A botched tribunal

The anguish of World War II was still fresh in Americans’ minds in 1946 when Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita was tried by a secret military tribunal and hanged as a war criminal. To Americans he was among the best known of Japan’s military leaders, famous as the “Tiger of Malaya” for his capture of Singapore. Most Americans felt the execution was justified retribution for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the long war in the Pacific and Japanese atrocities including the Bataan death march and the massacre of thousands of civilian men, women and children.

But there is more to the story, as recounted last week by a retired Washington, D.C., lawyer who tracked Gen. Yamashita’s movements during the war as a 21-year-old first lieutenant in army intelligence. Stephen B. Ives Jr. recalled his own knowledge of the case in a Washington Post article and an interview on National Public Radio.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a war hero as liberator of the Philippines, pressed for a quick conviction of the surrendered Japanese general by a hastily organized five-member military tribunal, says Mr. Ives. None of the five generals comprising the special court had legal experience or any serious combat command experience.

Gen. Yamashita was charged with violations of “the laws of war” by failing to “control … members of his command, … permitting them to commit brutal atrocities” in the bloody battle for Manila in February and March 1945. But Mr. Ives, who had been monitoring the Japanese campaign full time, says he “was troubled that Yamashita was to be held responsible for actions I knew he could not possibly have known of or prevented.” In fact, the general had ordered all forces to withdraw from the city; the army forces did pull out, but the Japanese navy refused to do so and committed the atrocities.

Mr. Ives said he told his commanding officer at the time that he felt he should offer help to Gen. Yamashita’s lawyer, but the commander advised him that the conviction already had been settled. The court admitted hearsay evidence, cut short examination of witnesses to save time, and quickly found the defendant guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging.

Gen. Yamashita’s lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene but the high court refused in a 6-2 decision, holding that it was “not concerned with the guilt or innocence of the petitioner” and would not appraise the evidence on which he was convicted.

Justices Frank Murphy and Wily Rutledge filed ringing dissents, declaring that Gen. Yamashita had been denied a fair trial. Justice Murphy acknowledged that Japanese forces under the general’s command had committed “brutal atrocities inflicted upon the helpless Filipino people” and said that those responsible should be punished. But those factors, he went on, “do not justify the abandonment of our devotion to justice in dealing with a fallen enemy commander. To conclude otherwise is to admit that the enemy has lost the battle but destroyed our ideals.”

Justice Murphy noted the U.S. forces had crushed the Japanese defense and wrecked its lines of communication and ability to control its troops. He wrote: “to use the very inefficiency and disorganization created by the victorious forces as the primary basis for condemning officers of the defeated armies bears no resemblance to justice or to military reality.” Gen. MacArthur approved the sentence and the hanging reportedly without waiting to read the Supreme Court decision.

Mr. Ives accepts the view of several historians that Gen. MacArthur needed the conviction to stave off demands that Emperor Hirohito be tried as a war criminal. Leaving the emperor in power was the key to his plan for a stable post-war Japan.

Mr. Ives has regretted ever since that he did not speak out at the time. He says he decided to speak out now in the belief that military tribunals, whatever their justification, can be distorted by senior officers, as in the Yamashita trial, for reasons of political strategy and revenge.