KIANGAN, Ifugao – It was in the 1990s when I first saw the so-called Yamashita shrine in this Cordilleran town that marked the capture of General Tomoyuki Yamashita on September 2, 1945.
Yamashita, known as the “Tiger of Malaya”, was the highest commander of the Japanese Imperial Army assigned to defend the Philippines from the advancing Allies in World War II.
Despite the order of Japanese Emperor Hirohito to surrender in August 1945, several Japanese soldiers led by Yamashita refused and insisted to continue waging war. But they were forced to retreat from Manila to the mountains of Cordillera.
Yamadhita’s group was confronted by almost a month of bombardment from combined American forces and the Philippine guerrillas in Kiangan that included the Cordilleran fighters that comprised the 66th Infantry Regiment.
Yamashita and his troops eventually yielded on September 2, 1945 at the old Kiangan Central School (KCS).
Yamashita was brought to Baguio City on September 3, 1945 by a helicopter, where he formally signed surrender documents before American forces at Camp John Hay marking the end of Japanese occupation in the Philippines.
Yamashita was tried for war crimes committed by troops under his command which he denied, arguing that he did not have knowledge that they occurred, including the Manila massacre.
Yamashita was convicted as a war criminal for “unlawfully disregarding, and failing to discharge, his duty as a commander to control the acts of members of his command, by permitting them to commit war crimes”.
He was executed by hanging on February 23, 1946 in Los Baños, Laguna.
Also known as the Rape of Manila (February 3 to March 3, 1945), the United States Army advanced into the city of Manila in order to drive the Japanese out.
The city became one of the most devastated Allied capital cities during the entire war as Japanese resistance and American artillery destroyed much of Manila’s architectural and cultural heritage dating back to the city’s founding.
Subjected to incessant pounding and facing certain death or capture, the beleaguered Japanese troops took out their anger and frustration on the civilians caught in the crossfire, committing multiple acts of severe brutality.
Between Japanese demolitions and American bombardment, Manila was being destroyed from within and without in a brutal, street-by-street, house-to-house, and building-to-building battle.
Manila became an apocalyptic wasteland — bodies, including those of infants, were strewn across streets, schools, and places of worship, beheaded, mutilated, bayoneted, or shot. Thousands more were driven from their homes, left without food, shelter, or medical care.
Over 100,000 civilians died — either killed by the Japanese or caught in the crossfire.
His conviction is now known as Yamashita standard of command responsibility in international law.
Command responsibility is the legal doctrine of hierarchical accountability for war crimes, whereby a commanding officer (military) and a superior officer (civil) are legally responsible for the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by his subordinates; thus, a commanding officer always is accountable for the acts of commission and the acts of omission of his soldiers.
The Yamashita standard applies as long as the commander did not attempt to discover and stop them from occurring.
The decision became a precedent where a commander has an “affirmative duty” to take measures to protect civilians and prisoners of wars (POWs), even if they did not personally commit or order the crimes.
It also created a form of “Indirect criminal liability”, where guilt stems from an omission (failure to act) rather than a direct action.
The victims include women who were held in captivity, and were raped as part of one of the largest operations of sexual violence in modern history.
Yamashita is also popularly known because of the term “Yamashita’s gold”, also referred to as the Yamashita treasure, which is the name given to the alleged war loot stolen in Southeast Asia by Imperial Japanese forces during World War II.
The stolen property reportedly included many different kinds of valuables looted from banks, depositories, other commercial premises, museums, private homes, and religious buildings. These were supposedly hidden in caves, tunnels, or underground complexes in different places in the Philippines.
The Marcos family was linked to the Yamashita treasure due to claims by Imelda Marcos that Ferdinand Marcos Sr. used some of this “Japanese gold” to fund the Philippine economy and that it was partly responsible for the family’s vast fortune.
A lawsuit was filed against Marcos Sr. by treasure hunter Rogelio Roxas, who claimed to have discovered a portion of the treasure, including a golden Buddha statue.
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Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 0917-502580./PN
