General Tomoyuki Yamashita was put on trial for war crimes committed by his troops in the Philippines in 1945. He was charged with failing to control the actions of his soldiers, which allowed them to commit brutal atrocities against civilians. This was one of the first instances where a military commander was held criminally responsible for war crimes carried out by subordinates. Yamashita denied the charges, but he was convicted in a controversial trial by a U.S. military commission and subsequently hanged.

1. The Trial of
General
Tomoyuki Yamashita

2. Introduction
• Tomoyuki Yamashita was a man who was born to join the military
scene. Yamashita earned his title as the “Tiger of Malaya” by taking
Singapore from the British in January 1942 with only 30,000 men to
the Brits’ 100,000. The battles he has fought and the wars that he has won
has brought him to a trail that found him guilty to many the things he has
done.

3. Who is Tomoyuki Yamashita?
• The Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita was born
on November 8th , 1885 in a small village of
OsugiMuraon on the Japanese islands of Shikoku.
• Growing up as the son of the local doctor of Osugi, the
family’s expectation for Yamashita was to be a doctor
but he did not do well in school so he did not have any
hope of carrying his fathers career.
• Even though Yamashita did not do well in school, his
family inspired him to become apart of the military
since he had good health and stamina.
• At the age of 15 he decided to enlist into Imperial
Japanese army and entered the Hiroshima Military
Academy in 1900.

4. How did Yamashita become a General?
• Tomoyuki Yamashita graduated Hiroshima Military Academy in
1908 with full honors and the ranked the highest in his class.
• He was well known for being hard working so he decided to study
at Staff College as a captain and graduated in 1916. Years later in
1921 he became a Military Attache in Switzerland and Germany.
• After, he served at Tokyo Imperial Headquarters from the years of
1921 through 1926 and got promoted to go to Austria and joined the
Military Attache in Vienna.
• Around 1940, Yamashita was given command of the 4th Infantry
Division in fighting in Northern China, until he got called back to
Tokyo and got promoted to become full time General and be a part
of the Hideki Tojo’s war cabinet.
• Yamashita was actually a very calm person, a lover of nature. He
has outspokenly opposed war with the United states and
Britain, and so the Tojo faction rising in Japan despised him.

5. The battle of Malaya
• *Japanese soldiers at a destroyed British base.

6. The battle of Malaya
• For the invasion of Malaya, Imperial
headquarters offered
Lt.Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita five divisions. In a
rare display of logistical
prudence, however, Yamashita accepted only
four and used but three because he correctly
believed he could not adequately supply more.
• This battle was a great achievement for Gen.
Yamashita because his troops were all poorly
supplied, and were all greatly outnumbered. He
relied on utilizing resources from the British
army after they had captured their bases.

7. The battle of Malaya

8. The battle of Malaya
• As the soldiers landed on shores of Malaya, Japanese soldiers did
not wait on the beaches while sailors unloaded their supplies.
Instead, they immediately headed inland carrying just enough
bread and rice to last them a few days. Rather than waiting to
secure and then provision their beachhead, soldiers of the Japanese
force, tasked with invading Malaya and capturing Singapore in
December 1941, planned to rely on their opponent for the supplies
needed to conduct operations. Much of the food and fuel used
during the invasion would come from captured British stocks.
• Unlike many other Japanese
campaigns, however, Yamashita's march through Malaya to
Singapore was provided with some logistical and engineering assets
not usually found accompanying a Japanese army.

9. The battle of Malaya
• The invading force had three transportation battalions. Each battalion had
three or four companies, with 30 or 40 trucks in each company. A repair
section supported each battalion. Yamashita also received eight
independent motor transport battalions, each comprising about 800
officers and men with 150 Nissan 1 1/2-ton trucks.
• Almost as soon as the campaign began, the Japanese began to acquire
supplies of all sorts from the retreating British, and not all of it was as dull
as rice.
• On the first day, Royal Air Force personnel at Kota Bharu burned buildings
and supplies, but left untouched bombs, gasoline and runways for use by
Japanese aircraft. At other airfields, explosions intended to crater runways
to make it unuseable were only partly successful. The Japanese easily
repaired the damage using native labor and large stocks of material that
the British had failed to destroy. The ease with which Yamashita's men
seized British stores and facilities meant that there was no need to bring
forward equipment and supplies. Following on the heels of the surrender
of Kota Bharu, the British abandoned SungeiPataniKuantan airfield. Those
two fields alone provided the Japanese with between 100,000 and
200,000 gallons of badly needed 90-octane fuel.

10. The Battle of Malaya
• At Alor Sitar in northwest Malaya, where the British
claimed to have destroyed all that was of
value, Japanese soldiers found, to their delight, piles of
bombs and one thousand drums full of high-grade
ninety-two octane petrol were piled high. Japanese
aircraft landed that very day their infantry occupied the
field, loaded up with British fuel and bombs, and flew
off to attack the British.
• Conquerors of Alor Sitar reported capturing 50 field
guns, 50 heavy machine guns, 300 vehicles and
sufficient ammunition and provisions to supply an
entire division for a full three months.

11. The battle of Malaya
• The Japanese had been so successful in seizing British supplies, the
Japanese had collected 13 airplanes, 330 pieces of artillery, 550 machine
guns, 50 armored cars and Bren-gun carriers, 3,600 cars and trucks, and
800 locomotives and rail cars. The captured weapons were immediately
put in storage and later issued to native armies willing to support Japan's
war efforts against their former British masters.
• Japanese finally arrived outside Singapore on January 31 and launched
their attack on February 8. During their advance they had gathered 1,000
rounds for each of their field guns and 500 rounds for each of their heavy
guns. Three thousand vehicles, many of them captured, hauled
ammunition toward the front lines for constant pressure on the British.
• Once the city had fallen, the Japanese found Singapore's forts almost
completely destroyed. The British army left nearly 450 mortars, anti-tank
and anti-aircraft weapons which were found intact in Singapore, which the
Japanese collected and used for future battles. The Japanese also
gathered up 30,000 rifles and enough ammunition to provide each rifle
with 550 rounds.

12. The battle of Malaya
• Gen. Yamashita was in charge of this battle, and was given the title “the
Tiger of Malaya.”
• His brilliant strategies of forging supplies from the British and using their
own weapons against them was how he was able to succeed in winning a
battle in which his men were greatly outnumbered, and also poorly
equipped with only 1 month supply of food and ammunition to begin
with, but managed to overcome their finite resources by winning battles
all over their enemy airfields and taking all the supplies they could from
the enemy’s base.
• Japan's philosophy of relying on the fruits of victory succeeded beyond its
wildest dreams in Malaya, and would again in Burma and the
Philippines. In each case, local resources helped the Japanese defeat the
Allies.
• The part of why the campaign through Malaya was so successful was the
Japanese ability to utilize resources abandoned by the fleeing British
forces.

13. The Trial

14. The Charges
• These were the first war-crimes trials to result from World War II, and dealt-
virtually for the first time- with a commander’s responsibility for atrocities
committed by his troops in violation of the law of war established by
international conventions.
• Major General R. J. Marshall, whose deputy chief of staff, reported-
acknowledging that there was no legal precedent for the charge- Yamashita
would be tried criminally for “negligence in allowing his subordinates to
commit atrocities.”
• Charges on Yamashita represents:
– “While leading the Japanese Army between October 9th – September 2nd of
1945, at Manila and other territories of the Philippines island, Yamashita
had unlawfully disregard and failed to discharge his duty as commander to
control the operations of his people, giving them the opportunity to commit
brutal atrocities and other high crimes against the people of United
States, its allies, its dependencies, and particularly the Philippines; and
he, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, thereby violated the law of war.”

15. The Trial
• Even before the war ended, the United States and its allies had
prepared to charge war crimes against the Japanese
• When the Allies signed a war-crimes agreement in London, the
department had forwarded to General Macarthur a list of suspected
war criminals and put the burden on him not only to round them up
and to identify and capture others but also to initiate a plan for
bringing them all to trial.
• Eventually, the Secretary of War and the Attorney General, as well as
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded that military commanders had
authority to try suspected war criminals before military commissions
established under regulations the commanders themselves
promulgated.
• Immediately after Japan’s surrender on September 2, President
Truman pressed MacArthur to get on with War-crimes prosecutions.
In the September of 1945, General MacArthur announced that the first
war crime charges will be against General Tomoyuki Yamashita
• On the 25th of September, Yamashita was imprisoned as a war
criminal

16. The Trial
• On the 8th of October, the United states arraigned
Yamashita
• Tomoyoku Yamashita then pleaded NOT GUILTY
– But at the time, the United States has served the bill of a specific
sixty-four item charge against Yamashita and those under his
command which included a large amount of murders, attempted
murders and rapes
• In Respond
– Yamashita defended himself stating that the bill did not indicates
him ordering or even knowing that these brutal crimes were
committed
• The trial officially opens on October 29th, summing the
new amount of charges of 123 crimes against
Yamashita, yet not one mentioned a direct link to

17. The Trial
• In the beginning of the trial, both prosecution and
defense emphasized the issue of command
responsibility.
• The prosecution explains the atrocities were so
widespread, numerous and notorious that Yamashita
should have known or must have known.
• The fact that Yamashita was at Baguio and was cut off
from Manila at the time when the atrocities happened
was ignored.
• Because Yamashita was the commander of the
Japanese forces and therefore was guilty to every crime
committed by every soldier assigned to his command.

18. In Result
• In result, On December 7th of 1945, Yamashita was sentenced to death
• On February 27th, 1946 at Los Banos, Laguna Prison Camp, Yamashita
states his final words (translated),
• “As I said in the Manila Supreme Court that I have done with my all
capacity, so I don't ashame in front of the gods for what I have done when I
have died. But if you say to me 'you do not have any ability to command the
Japanese Army' I should say nothing for it, because it is my own nature.
Now, our war criminal trial going on in Manila Supreme Court, so I wish to
be justify under your kindness and right. I know that all your American and
American military affairs always has tolerant and rightful judgment. When I
have been investigated in Manila court I have had a good treatment, kindful
attitude from your good natured officers who all the time protect me. I never
forget for what they have done for me even if I had died. I don't blame my
executioner. I'll pray the gods bless them. Please send my thankful word to
Col. Clarke and Lt. Col. Feldhaus, Lt. Col. Hendrix, Maj. Guy, Capt.
Sandburg, Capt. Reel, at Manila court, and Col. Arnard. I thank you.”
• After his final statement, Yamashita was hung.