Any response to the fact that the casualty figures you relied upon appear to be extremely dubious, at best?
Why isn’t the fact that 400,000 innocent people die in Japanese occupation in august 1945 on, used in the atomic bomb debate more?
- Thread starter Bellacinos
- Start date
Any response to the fact that the casualty figures you relied upon appear to be extremely dubious, at best?
Yamashita was a brilliant field commander and a brave soldier, but he was also a brutal man. The Manila Massacre may not have been his fault, but he was up to his neck in the Sook Ching Massacre that took place after the fall of Singapore, to name just one crime.
The War Crimes standard for commanding officers was established in 1945. If it was so important why did the US not apply it to itself?
International Criminal Court officials were sanctioned by the US after the Hague-based ICC began to investigate whether US forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
The United States, claimed that the International Criminal Court had no jurisdiction over the United States, which has not ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC. However, Afghanistan did ratify the Rome Statute, and thus crimes committed on its territory by anyone, even if he or she is a citizen of a country that did not accept the ICC's legitimacy, is subject to its jurisdiction.
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So, who was responsible for turning Manila into a battlefield that was fought over block by block? Who was responsible for the brutality against the Filipino People? Were those things caused by MacArthur being clueless? From a military point of view the American liberation of Luzon went very well so how was MacArthur made to look clueless? What angered him was the needless destruction of Manila, and the massacre and rape of its citizens.
Yeah, few people realize how evil the Japanese Empire really was. I was talking with someone recently about how the Japanese were in some ways even worse than the Germans and they seemed to have no idea. I’d still put Germany as evil number 1, but the Japanese gave them a run for their money and weren’t far behind.
Anyways, by the standards of the time, the atomic bombings were completely justified. The Allies were already killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in indiscriminate strategic bombings at that point in the war, anyways. The atomic bombs were just bigger bombs that could do this more effectively. And it saved millions of lives between Allied servicemen, Japanese civilians, and the hundreds of thousands of civilians in the occupied territories who were being killed each month.
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Excatly the atom bomb was just another one, after reading decisive darkness...otl japanese got it easy
When Yamashita ordered all the army units to withdraw from Manila and the navy personnel told him they would stay behind to fight to the death in the city what measures did he take to get the navy forces to join the retreat? Did he make any effort to see his orders not to make a fight for the city were carried out? He was also tried for the mass killings of Filipinos, and U.S. POWs beyond what was done in Manila.
What does My Lai have to do with this? My Lai was about American troops killing civilians in retaliation for VC activity. Any civilians in Manila killed by the U.S. Army died in the crossfire of a battle brought on the Japanese. The Japanese decided to fight to the death, so they had to be blasted out of every building. While the battle was going on the Japanese took every opportunity to kill or rape every Filipino, they could get their hands on.
Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi who died/suicided in the battle. He commanded Kirishima in the Battle of Midway in June 1942, but Kirishima was sunk in the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 15 November of the same year.
Once American forces had landed on Luzon and had begun converging on Manila, welcomed and assisted by Filipino troops of the Philippine Commonwealth Army and Philippine Constabulary, the Japanese supreme commander for operations in the Philippines, Lt.-General Tomoyuki Yamashita gave Iwabuchi a direct order to withdraw from Manila without combat. Yamashita wanted to consolidate his forces, and to avoid being trapped in urban warfare in downtown Manila with close to a million civilians. However, Iwabuchi repeatedly refused to obey orders. Citing shame at having lost Kirishima, Iwabuchi stated that he could redeem himself only by holding his position to the death.
Yamashita had not intended to defend Manila; he did not think that he could feed the city's one million residents - - Connaughton, Pimlott, and Anderson, p. 72
Yamashita did order the commander of Shimbu Group, Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama, to destroy all bridges and other vital installations and then evacuate the city as soon as any large American forces made their appearance.
However, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy's 31st Naval Special Base Force, was determined to fight a last-ditch battle in Manila, and, though nominally part of the Shimbu Army Group, repeatedly ignored Army orders to withdraw from the city. The naval staff in Japan agreed to Iwabuchi's scheme, eroding a frustrated Yamashita's attempts at confronting the Americans with a concerted, unified defense ***
- Sandler, Stanley – World War II in the Pacific: An Encyclopedia, p.469
- Connaughton, R., Pimlott, J., and Anderson, D., 1995, The Battle for Manila, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 0891415785 pp. 72-73
Iwabuchi had 12,500 men under his command, designated the Manila Naval Defence Force, augmented by 4,500 army personnel under Col. Katsuzo Noguchi and Capt. Saburo Abe. - Connaughton, Pimlott, and Anderson, p. 73
*** The Shimbu Group under Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama fortified their positions east of Manila in the Sierra Madre mountain range - practically controlling Ipo Dam, Wawa Dam, and its surrounding areas. The result was a seesaw battle, and the longest continuous combat engagement in the Southwest Pacific Theater from February 28 to May 30, 1945. Facing the Shimbu Group during the Battle of Wawa Dam and Battle of Ipo Dam was initially the 6th Army's XIV Corps, and this would later be replaced by the XI Corps. While the fighting took 3 months, the American forces supported by Philippine guerrillas forced decimated the Shimbu Group, forcing Gen. Yokoyama to retreat his forces further east. - MacArthur, Douglas. "Reports of General MacArthur Vol. 1". US Army Center for Military History. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
In all, ten U.S. divisions and five independent regiments battled on Luzon, making it the largest American campaign of the Pacific war, involving more troops than the United States had used in North Africa, Italy, or southern France.
Japanese Fourteenth Area Army aka Shimbu Group (map)
Components:
8th Infantry Division
39th Independent Mixed Brigade
IJA 65th Independent Infantry Brigade
IJA 9th Artillery Headquarters
However, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy's 31st Naval Special Base Force, was determined to fight a last-ditch battle in Manila, and, though nominally part of the Shimbu Army Group, repeatedly ignored Army orders to withdraw from the city. The naval staff in Japan agreed to Iwabuchi's scheme, eroding a frustrated Yamashita's attempts at confronting the Americans with a concerted, unified defense ***
- Sandler, Stanley – World War II in the Pacific: An Encyclopedia, p.469
- Connaughton, R., Pimlott, J., and Anderson, D., 1995, The Battle for Manila, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 0891415785 pp. 72-73
Iwabuchi had 12,500 men under his command, designated the Manila Naval Defence Force, augmented by 4,500 army personnel under Col. Katsuzo Noguchi and Capt. Saburo Abe. - Connaughton, Pimlott, and Anderson, p. 73
*** The Shimbu Group under Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama fortified their positions east of Manila in the Sierra Madre mountain range - practically controlling Ipo Dam, Wawa Dam, and its surrounding areas. The result was a seesaw battle, and the longest continuous combat engagement in the Southwest Pacific Theater from February 28 to May 30, 1945. Facing the Shimbu Group during the Battle of Wawa Dam and Battle of Ipo Dam was initially the 6th Army's XIV Corps, and this would later be replaced by the XI Corps. While the fighting took 3 months, the American forces supported by Philippine guerrillas forced decimated the Shimbu Group, forcing Gen. Yokoyama to retreat his forces further east. - MacArthur, Douglas. "Reports of General MacArthur Vol. 1". US Army Center for Military History. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
In all, ten U.S. divisions and five independent regiments battled on Luzon, making it the largest American campaign of the Pacific war, involving more troops than the United States had used in North Africa, Italy, or southern France.
Japanese Fourteenth Area Army aka Shimbu Group (map)
Components:
8th Infantry Division
39th Independent Mixed Brigade
IJA 65th Independent Infantry Brigade
IJA 9th Artillery Headquarters
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Yeah. The one Ching Lee blasted the crap out of in the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Kind of a wonder Iwabuchi survived it. Plenty of Filipinos who wished he hadn't!
So why didn't Yamashita relieve Iwabuchi for insubordination, and get those men to follow orders? Just saying that Iwabuchi disobeyed orders doesn't excuse Yamashita of responsibility for what happened. The retreat from Manila didn't happen in a day, we're talking about a few weeks. Yamashita failed as a commander to see his order were carried out. Perhaps the interservice conflict made Yamashita back off from firing an admiral, so he let the navy men do whatever the hell they wanted to do. But that doesn't relieve him of his culpability for what happened.Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi who died/suicided in the battle. He commanded Kirishima in the Battle of Midway in June 1942, but Kirishima was sunk in the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 15 November of the same year.
Once American forces had landed on Luzon and had begun converging on Manila, welcomed and assisted by Filipino troops of the Philippine Commonwealth Army and Philippine Constabulary, the Japanese supreme commander for operations in the Philippines, Lt.-General Tomoyuki Yamashita gave Iwabuchi a direct order to withdraw from Manila without combat. Yamashita wanted to consolidate his forces, and to avoid being trapped in urban warfare in downtown Manila with close to a million civilians. However, Iwabuchi repeatedly refused to obey orders. Citing shame at having lost Kirishima, Iwabuchi stated that he could redeem himself only by holding his position to the death.
Yamashita had not intended to defend Manila; he did not think that he could feed the city's one million residents - - Connaughton, Pimlott, and Anderson, p. 72
Yamashita did order the commander of Shimbu Group, Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama, to destroy all bridges and other vital installations and then evacuate the city as soon as any large American forces made their appearance.
However, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy's 31st Naval Special Base Force, was determined to fight a last-ditch battle in Manila, and, though nominally part of the Shimbu Army Group, repeatedly ignored Army orders to withdraw from the city. The naval staff in Japan agreed to Iwabuchi's scheme, eroding a frustrated Yamashita's attempts at confronting the Americans with a concerted, unified defense ***
- Sandler, Stanley – World War II in the Pacific: An Encyclopedia, p.469
- Connaughton, R., Pimlott, J., and Anderson, D., 1995, The Battle for Manila, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, ISBN 0891415785 pp. 72-73
Iwabuchi had 12,500 men under his command, designated the Manila Naval Defence Force, augmented by 4,500 army personnel under Col. Katsuzo Noguchi and Capt. Saburo Abe. - Connaughton, Pimlott, and Anderson, p. 73
*** The Shimbu Group under Gen. Shizuo Yokoyama fortified their positions east of Manila in the Sierra Madre mountain range - practically controlling Ipo Dam, Wawa Dam, and its surrounding areas. The result was a seesaw battle, and the longest continuous combat engagement in the Southwest Pacific Theater from February 28 to May 30, 1945. Facing the Shimbu Group during the Battle of Wawa Dam and Battle of Ipo Dam was initially the 6th Army's XIV Corps, and this would later be replaced by the XI Corps. While the fighting took 3 months, the American forces supported by Philippine guerrillas forced decimated the Shimbu Group, forcing Gen. Yokoyama to retreat his forces further east. - MacArthur, Douglas. "Reports of General MacArthur Vol. 1". US Army Center for Military History. Retrieved April 28, 2023.
In all, ten U.S. divisions and five independent regiments battled on Luzon, making it the largest American campaign of the Pacific war, involving more troops than the United States had used in North Africa, Italy, or southern France.
Japanese Fourteenth Area Army aka Shimbu Group (map)
Components:
8th Infantry Division
39th Independent Mixed Brigade
IJA 65th Independent Infantry Brigade
IJA 9th Artillery Headquarters
Over and over again Japanese commanders said they ordered their men not to commit war crimes, but they just did them anyway. The culture of brutality at all levels of the Japanese military was so pervasive that it could never have existed without the complicity of the top command. The Japanese were brutal to their own men. A military that uses beatings to maintain discipline will be brutal to civilians in foreign countries, let alone hostile ones. A general can't say, "It's not my fault, my men are just savages. They take out their frustrations on civilians, and when they get orders, they don't like they may disobey them or stage a revolt and kill their superiors."
The Japanses military wasn't good on following orders. Junior officers launched the China War and invasion of Manchuria. At the end of the war they killed people, including a Lieutenant General in command of the Imperial Guards at the Imperial Palace to try to stop the surrender. They attempted to place the Emperor under house arrest. Perhaps it was due to the stories of the Ronin. Tom Cruise made a movie about a group of Samurai who attempted to overthrow the Japanese government in the late 1800s. One reason Tojo was promoted to Army Minister and later made PM was because they thought he could control the military fanatics if negociations succeeded with the US.
During the February 26 coup attempt of 1936, Tojo and Shigeru Honjō, a noted supporter of Sadao Araki, both opposed the rebels who were associated with the rival "Imperial Way" faction. Emperor Hirohito himself was outraged at the attacks on his close advisors, and after a brief political crisis and stalling on the part of a sympathetic military, the rebels were forced to surrender. As the commander of the Kempeitai, Tojo ordered the arrest of all officers in the Kwantung Army suspected of supporting the coup attempt in Tokyo. In the aftermath, the Tōseiha faction purged the Army of radical officers, and the coup leaders were tried and executed.
Not sure how you arrest a lunatic who has thousands of fanatical troops with him. if your not in control of the Kempeitai. Perhaps ...
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Well that's because the Cold War occurred, China fell to communism, and then there was the Korean War, so the U.S. needed Japan as a bulwark. Those who had prior military experience in the IJA and the IJN were pressed back into JSDF service, providing they didn't have any war crimes of course.
But yes, a lot of evil people got away such as Shiro Ishii, Hisato Yoshimura, and Masanobu Tsuji. The Unit 731 personnel's data was not needed for the U.S. biological weapons program since the U.S. was years ahead of the Japanese in terms of biological and chemical weapons.
Tojo's suicide attempt failed. At least the victims got justice for this part.Well, not all of them!
Apologies for the racial pejorative in the headline - but hey, that's just the way the media and everyone else rolled in the 1940's.
Thanks for the change of the geopolitical eras.
Masaobu Tsuji is an evil man who was responsible for the Bataan Death March and the Sook Massacre. He was even stated to eat the livers of POW. After the war, he became a CIA asset but was also a liability as Tsuji was known to make deals with the Chinese Communists when he went to southern China to have himself "captured". Part of his "deal with the Devils" was to undermine the post-war U.S.-Japan relationship since he still held his Pan-Asian views. Even if the Chinese Communists were the enemies, they were the closest "ally" to challenge the Americans and Europeans in post-war Asia. Of course, Tsuji ran for the Diet in 1952 before disappearing into Laos in 1961. It was alleged he became an advisor to the North Vietnamese government or joined the Pathet Lao. He was declared dead on July 20, 1968 after his 7 years of disappearance.
Tsuji had no loyalty but himself or his Pan-Asianist views. It's ironic how the IJA considered the Chinese Communists or any Communist movement as enemies to the Empire, but Tsuji himself switched sizes because the communists in China, Laos, and Vietnam shared his "anti-West" agenda.
Some agree Yamashita was executed as vengeance for MacArthur losing in the Philippines. Some say Yamashita was executed after revealing the hidden Golden Lily sites to the post-war council so that the OSS or the CIA can use the gold to fund anti-communist activities during the Cold War.
Yamashita did claim he was unaware of his troop's atrocities in Bataan and Manila, but the Allies would not buy that. As a general, you can't just turn a blindeye on what subordinates would do.
The IJA and the SNLF decided to lash their anger and frustration on the civilians just to make it more bloody for the Americans.
classyjazzy55
Banned
You can't on the one hand say that the US was justified because the Japanese were full of brutal war criminals that were never going to surrender, and then on the other defend the US's actions in keeping most of them off the hook, especially compared to Nuremberg, and even then a lot of Nazi war criminals were let off the hook. And no, it isn't justified because of communism.
I'm not justifying nor denying war crimes caused by the Japanese here either. It's just sad that many were left off the sliding scales of justice due to the change of geopolitical structure. I agree many of them should have been tried because the victims of WWII needed justice.
I am appalled how Masanobu Tsuji became a free man and even ran for politics. Heck, he was even employed as a CIA asset, but he was also a headache for the agency due to his pan-Asianist views. Tsuji was a man with no loyalty except to himself and his belief that Asia should be free from the West, even if that means making deals with the Chinese Communists, the NVA, the Pathet Lao, and other independence movements at this period.
Ishii, Yoshimura, and Tsuji should have gotten the noose.
On top of that the Japanese sent out several thousand pilots to crash their planes into Allied ships. What does that say about their mentality? Even civilians were committing suicide rather than be captured because their government told them they would be tortured, raped and killed by the Americans. They told their people that to become a marine you had kill your parents. That didn't sound like a government on the verge of surrendering.
It would have been terrifying had Operation Downfall gone ahead. The government (depends if it was the junta or the Emperor) told the Japanese citizens to fight to the death should the Americans land on the Home Islands. Even if it included using bamboo spears or medieval weapons.
Bored Young Man
Banned
I thought this was a thread about minimalizing loss of life from WWII, not equivocating between Imperial Japanese atrocities and American atrocities.
The point is the net number of humans saved, a few hundred war criminals tried after they were already stopped means little.