Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [372]
The proceedings began on 29 October 1945, and at first the general declined to go into the witness box. When persuaded to do so, he presented an impressive image of dignity and fluency. Convicted and sentenced to hang, he removed his belt and presented it to an American colonel as a souvenir, observing jovially: “You’re the only man here fat enough to wear this.” Pinioned before being marched to the gallows, he complained of the tightness of the handcuffs, but then strode courageously to meet death. Gen. Masaharu Homma was shot by firing squad in April 1946, convicted of responsibility for the Bataan death march. Homma said: “I am being executed for the Bataan incident. What I want to know is: who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? MacArthur or Truman?” He went gaily to execution, raising a beer glass to the chaplain and interpreter, saying in perfect English: “Come on gentlemen, please. Bottoms up!”
Many people, American as well as Japanese, were dismayed by the fashion in which Yamashita and Homma were done to death. Their trials bore an ugly stamp of kangaroo court proceedings, at which evidence of the generals’ opposition to inhumane treatment of civilians and POWs was swept aside. It was widely believed that the sentences represented MacArthur’s personal vengeance upon Japanese commanders who had humiliated him in the field. There is, however, a strong contrary argument. Yamashita and Homma were sympathetic and personally honourable figures. Yet they held the responsible commands when unlawful and indeed unspeakable acts were committed against a host of innocents. How could their subordinates be punished for carrying out such deeds, if commanders went free? Japanese atrocities might not have been directly ordered by Yamashita or Homma, but they reflected a culture of massacre in which the entire Japanese military was complicit, and which it worked assiduously for decades to promote.
Even if the generals’ executions were symbolic rather than legally proper, they were almost certainly necessary. The American decision to leave Hirohito on his throne caused many Japanese afterwards to suppose that their nation could not have behaved so very badly, if their emperor’s reign was permitted to continue. Had Japan’s most senior commanders also been judged unaccountable for the ghastly deeds of the nation’s soldiers, their survival would have appeared a betrayal of millions dead by Japanese hands. It is plainly true that the 1945–46 war crimes trials, in Europe as well as Asia, represented victors’ justice. No attempt was made to impose even token punishment upon Allied personnel who committed unlawful deeds. But it seemed preferable then, as it still does today, to subject to trial some of those responsible for crimes against humanity, rather than to hold none responsible because so many were guilty.
In the wake of Japan’s surrender, Hirohito’s soldiers, sailors and airmen were shocked to find themselves objects of obloquy among their own people. Public animosity embraced the humblest as well as the loftiest warriors. After years of suffering, all the pent-up frustration and misery of the Japanese people was made manifest in the wake of defeat. Servicemen who had mindlessly accepted the code of bushido, and sometimes suffered terribly to fulfil its demands, now faced the contempt of their own nation. Amazingly, the U.S. army of occupation found itself protecting the survivors of the Imperial Japanese Army from the fury of its own people. This was an experience unknown among German veterans who had served in Hitler’s legions. Japan’s early post-war years were characterised by a collapse of hierarchies, a ruthless pursuit of self-interest reflected