soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Mike Muth wrote:
> "Yau" wrote:
>
>> wrote in message news:fcv4d3
>
>>> calling it "inaccurate" (among other things.) How is it you passed
>>> over the fact that almost all accounts also state that Yamashita
>>> specifically ordered Japanese troops out of Manilla in order to avoid
>>> needless casualties?
>
>> How genuine were such orders tho? They seem to be fairly ineffective
>> in virtually all instances which makes the modern observer wonder
>> whether they had a duplicit quality and were just issued to deflect
>> future criticism. Yamashita was, afterall, the same general who
>> presided over the horrors inflicted upon the civilian population in
>> Singapapore and Malay - despite giving his word to Percival that they
>> would not be molested.
>
> I think many atrocities actually reflect a widespread disciplinary
> problem in the Japanese armed forces.
>
> Yeah, they could get their troops to make suicidal attacks,but, once the
> fighting ended, discipline went down the tubes in too many units. In
> some cases, the problems started at the top. For example, the commander
> of the 65th Independent Brigade was seen beheading American prisoners
> after the surrender in Bataan. One would expect his personnel to follow
> his example. On the other hand, in _Return Via Rangoon_, there is an
> account of a British soldier who is captured and is quite well treated by
> the capturing unit. Eventually, he is transported to the prison in
> Rangoon in the unit commander's personal vehicle.
>
> In the case of Manila, Yamashita did order the withdrawal from the city.
> the guards at Bilibid and Santo Tomas turned over their prisoners without
> any atrocity. There were some threats and some bargaining which allowed
> the guards to walk out and join the city's defenders, but prisoners were
> not executed. On the other hand, the Japanese navy personnel who
> remained in the city were told to kill civilians and were given
> instructions as to the best method for doing so (round them up, lock them
> in a house, set fire to the house and shoot anyone who tries to escape).
>
> At Cabanatuan, the POWs were actually treated well *after* their regular
> guards left the compound. Army units passing through did not molest the
> prisoners and some actually *asked* the prisoners for food (some other
> units would have simply taken all they wanted).
>
> Japanese Navy Forces seem to have been frequently guilty of atrocity
> (Singapore, Palembang, Bangka Island, Wake Island, Manila, Hong Kong,
> among others) while those who seemed to have behaved well were all Army
> units. I would say that those who behaved well were those with strong
> non-commissioned officers who actually achieved the sort of discipline
> one would expect from a front-line unit.
>
> Some Japanese atrocities occurred when units were starving and discipline
> was breaking down even more. Sandakan would seem a good example of this.
> Likewise the frequent incidents of cannibalism - although this was at
> times sanctioned by commanding officers (sometimes general officers).
>
> In some cases, such as in China, commanding officers encouraged atrocity.
> When those units deployed elsewhere, they took their ill-disciplined,
> murdering ways with them. I think this is part of the causation of the
> massacres in Singapore in 1942.
>
> The phenomenon of a senior officer giving an order while his units do
> something contrary to that order is hardly new or novel. In a situation
> in which the subordinates *know* that their lot is to die, it's hardly
> surprising that they would disobey and that discipline could break down
> during a long wait before combat (such as in Manila).

Your comments with particular reference to the atrocities in Manila appear
to be in congruence with the account provided by Lawrence Taylor in his
book, A Trial of Generals.....Homma, Yamashita, MacArthur. In his book,
Taylor reported that Yamashita appeared to be genuinely stunned upon hearing
the details of the atrocities. He later told Lt. Commander Samuel Stratton,
USN, who had initially given him that information "If those crimes were
committed, I positively and categorically affirm that they were against my
wishes and in direct contradiction to all my expressed orders. If they were
committed, they occurred at a place and at a time of which I had no
knowledge whatsoever." Although he was subsequently subjected to intense
questioning over a considerable period of time, he never varied from that
statement.

The general conclusion reached by Taylor was that the presence of British
General Percival, who commanded the British troops overrun by Yamashita's
troops at Singapore, at Yamashita's trial in the Philippines (although the
British had no involvement there) was intended to provide Percival with a
measure of comfort at the trial of his victor. Similarly, there were those
who felt that the trial of General Homma was also the result of MacArthur's
exercise of the victor's power against a foe who had vanquished him with a
considerably smaller force than MacArthur had available to him for the
defense of the Philippines. Indeed, there are those who believe that the
trial of the two Japanese generals was more an exercise in revenge than a
prosecution of war crimes per se.