WAR CRIMES: Sober Afterglow

General Douglas MacArthur says that his headquarters does not interfere with freedom of the press in Occupied Japan. But sometimes, when news unfavorable to SCAP comes along, there is hidden interference.

Not long ago Tokyo’s Shimbun ran a brief review of The Case of General Yamashita (The University of Chicago Press; $4), by A. Frank Reel, a labor lawyer and former U.S. Army captain, who had helped defend the Japanese commander in America’s first major war crimes trial. Next day a SCAP officer phoned Shimbun and other Tokyo papers that it would be “advisable” not to mention Reel’s book. The Hosei University Press was likewise cautioned not to publish it. The admonitions have been strictly obeyed.

Enough Japanese editors had read Reel’s book (it was sent to them by the U.S. publishers) to assure that some day, when the Occupation withdrew, it would emerge from censorship. Then, instead of heightening respect for American good faith and readiness to acknowledge a wrong, The Case of General Yamashita might engender a bitter disillusion.

But Reel’s book should be much more the concern of American readers than Japanese. Two months after publication, it has sold only 2,100 copies. Yet it is a classic of its kind, a superbly presented, toughly argued, dramatic and damning report on American justice in a case of fundamental importance.

Retribution. Tomoyuki Yamashita, “Tiger of Malaya” and conqueror of Singapore, climbed down from a Philippine mountaintop on Sept. 2, 1945 to surrender to the Americans. From Tokyo, Supreme Allied Commander MacArthur ordered his immediate trial as a war criminal. Some 60,000 Filipinos and Americans had suffered and died in Japanese atrocities during the eleven months of Yamashita’s command in the Philippines. Their fate cried for retribution.

The charge against Yamashita was that he had “unlawfully disregarded and failed to discharge his duty as commander to control the operations of the members of his command, permitting them to commit brutal atrocities . . . thereby violated the Laws of War.” This charge, described by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge as “vagueness if not vacuity,” laid down a new principle—that a commander is a criminal if his men violate the Laws of War, whether he ordered the violations or even knew of them.

The Nürnberg trials have been subject to grave questioning, but at least they attempted to link every man accused with specific acts. The Yamashita trial simply proved atrocities and then held Yamashita responsible because he was in technical (but not actual) command of the area where they were committed.

Reel quotes an Army lawyer’s comment : “Under such a principle, I suppose, even MacArthur should be tried.” . Objection. A military commission of five U.S. generals* sat in judgment on Yamashita. They had no legal background. The commission seemed to feel that defense objections, made for the record, wasted time and smacked of insubordination. Once, in a smiling but meaning aside to Reel, one of the general-judges remarked: “You fellows should talk to us, not to the record. You’ll get along better.”

Defense continued to talk both to the judges and the record. One of Yamashita’s aides, whose English was limited, became sorely puzzled. “Who is this Mr. Jackson that Captain Reel is always talking about? He always jumps up and says, ‘Jackson.’ ” When the Americans realized that “Jackson” was the Japanese’s understanding of “objection,” they told him that Jackson’s last name was “Notsustained.”

The generals permitted the prosecution wide latitude. Much testimony was based on opinion and hearsay, two or three times removed. The prosecution showed a U.S. -propaganda film, Orders from Tokyo, in which a G.I. pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of a slain Japanese soldier, while the soundtrack intoned: “Orders from Tokyo. We have discovered the secret orders to destroy Manila.” In fact, no such orders were ever found, as the defense demonstrated.

Yamashita was blamed for rape and murder committed in Manila by Japanese naval forces who were trapped and later wiped out by the Americans. It turned out that these forces were not under Yamashita’s effective command. He was far away in the hills, and had lost touch with the units responsible for most of the outrages. Yamashita, in fact, reached the Philippines for the first time two days after the U.S. troops had landed at Leyte, and never did succeed in establishing contact with many of his units.

Implication. Urged on by a radiogram from MacArthur, the commission closed the trial a little more than a month after it began. By neat timing, they handed down their verdict on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. They found Yamashita guilty as charged, sentenced him to hang.

Army brass tried to block them, but Yamashita’s lawyers wangled an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. A majority of the high justices in Washington, without passing on the fairness of Yamashita’s trial, refused to accept jurisdiction. They declared it was a matter for MacArthur to review. SCAP’s chief promptly hailed Yamashita’s conviction as “beyond challenge,” and sentence was executed.

But a Supreme Court minority of two—the late Justices Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge—dissented in grave words. They were appalled by the “wide departure from any semblance of trial as we know that institution.” Warned Murphy: “[Yamashita’s trial] is unworthy of the traditions of our people . . . The high feelings of the moment doubtless will be satisfied. But in the sober afterglow will come the realization of the boundless and dangerous implications . . . No one in a position of command in an army, from sergeant to general, can escape those implications.”

Three years after Yamashita was hanged, Japanese Admiral Soemu Toyoda stood a six months’ international trial in Tokyo on charges similar to the Yamashita case. He was acquitted when it was shown that he had no knowledge of the crimes, although he was in technical command of the men who committed them.

But SCAP has not seen enough of “the sober afterglow” to let the Japanese read Reel’s The Case of General Yamashita.

* Major General Russel B. Reynolds, Major General Leo Donovan, Major General James A. Lester, Brigadier General Egbert F. Bullene, Brigadier General Morris C. Handwerk.