniform, the collar of his white shirt folded out. Campaign ribbons still adorned his left breast. “He carefully laid the envelope in which he kept notes and papers on the table, greeted his lawyers with a slight smile, and sat down,” Reel recalled. “He betrayed no sign of nervousness or apprehension. To all appearances, this was just another day of trial.”
Kenworthy made his way to the center of the room, turned, and faced the crowd to deliver a stern warning. “There will be no demonstrations,” he ordered. “When the judgment is pronounced, you will not utter any sound or make any display, either of pleasure or of dissatisfaction. I know there is a natural impulse to react to so dramatic an event, but in the interests of decorum, you will restrain yourselves.”
Yamashita at times stole glimpses at the throngs of spectators. Over the course of the thirty-two-day trial, an estimated sixteen thousand people had attended.
But today was different—today the world would learn whether one of Japan’s most famous generals would die for the destruction of Manila.
“Attention!” Kenworthy hollered at two p.m.
The five judges filed into the courtroom and took their seats behind the bench amid the whir of motion picture cameras and exploding flashbulbs. For a case as high-profile as this, the judges, in their final meeting, had made an unusual pact. “We agreed with one another never to discuss publicly or in public writing anything about the trial of General Yamashita,” Presiding Judge Reynolds wrote decades later in a private letter. “We decided this course of action because we believed the very voluminous record would be sufficient for future research, and should stand on its own feet.”
“The Commission is in session,” Reynolds announced.
The presiding judge, reading from prepared remarks, outlined the charges against Yamashita, noting that the atrocities took place throughout the entirety of his time in command. “The crimes extended throughout the Philippine Archipelago, although by far the most incredible acts occurred on Luzon,” Reynolds said. “It is noteworthy that the Accused made no attempt to deny that the crimes were committed.”
Over the course of the trial, Reynolds stated, the commission had heard testimony from 286 witnesses in eleven languages, a parade of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and nurses, most of whom had described what happened to them and their loved ones. That testimony was complemented by 423 exhibits, ranging from captured enemy orders and photographs to victim statements. “Many of the witnesses displayed incredible scars of wounds which they testified were inflicted by Japanese from whom they made spectacular escapes followed by remarkable physical recovery,” he said. “For the most part, we have been impressed by the candor, honesty and sincerity of the witnesses whose testimony is contained in 4055 pages in the record of the trial.”
Reynolds acknowledged the hard-fought arguments on both sides, stating that the prosecution had shown that the crimes were so extensive and widespread that such violence must have been either ordered or permitted. He likewise said the defense had successfully portrayed the incredible challenges Yamashita inherited when he took command in the Philippines, from shortages of food, fuel, and equipment to the struggle against an overpowering enemy. Reynolds added that Yamashita and his senior staff all maintained that any such atrocities ran contrary to the general’s policies and orders. “Taken at full face value,” the judge said, “the testimony indicates that Japanese senior commanders operate in a vacuum, almost in another world with respect to their troops, compared with standards American Generals take for granted.”
Spectators hung on every word. “An unearthly silence came over the courtroom as the General continued to read,” Mountz wrote in a letter. “I know personally the perspiration began to drop off me as the suspense continued to mount.”
Reynolds prepared to wrap up his comments, pointing out that Yamashita was an experienced commander and as such understood the authority and responsibility entrusted to him. “It is absurd,” he said, “to consider a commander a murderer or rapist because one of his soldiers commits a murder or rape. Nonetheless, where murder and rape and vicious, revengeful actions are widespread offenses, and there is no effective attempt by a commander to discover and control the criminal acts, such a commander may be held responsible, even criminally liable, for the lawless acts of his troops.”
Reynolds paused.
“The Accused, his Senior Counsel and personal interpreter will take position before the commission,” the judge ordered.
Yamashita and his legal team approached the bench. The general had prepared a statement, which Hamamoto read aloud. Yamashita said he had at all times, in his battle against MacArthur, conducted himself in accordance with principles of fairness and justice. “I have been arraigned and tried before this Honorable Commission as a war criminal,” he said. “I wish to state that I stand here today with the same clear conscience as on the first day of my arraignment and I swear before my Creator and everything sacred to me that I am innocent of the charges made against me.”
Reynolds prepared to deliver the verdict.
“The room was deathly still,” Kenworthy recalled. “It seemed that all persons therein were holding their breath, not making the slightest noise.”
The judge began to read from his prepared remarks in a slow and calm voice. Overhead the bright klieg lights illuminated the room like a Broadway stage. “It was as though the spectators had been splashed in the face with ice water,” wrote the reporter for the Manila Courier. “Spectators stiffened, eyes glued to Yamashita.”
Reynolds said that the commission concluded that the atrocities committed by Yamashita’s troops were not sporadic but rather were methodically supervised by Japanese officers. During that time, he had failed to control his forces. “Accordingly upon secret ballot, two-thirds or more of the members concurring, the Commission finds you guilty as charged and sentences you to death by hanging.”
Everyone in the courtroom focused on Yamashita as the interpreter whispered the decision to him. “I feel that he must have known what was coming,” recalled George Guy, one of his lawyers. “When the final words were translated, there was scarcely a change of expression on his quiet and solemn face.” Others observed the same. “Not a muscle moved in his broad face as he took in the import of the verdict,” wrote the reporter for the Manila Times. “The silence in the courtroom was disturbed only by the whir of movie cameras taking a record of the momentous event.”
The general made a curt bow to the commission members before Kenworthy motioned for him to follow him out at two-fifteen p.m. “As the convicted war criminal started leaving the courtroom, the tension broke and people started filing out,” the reporter with the Courier wrote. “There were no smiles; there were no grimaces.”
Newsweek reporter Robert Shaplen, who had seen the worst of the Battle of Manila, cabled his thoughts to his editors. “He maintained to the end, and said so in his final statement, that his conscience was clear and that he was innocent of the charges. I believe he really thought so,” the reporter wrote. “What’s more I think his legal counsel thought so, too, because after the decision was announced they maintained this conviction privately. I never saw a defense staff take a decision any harder.” Others agreed, including Halsema, who wrote of his admiration for Frank Reel: “If I ever were being tried, I’d certainly hope to have him as my lawyer.” The former internee, who had more reason than most to want to see the Japanese punished, felt the conviction was a mistake. “I still don’t think justice was done,” he wrote in his diary, “and think executing Yamashita will be a first-class blunder with unpleasant repercussions in the future.”
“C’mon,” Colonel Clarke finally said to Reel. “I hate like hell to do this but we better go up and see him.”
Outside on the streets word spread quickly of the verdict. “Yamashita will die,” crowds chanted in Tagalog.
Filipino newspapers likewise celebrated the news. “Yamashita gets justice,” declared the Manila Chronicle. “The death sentence,” added the Star Reporter, “came as an answer to the prayers of the thousands of war widows and orphans.”
President Osmeña released a statement. “The Filipino people who have suffered so much at the hands of the cruel enemy feel that justice has been done.” Manila councilor Elvira Montenegro filed a resolution with the municipal board, requesting General MacArthur hang Yamashita in the Walled City. “Manila has suffered the brunt of Japanese bestialities and it seems fair that its people should be given the privilege to see Yamashita atone here for all the atrocities committed by his men.”
Reporters even tracked down Yamashita’s wife in Japan. “The American method of justice is admirably fair,” she said. “I am pleased with it.”
Back in his cell at the High Commissioner’s Residence, Yamashita smoked a cigarette when his defense lawyers came up to visit him. Muto was distraught. “Why must they hang us?” he asked. “Why can’t they shoot us like true soldiers.”
Yamashita shot him a stern look and then softened. The general shook hands with his lawyers. As a token of his appreciation, he gave to each of them his few belongings. To Harry Clarke, he gave a silver watch, ribbons, and a field tea set he had used from his time in Malaya through Manchuria and now the Philippines. He gave Gordon Feldhaus a three-star gold general’s insignia and his general staff fourragere cord. To Guy, Yamashita presented his gold-plated presentation spurs because he was a cavalry officer. Frank Reel and Milton Sandberg each received watches, gold good-luck coins, and calligraphy brushes.
Yamashita gave his leather belt to Walter Hendrix. “You’re the only man,” he said, “fat enough to wear this.”
The general had a request for his former chief of staff. That night in the mountains when Yamashita had learned of Japan’s surrender, he had told Muto that he planned to stay alive long enough to make sure his troops returned home, a job that now fell to Muto. “That is my last wish,” he told him. “That is my last command.”
Military police transferred Yamashita that day to Luzon Prisoner of War Camp No. 1, where he was stripped of his belt, pocketknife, and all other items he might use to harm himself. Now that the general had been sentenced to die, America wanted to make sure he lived long enough to suffer that fate. Guards locked Yamashita in a makeshift cell consisting of a concrete floor surrounded on all sides and above by wire mesh. That evening two officers from the Judge Advocate’s Office drove out to check on him at ten p.m. “General was lying on a GI cot, dressed in underwear, with most of his person exposed, with a blanket over him. He was sleeping. A guard armed with a rifle, was stationed immediately outside the door of the cell,” according to a memo of the visit. “General Yamashita was adequately, carefully and securely confined and it would be almost impossible for him to escape or to successfully attempt suicide.”