WI: Yamashita is found innocent in his trial?

ben0628

Banned
In 1946, Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita was put on trial for war crimes that took place in the Phillipines. For his defense, Yamashita argued that the commander of a large army cannot possibly control the actions of all his subordinates and that he cannot be held responsible for atrocities that he did not order. The courts however declared that Yamashita was guilty and in the process established the 'Yamashita Standard', which states that a superior is always held responsible for the crimes committed by their subordinates.

My question is the following: Is their anyway Yamashita can be found innocent, and if so, what happens to both Yamashita, and the legal precedent his case set?
 
As much as Yamashita's trial was one of the few rigged shows conducted by the US (Doug), it did help push command responsibility into a global standard. Without this ruling, command responsibility might take a bit longer to have been established and codified.
 
As much as Yamashita's trial was one of the few rigged shows conducted by the US (Doug), it did help push command responsibility into a global standard. Without this ruling, command responsibility might take a bit longer to have been established and codified.

By this logic the ultimate responsibility lies with the Commander of the Armed forces as a whole. In the US the President? - Never heard that the US Prez was convicted...

(I know that the current interpretation of command responsibility would prevent this happening ;) - but Yamashita would have been a free man unde the current interpretation)
 
As much as Yamashita's trial was one of the few rigged shows conducted by the US (Doug), it did help push command responsibility into a global standard. Without this ruling, command responsibility might take a bit longer to have been established and codified.

I have heard it was questioned by some, but I would note that men under his command carried out a number of documented war crimes in Malaya. He had a responsibility to ensure that the relatively small force followed the rules of war. If he was able to impose his will on the army to lead it to such a decisive victory he ought to have been able to ensure that orders regarding the treatment of prisoners were enforced.
 
I have heard it was questioned by some, but I would note that men under his command carried out a number of documented war crimes in Malaya. He had a responsibility to ensure that the relatively small force followed the rules of war. If he was able to impose his will on the army to lead it to such a decisive victory he ought to have been able to ensure that orders regarding the treatment of prisoners were enforced.
From what I understood of the guy,he did try to stop his troops from abusing/killing civilians and prisoners if he could.Problem was that his subordinates just ignored him.IIRC,he actually had some of the people who undertook of the Alexandra Hospiral massacre in Singapore executed.He also treated prisoners and civilians with respect when possible.
 
I have heard it was questioned by some, but I would note that men under his command carried out a number of documented war crimes in Malaya. He had a responsibility to ensure that the relatively small force followed the rules of war. If he was able to impose his will on the army to lead it to such a decisive victory he ought to have been able to ensure that orders regarding the treatment of prisoners were enforced.
He was put in charge of a disintegrating chain of command while sick and disconnected from his men. More importantly, most of the crimes placed on him were committed by the IJN, which not only were outside his command but sometimes outright disobeyed orders. For example, the Battle of Manila was headed by Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi who ignored Yamashita's order to evacuate the city.

Now, there were plenty of things to hang Yamashita with, such as his possible connections to Sook Ching, but the meat of the charges against him were literally out of his hands.
 
From what I understood of the guy,he did try to stop his troops from abusing/killing civilians and prisoners if he could.Problem was that his subordinates just ignored him.IIRC,he actually had some of the people who undertook of the Alexandra Hospiral massacre in Singapore executed.He also treated prisoners and civilians with respect when possible.

That was my understanding too. That and both he and General Homma had been against the war to begin with.

A friend who had a particular interest in McArthur said that he wanted to try to help out either Yamashita or Homma - can't remember which - but he'd used up all his capital retaining the Emperor so that wasn't possible,
 
That was my understanding too. That and both he and General Homma had been against the war to begin with.

A friend who had a particular interest in McArthur said that he wanted to try to help out either Yamashita or Homma - can't remember which - but he'd used up all his capital retaining the Emperor so that wasn't possible,

I would hazard a guess it would have been Yamashita he might have wanted to help. I believe he noted quite fairly that Homma had treated the US and Philippine prisoners very poorly post Bataan.

Yamashita in my view was culpable for events in Malaya, he may not have ordered mistreatment, but preventing it was too low on his priority list. Unlike during the Philippines, in Malaya he was in command of a coherent and effective formation, I have more sympathy for his situation in the Phillipines.
 

CalBear

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Yamashita was dead from the get. Same as Homma.

Unlike Nuremberg, which had the Allies bending over backwards to show they were not running a kangaroo court, MacArthur's trials for those officer virtually required all members of the Court to have a pouch.

Pure victor's justice.
 

CalBear

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I would hazard a guess it would have been Yamashita he might have wanted to help. I believe he noted quite fairly that Homma had treated the US and Philippine prisoners very poorly post Bataan.

Yamashita in my view was culpable for events in Malaya, he may not have ordered mistreatment, but preventing it was too low on his priority list. Unlike during the Philippines, in Malaya he was in command of a coherent and effective formation, I have more sympathy for his situation in the Phillipines.
Homma was not in actual command after the PI fell. He was relieved of command because his treatment of the Philippine population was judged to be far to gentle by his commanders (General Count Hisaichi Terauchi, and Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama). Homma was actually forced out of the Army and into retirement in 1943 (a senior IJA officer was forced INTO retirement, after a brilliant victory IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR because he was to humane to civilians). Both of these officers died (Sugiyama at his own hand and Terauchi from a series of strokes) before they could be brought before the Bar.
 
IMHO there were numerous factors involved in the various trials involving Japanese senior military, among which were Dougie and also racism ("yellow bastards"). One factor that bit those who were probably not culpable of "war crimes" was the entire set up of the Japanese military. The twisting of Bushido to imply that those who surrendered were dishonorable which tended to give a green light to abuse from the private soldier on up. The ignoring of concepts such as proper treatment of enemy wounded, and respecting the red cross (which had been scrupulous during the Russo-Japanese War) - soldiers were taught nothing of this. The Japanese themselves were just as racist as anyone else, and the inferior status of Chinese, Koreans, other Asians, Europeans, was an excuse for maltreatment. These pervasive doctrines and attitudes (and too much more to list) meant that troops were primed to be amenable to excess, and when your junior officers felt free to disobey directives...

Finally, and not often discussed, is the fact that in Germany you could blame stuff (correctly or not) on the SS. "It wasn't the army that did all this terrible stuff it was the SS" - bullshit of course but at least partially true in many cases. In Japan there was the Kempitai, but they were not a complete parallel organization with troops etc - a secret police/military police. In the Pacific it was the Japanese military, army and navy, that was "hands-on" for the atrocities, not an SS equivalent.
 
Homma was actually forced out of the Army and into retirement in 1943 (a senior IJA officer was forced INTO retirement, after a brilliant victory IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WAR because he was to humane to civilians).
What do you expect from an army that thought nothing of testing swords on random civilians, razing entire villages and passing out poisoned candy to children to determine the effectiveness of various bioweapons?

The IJA was basically the Waffen SS but more fanatical and without a significant number of tanks.
 
...and passing out poisoned candy to children to determine the effectiveness of various bioweapons?

On the bioweapon subject... I think it was utterly immoral that Yamashita, a man whose crime was through lack of control of his men, was executed...but Shiro Ishii, a man who personally conducted bio weapons experiments on civilians and ran Unit 731, was let off because he was deemed useful.
 
Ishii's get out of jail card was an application of "the greater good" theory. This is not me justifying it, simply saying why. Werner von Braun was well aware of the slave laborers at Mittelwerk and had no penalty. This is one of many examples of this sort of thing. Even more grotesque are documented examples of people imprisoned and tortured under the fascist regimes or collaborators, freed, and then re-imprisoned under the communists and tortured by the same torturers but in a new uniform.
 
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