<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new book Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila <\/em>was recently published (October 30, 2018, W. W. Norton) by James M. Scott. It tells about the retaking of the Philippines in 1945 by the American troops and the horrific atrocities committed by the Japanese troops. The author was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his book Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor<\/em> (2015, W. W. Norton). [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article provides excerpts from the book review posted on November 4, 2018 in the Los Angeles Times<\/em> by Bob Drogin, who was the Los Angeles Times\u2019 bureau chief in Manila from 1989 to 1993. All quotes below are from Drogin\u2019s book review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Retelling this part of history is long overdue. \u201cIt is hard to imagine that a major monthlong\nbattle from WWII \u2013 one that devastated a large city, caused more than 100,000\ncivilian deaths and led to both a historic war crimes trial and a Supreme Court\ndecision \u2013 should have escaped scrutiny until now.\u201d This new book by James M. Scott has removed\nthat gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book begins in March 1942 by describing how \u201cGeneral Douglas\nMacArthur, the egotistical military commander of the U.S. colony in the\nPhilippines, was caught woefully unprepared when the war began. Japanese\nbombers destroyed his planes on the ground and American and Philippine forces\nwere soon overwhelmed. MacArthur\nfamously vowed to return as he was evacuated to Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three years later, the tide of the war changed, and the U.S. and her\nallies were winning the war. \u201cMost\ncommanders saw \u2018no need to risk American lives on a costly invasion of the\nPhilippines\u2019 when the fall of Japan appeared imminent.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut MacArthur insisted, and by early 1945 his troops were closing on\nManila. \u2026 Convinced the Japanese would abandon Manila, just as he had,\nMacArthur ordered up a massive victory parade to welcome himself home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn Feb. 6, 1945, MacArthur preemptively announced the city\u2019s\nliberation, claiming credit in grandiose terms. \nCongratulations poured in from Washington, London, and elsewhere. But the 29-day battle had only just begun.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n What followed was a month-long battle, which resulted in the death of\nover 100,000 Filipino civilians, the complete destruction of the beautiful city\nof Manila, the worst urban fighting in the Pacific theatre, and the deaths of\nover 1,000 and the wounded of over 5,500 American soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Japanese commander, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, was ordered \u201cto\nbog MacArthur\u2019s forces down in the Philippines and give Japan time to prepare\nfor the expected U.S. invasion (of Japan mainland). He ordered subordinates to destroy Manila\u2019s\nbridges and port and then to follow him to the mountains. Once Yamashita withdrew, however, Rear\nAdmiral Sanji Iwabuchi instead ordered his marines to fight to the last\nman. They methodically dynamited Manila\u2019s\nbusiness, government and religious landmarks, obliterating the city\u2019s cultural\nheritage, and torched thousands of wooden homes, sparking deadly firestorm Worse, they cruelly tortured and killed\nthousands of men, women and children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scott\u2019s book was based on his research using \u201cwar crimes records,\nafter-action military reports and other primary sources for the agonizing\ntestimony of Philippine survivors and witnesses of more than two dozen major\nJapanese atrocities.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe frenzy of Japanese massacres defies imagination. Countless women were raped and tortured,\ntheir babies tossed in the air and bayoneted. \nPatients and doctors were stabbed at hospitals, nuns and priests hanged\nat churches, children tossed into pits with grenades. Marauding Japanese troops burned people alive\nin convents, schools and prisons. They\nsimply buried others alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMilitary orders later found by investigators stated that \u2018all people\non the battlefield\u2026 will be put to death.\u2019 The battlefield was the entire city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAgainst them was a U.S. force unprepared for urban warfare. They fired 155-millimeter howitzers at\npoint-blank range to dislodge the enemy and used tanks, flamethrowers and\nbazookas to kill the rest. They fought\nblock by block, house by house, room by room, leveling hundreds of city\nblocks.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was hard to tell who had done more damage \u2013 the Japanese defenders\nor the American liberators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the war in the fall of 1945, General Yamashita was tried in an\nAmerican military tribunal in Manila for war crimes committed by troops under\nhis command during the Japanese defense of the occupied Philippines. In a\ncontroversial decision, Yamashita was found guilty of his troops\u2019 atrocities,\nalthough there was no evidence that he approved or even knew of them, and furthermore,\nmany of the atrocities were committed by troops not actually under his\ncommand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This decision \u2013 holding the commander\nresponsible for his or her subordinates’ war crimes as long as the commander\ndid not attempt to discover and stop them from occurring \u2013 came to be known as\nthe Yamashita standard. Yamashita\u2019s American legal defense team\nappealed the decision to the Philippines Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme\nCourt, but both courts declined to review the verdict. The legitimacy of the hasty trial was\nquestioned at the time, including by the American Supreme Court Justice Frank\nMurphy, who protested various procedural issues, the inclusion of hearsay\nevidence, and the general lack of professional conduct by the prosecuting\nofficers. Evidence that Yamashita did not have ultimate command responsibility\nover all military units in the Philippines was not admitted in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yamashita was sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1946. The Yamashita standard was added to the\nGeneva Conventions and was applied to dozens of trials in the International\nCriminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. \nIt has also been adopted by the International Criminal Court established\nin 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is now finally a scholarly book on this important part of neglected history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ——————————————–<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1] I want to thank the person who several months ago sent me this book review article. However, I do not remember who sent me the article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new book Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila was recently published (October 30, 2018, W. W. Norton) by James M. Scott. It tells about the retaking of the Philippines in 1945 by the American troops and the horrific atrocities committed by the Japanese troops. The author was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5629"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5687,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5629\/revisions\/5687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}