by James Webb
The Tiger had worn our soldiers out.
On July 5, MacArthur had declared the Philippines “entirely liberated,” claiming that his battle against Yamashita “was one of the rare instances when in a long campaign a ground force superior in numbers was entirely destroyed by a numerically inferior opponent.” In his desire to outdo Yamashita, MacArthur had taken to dissembling, talking cleverly of “long campaigns,” and comparing only “ground forces” so that his numbers would not acknowledge a total superiority in the air and on the sea. He knew that the greatest example in the entire war of a numerically inferior ground force conquering a larger foe was the brutally short campaign waged by Yamashita himself, in his lightning conquest of Singapore.
In early 1942 the brilliant Tiger of Malaya had taken the supposedly unconquerable British colony from behind, landing four hundred miles up the coast on the Malaya Peninsula and driving relentlessly past outpost after outpost, his troops sometimes even on bicycles in a strangely Japanese version of blitzkrieg. Outnumbered three to one by the British defenders, Yamashita had bluffed and scrapped his way to the very edges of the central city, forcing a quick and startling surrender that echoed throughout the world, and particularly in Asia. British and Australian prisoners of war from the Singapore battle were paraded by the Japanese through city streets as far away as Hanoi and Seoul as evidence that the West, and particularly the Caucasian soldiers, were inferior to the Japanese. Throughout Japan, and particularly among the common soldiers of the imperial army, Yamashita had become a true folk hero.
The radio loudspeakers went silent behind us. Near them, from a higher bluff and on the truck beds themselves, dozens of soldiers began talking excitedly to each other, pointing toward the Bessang Pass. There was movement along the valley’s floor, an antlike string of uniformed men passing through the narrow break in the cliffs, heading in our direction.
Brute Petrulakis lifted his field glasses to his eyes, scanning the rocks and crags of the pass for several seconds. “Here he comes,” Petrulakis finally said. A grin crossed his face. “I know that’s him. The guy’s got a big potato head, just like the pictures. And I’ll be damned. He’s the first one through the pass. He’s marching at the front of his men!”
A small column of jeeps and trucks headed out toward the Japanese from the Thirty-second Division’s lines. Petrulakis and I stood in one truck bed along with a squad of soldiers, bouncing slowly along a rock-strewn road toward the pass. The war was now officially over but the soldiers were taking no chances, still looking nervously ahead as the truck lurched and groaned.
Petrulakis joked with one of his sergeants as we neared the approaching Japanese. “Keep your eyes peeled, Chambers. Nobody wants to be the army’s first peacetime casualty, huh?”
“Not on your life, Colonel,” answered the leathery-faced, battle-hardened squad leader. His M1 rifle was at the ready, pointed upward toward the rocky cliffs behind the Japanese. A finger rested uneasily on the trigger. “I didn’t last this long to end up in a box.”
But there were no surprises. The string of American vehicles slowly pushed forward along the broken road, ever further from the safety of the Thirty-second Division’s front lines. The group of Japanese soldiers cleared the pass and soon were in a narrow valley at the far end of the road, trudging toward the Americans. And finally the two groups neared each other in the artillery-pocked no-man’s-land that had separated their positions for more than two months.
Our little convoy halted. Infantry soldiers jumped from the trucks and moved quickly off the road, setting up a perimeter around the place where the two groups would link up. Dozens of dud artillery shells and unexploded rocket rounds littered the rocky soil near where the soldiers walked. General Styer’s emissaries disembarked and gathered nervously on the road itself. Colonel Petrulakis and I stood somewhere in between, watching with fascination as the Japanese continued to approach.
Petrulakis whistled softly, watching the hulking Yamashita march resolutely toward us. He broke into an excited grin. “Get a load of that!”
Standing next to him, my own heart was racing. Not unlike Petrulakis, as I watched General Yamashita approach I was overcome with an odd thrill of recognition. Accustomed as I was to being near the aura of MacArthur, this was my first vision of the very embodiment of all that we had viewed for so long simply as the enemy. Marching solemnly toward us, without fanfare or even a point man, was the force behind the stunning conquest of Singapore, the man who had pushed our own army through the long months of frustrating, never-resolved, cave-by-cave, ridge-by-ridge battles of Luzon.
The burly, imposing general was wearing a brown service-dress uniform, complete with a full-length jacket, medals, knee-high leather boots, and a cloth campaign hat. In his left hand as he marched along the rough, rocky road he gingerly carried his officer’s sword, the symbol of his power. He was bull-necked, thick-shouldered, and at least six foot two, the first Japanese I had ever seen who was taller than I myself. His huge head was shaved to the scalp. His face was a mask that showed absolutely no emotion—neither fear nor arrogance, neither anticipation nor regret. The dozen senior Japanese officers who followed him seemed like lost midgets as they stumbled bravely in his wake.
He stopped near us, catching his breath. Then he began peering intently at the Americans who stood on the road waiting to take him prisoner, as if inspecting them. Yes, I thought, watching him calmly search the faces and uniforms among the group, this is a great soldier.
Finally Yamashita found what he was looking for. An American one-star general, the senior emissary from General Styer’s staff, had begun walking toward him. The Tiger met him halfway. Coming to attention in front of the American, Yamashita saluted, gave him a slight bow, then handed over his sword. He spoke in Japanese, but his words were quickly interpreted by a soft-voiced, bespectacled officer who had stepped up to a position just behind him.
“The general says, ‘In accordance with the imperial rescript, I am surrendering command of my army and placing myself under your control. My soldiers have been ordered to lay down their weapons and subject themselves to your decisions. The war is over. They will fight no more.’ ”
Taking the sword from Yamashita, the American general turned to the interpreter, giving him a shocked gaze. “You speak perfect English,” he said. “Not even an accent!”
“I am Colonel Masakatsu Hamamoto,” said the interpreter, bowing as he grinned with a shy embarrassment at the attention that had been drawn to him. “Harvard, class of twenty-nine.”
“Does General Yamashita wish to say anything else?”
Hamamoto shook his head, not even bothering to ask the general. “Not here. It’s over. He has given you his sword. He would ask that you treat his soldiers well. But there is nothing left to say.”
We quickly reboarded the trucks and jeeps. The dozen surrendering Japanese were divided into groups and ordered onto different trucks, except for Yamashita, who rode in the brigadier general’s jeep. Then our little convoy set off again, following fifteen miles of treacherous mountain roads as we retraced our earlier route to a tiny airstrip in a valley at Bagabag, where those of us who had come up from Manila had arrived just after dawn. Yamashita rode next to the driver in the jeep just in front of our truck. The American brigadier general sat just behind him. An armed guard sat next to the general. After watching Yamashita surrender, the guard seemed a gratuitous and unnecessary gesture. The Tiger did not so much as turn his head during the hourlong journey.
At Bagabag we boarded two C-47 aircraft and took off within minutes, heading for Baguio and the official surrender that would take place at the high commissioner’s old residence at Camp John Hay. Canvas jump seats ran the length of the aircraft’s narrow fuselage on both sides. Aboard the workhorse cargo plane I found a place directly across from Yamashita, so that we sat facing each other, our knees almost touching. The hourlong flight to Baguio would be my best chance to talk with him privately, as I had been ordered to do by
MacArthur.
The aircraft lifted slowly above the endless mountains. We nodded slightly to each other. Then I leaned forward, speaking to him in Japanese. “General, I am Captain Jay Marsh. I work on General MacArthur’s staff. He sent me down from Yokohama to—give you his regards.”
Yamashita gave me an immediate, knowing smile. “That was very kind of the General. And you honor us by speaking our language.” He gestured easily toward his interpreter, as if we were exchanging pleasantries at a cocktail reception. “Perhaps you and Colonel Hamamoto knew each other at Harvard?”
Hamamoto and I both exchanged tight smiles. Neither of us were as relaxed as the general seemed to be. “I don’t think so,” I answered.
Yamashita continued to look deep into my eyes, as if openly examining my subconscious. “I assume you are an intelligence officer, Captain Marsh?”
“No,” I said, taken slightly aback. “I am a member of the supreme commander’s personal staff.”
“It is a long journey from Yokohama, just to say hello to a battlefield adversary. Don’t you think?” The Tiger’s twinkling eyes were still breaking my mind apart.
“The supreme commander is a very thorough man.”
“I have studied MacArthur,” said Yamashita. “He has made many statements about me since the battles on Leyte. It is fair to say that he does not like me. Personally, I mean. Not to mention militarily.”
His bluntness surprised me. And then I remembered that such forthrightness had been his forte throughout the war. Indeed, he had forced the surrender at Singapore by uttering only three words to General Percival: Yes or no. No negotiations, no debate. Surrender or fight. And the beleaguered British commander had folded on the spot.
“I am only a captain,” I finally demurred, watching Yamashita’s face again break into a knowing smile. “The supreme commander does not share his personal feelings with me.”
“He does not share them with me, either,” said Yamashita. “But on this issue it is not difficult to know what they are.”
“It’s not my business to speak for the supreme commander in the area of his personal views. That is, as we say in the American army, above my pay-grade.”
“You’re a very smart man. Very careful with your words. Perhaps you should become a politician.” He had not lost his smile. “It is a short plane ride, so we should speak honestly, don’t you think? Why did MacArthur send you? What does he want to know, Captain Marsh? Go ahead! Ask me! Go ahead! You’ve traveled a long way!”
Sitting so near the Tiger, I felt swept along by the force of his physical presence, as well as his easy candor. He had no fear. He refused even at this moment of utter humiliation to descend into the obsequious double-talk I had expected, or the flattery toward MacArthur that I had witnessed from the sly, calculating Lord Privy Seal Kido. I felt a warmth for him grow inside me, one that I had neither expected nor desired.
“He asked that I inquire about your—frame of mind,” I finally answered.
“I predict that he will find me sane.”
Yamashita laughed softly, eyeing me with an amused certainty. “I have been a soldier for a long time, Captain. I served close to the imperial court in the years of palace intrigue before the war. I myself have played the messenger before, sounding out rival factions on behalf of the emperor and others. I even went to Germany in 1940 on behalf of the emperor, spending seven months—listening, as we say, and reporting back to him on our options. So you should relax. And don’t worry about pretending!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, General.”
He shrugged. “Then let me make this easier for you. General MacArthur sent you to listen to me, did he not? He wants to know something about me that he doesn’t want to put into his standard message traffic, where it will be read by subordinates or perhaps competitors. Something he might not even want his intelligence officers to discuss. Something personal, perhaps?”
I gathered my thoughts, peering out the window for a moment at the thickly canopied mountains we were traversing. Naively, I had expected to maneuver Yamashita, but he had completely stripped away the facade. So there was no need to put the question subtly.
Still, I attempted an indirectness. “The supreme commander is aware that certain other Japanese commanders found it honorable to commit seppuku rather than surrender once they lost their battles. This happened all across the Pacific.”
Yamashita knew at once where I was heading. He seemed amused. “But they had no recourse in their honor, Captain. They lost.”
“Excuse me, General?”
He looked out the window of the C-47 for a long moment, his gaze lingering on the raw mountains into which he had withdrawn six months before. Soon we would be at Baguio, where he had once kept a headquarters before being pushed further and further into the pocks and caves by our overwhelming forces, until he had formed his final defensive perimeter on the far side of the Bessang Pass.
“My orders were to delay the Allied advance on the Japanese mainland. To tie up as many American soldiers as possible. To continue to fight as long as possible. I carried out those orders. And I would still be carrying them out, except that the emperor ordered me to stop.”
His answer startled me, coming as it did from a man who had just given over his sword and was now on his way to prison. His face remained calm, supremely self-confident. And I knew that he wanted me to say those words to MacArthur.
“You’re saying that you were not defeated?”
“How do we define defeat? I’m saying that I had not lost. I turned over my sword only after the war was officially ended. After the last assault was made, and the final shot was fired. I did not desert my soldiers, and I did not surrender under fire. And so I still have my honor.”
There was an arcane patience in the way Yamashita continued to smile at me, and I began to understand MacArthur’s concerns. His comment about not deserting his soldiers under fire was a deliberate tweak at Douglas MacArthur himself. His refusal to surrender until the war was officially over would indeed preserve his integrity and his stature. An enormous power emanated from his simple, inarguably precise code, one that the Japanese people would have no trouble comprehending.
MacArthur was entering Japan as a conquering regent, the Blue-Eyed Shogun, his credibility riding on the strength of his military prowess. He was fond of pointing out that the Japanese were an ingenious but barbaric and superstitious race. Under this notion, the very basis of his power depended on this nation-family’s viewing him as an all-powerful demigod, a peer of the emperor himself, or even an alternative to him. Yamashita had conquered the British cleanly and swiftly at Singapore. He had held off MacArthur’s armies in the mountains of Luzon until the moment the war was ended. If he returned alive on Japanese soil, his fiercely simple self-assurance could provide a visible counterpoint and even a rallying point for those who wished to oppose the supreme commander’s powers.
“You wish me to say this to MacArthur?”
Yamashita shrugged as if unconcerned. “I would never tell you what to say to General MacArthur. The war is over. MacArthur will have his way with me. But I carried out my orders, Captain Marsh. And so there is no loss of honor in obeying the emperor’s edict to cease fighting.”
“I will tell MacArthur.”
“If you wish.”
He gave me a small wave, then turned and began talking quietly to Colonel Hamamoto. There was really nothing left to say. The C-47 began its quick descent into Baguio. A heavily armed convoy awaited us on the ground to take the Tiger to Camp John Hay, where he would officially surrender. And within two days he would be imprisoned at the Muntinglupa Bilibid, near Manila.
——
He did not kill himself, sir, because he does not believe he was defeated. And so he never lost his honor.”
The simple truth of those words was like a slap in Douglas MacArthur’s face. He bit into his pipe as he paced before me, then took it out of his mouth and began jabbing it into the air
like a pointer as he talked. “His forces were demolished at Leyte! His troop transports were sunk as they tried to reinforce! He was driven off the beaches at Lingayen Gulf and into the north. He was driven out of Baguio and even further north, into the mountains! And there he hid, until the war was over!”
Like MacArthur in the tunnels of Corregidor, before he was able to escape? I was unable to shake that thought as the supreme commander paced and fretted. “He said that was his mission, sir. Not to defeat us but to tie up our forces and prolong the war. And that he carried out that mission.”
“He surrendered, Captain Marsh! He turned over his sword.”
“Only after the emperor ordered him to, sir. And only after the war officially ended.”
MacArthur seemed to lose his normal composure for a moment, eyeing me bitterly with a gaze that froze my heart. And then he spoke calmly, almost as if taunting me. “Are you now his advocate, Jay?”
I shrugged helplessly under the supreme commander’s stare. “I’m only stating his views, sir. You asked me to find out what his intentions are. That was the best I could do.”
“Did you ask him about the rape of Manila?”
I swallowed hard now, feeling that I had failed him and stifling my embarrassment. “No, sir. We didn’t have much time. I didn’t know you wanted—”
“That’s enough.” MacArthur had regained his bearing. “It’s what I wanted to know. Good work, Jay. You did indeed find out what I asked you to.” He turned and began looking expectantly at Court Whitney.
“We’re working to set up a military commission,” said Whitney, as if on cue. “We can arrange for an early trial.”
“Soon,” said MacArthur, pacing again. “The world must learn of the terrible transgressions that took place, before the war fades in its memory.” His mind shifted gears in midstride, as if he needed no more from me. My simple report had clearly verified his preconceptions. Now he pointed at Willoughby. “Tell Jay about the meeting we want him to cover.”
