The Gentleman or the Tiger?

In their misery during the Japanese defense of Manila, Filipinos spoke the name of General Tomoyuki Yamashita as if it were blasphemous. When peace came and the "Tiger of Malaya" was brought to trial, they crowded the courtroom to stare. As they had expected, he looked like an ogre--a squat, shaven-headed, simian figure in a green uniform. When prosecution witnesses told of the raping, killing and burning which Manila had endured at Japanese hands, many in the audience guessed that the verdict would be quick and harsh.

But last week, as the Japanese general rose to defend himself, spectators began to experience an uneasy perplexity. The chunky Japanese neither cringed nor swaggered. He bowed politely to the five U.S. generals sitting as judges. With ponderous dignity he instructed the Nisei interpreter: "Yamashita wants no mistakes. On long sentences I will repeat them twice. Listen carefully." Then he seated himself in the witness chair, denied that he had ever known of Philippine atrocities, much less condoned or ordered them.

Alibi. In ensuing hours of cross-examination he was never trapped into contradiction. Yamashita simply waited, without anger, through the prosecutor's periods of elaborate sarcasm, then licked his lips and answered in unhesitant Japanese.

He gave shrewd emphasis to a point few military men could consider without sympathy: he had arrived in the Philippines only nine days before the U.S. landings on Leyte, had been unfamiliar with the country, the people and even his own officers; thereafter he had been involved in the nerve-racking confusion of losing battles. "I was under constant attack by superior American forces," he said.

"I Did My Best." Slowly, almost passionately, he made his plea for understanding: "I have put forth my maximum effort in order to control my troops. If this was not sufficient then somehow I should have done more. I feel that I did my best."

When the defense rested, the task of the trial commission no longer seemed simple. Yamashita's spirited defense had suddenly emphasized the lack of precedent for war crimes trials, the vagueness of the charges--violation of the rules of war. The commission had other problems. What was Yamashita--a consummate liar or a victim of circumstance? What was to be his fate? The rope or the firing squad? Prison? Freedom? Manila waited for the answer.

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