The Evening Star (December 8, 1945)
Editorial: Yamashita’s crime
After what he himself describes as a fair trial, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita – the “Tiger of Malaya” – has been sentenced to death by an American military commission in Manila for the crime of having failed to control his forces in such a way as to prevent their terrible atrocities in the Philippines.
Yamashita himself, as he contended during his trial, may have taken no personal or direct part in the rape and slaughter, and it is conceivable – though it seems highly improbable – that he was unaware of what was happening. But he was the top commander of all Japanese forces in the Philippines, and he was therefore responsible for everything done by them.
It does not lessen his fundamental guilt to say that he remained personally aloof from the sadism and butchery or that he did not know about them. The blood on the hands of his subordinates was blood on his hands as well. If he did not know what they were doing, he should have known. As their commander, it was his duty and responsibility to know. One word from him might have been enough to stop the terror before it started, and if he had issued that word and done his best to have it obeyed, he would not now be a man condemned to be hanged.
The crime, the atrocity, personally committed by Yamashita was that he neglected, willfully or otherwise, to exercise his authority as it should have been exercised, and it was from this negligence, fundamentally, that the crimes and atrocities of his subordinates flowed. The circumstances of the situation, as the American commission has declared in sentencing him, demanded that he provide effective control of his troops, but he did not do this, and so the horrifying brutalities took place and were, indeed, “often methodically supervised by Japanese officers.” As the top officer, therefore, the officer who had the power to restrain all those under him, he must be held at least as accountable as any of his underlings, and it is doubtful in the extreme that the logic of this finding will be declared invalid by the authorities to whom he may yet appeal.
It is said that this sets a precedent in international law. If so, it is a most wholesome precedent, and one to be marked well by present and future military commanders in every land. It is a civilizing principle which our not-too-civilized world should be able to use to good advantage in the years ahead.