The Evening Star (December 9, 1945)
Gen. Homma indicted for war crimes of Japs in Philippines
Accused of death march and other atrocities; faces Manila trial
TOKYO (AP) – The United States today formally charged Japanese Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma, conqueror of the Philippines, with permitting the death march of Bataan and other atrocities against Filipinos and Americans.
The indictment, made public by Gen. MacArthur, also named four other officers accused of sanctioning murder, brutalities and other crimes during the early months of the war in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters announced that the Secretary of War has ordered that final action in the case of Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita shall be withheld pending disposition by the U.S. Supreme Court of petitions for writs of habeas corpus and prohibition.
Yamashita is under sentence of hanging decreed by a military court as punishment for condoning atrocities by his Japanese troops in the Philippines.
Will be taken to Manila
Homma, 58, who is held at Omori prison camp outside Tokyo, will be taken to Manila for trial shortly, presumably before the same type of military commission which two days ago sentenced Yamashita.
Some of the other officers named already are in the Philippines. The trial dates will be announced later by Lt. Gen. Wilhelm D. Styer, commander of U.S. forces in the Southwest Pacific.
The indictment, consisting of two broad charges and 42 specifications, does not accuse Homma himself of committing atrocities or specifically ordering them, but of permitting troops under his command to murder, criminally attack, rob, pillage and otherwise violate the laws of war.
The other officers listed were Lt. Col. Saichi Ohta, commander of the dreaded Kempei-Tai (military police) in the Philippines during 1942; Maj. Zanzo Saito, commander of the so-called “Tiger unit” of the Japanese Army; Maj. Takashi Tohei, commander of a Kempei-Tai unit near Manila, and Col. Akira Nagahama, chief of the Philippines Kempei-Tai from late 1942 to 1945.
Atrocities mentioned in the 42 specifications included the bombing of Manila by the Japanese after it had been declared an open city, the bombing of a general hospital on Bataan, the bayoneting to death of American and Filipino hospital patients, the beheading of an entire Filipino family, and the use of Filipino prisoners as live targets in bayonet practice.
Particular emphasis was laid on the Bataan death march in which thousands of American and Filipino prisoners of war perished, many of them by the bayonets of guards who simply killed them when disease or weakness caused them to falter.