The Emperor's General

by James Webb

  As MacArthur had hoped, General Yamashita’s trial played to a huge audience, both inside the Philippines and abroad. At precisely eight A.M. the military police opened the residence’s inner doors to the public. The balconies and the front two rows of the ballroom were already taken by reporters, cameramen, and photographers. Within minutes the courtroom filled with eager spectators, most of them Filipinos with harsh memories of the Occupation of Japan. As would be the case for the next five weeks, the yard outside the residence brimmed full with hundreds and sometimes thousands of others who would wait in line all day, hoping that one spectator or another might leave, thus allowing them a glimpse inside.

  General Reynolds and his subordinates arrived promptly, and regally took their seats. The lawyers then entered, followed by General Yamashita himself, along with two Japanese military officers with whom he would be allowed to consult for factual accuracy when his actions were under question. As the day progressed, formal charges would be made. After that, the arguments would be taken. Then a steady stream of witnesses would begin recounting their horrifying experiences at the hands of Japanese soldiers.

  The klieg lights went on. The cameras flashed. General Reynolds coolly and dispassionately read the allegations of the United States against the accused. The charges were brief, and by their very nature vague: “That Tomoyuki Yamashita, General Imperial Japanese Army, between 9 October 1944 and 2 September 1945, at Manila and at other places in the Philippine Islands, while commander of armed forces of Japan, unlawfully disregarded and failed to discharge his duty as commander to control the operations of the members of his command, permitting them to commit brutal atrocities and other high crimes against the people of the United States and of its allies and dependencies, particularly the Philippines, and he, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, thereby violated the laws of war.”

  The crowd murmured and whispered. The photographers and cameramen took their eternal, capturing shots. The military commission’s generals bickered and preened. The lawyers began to argue. The witnesses gathered in the back of the reception room and soon would be offered a weeping public catharsis. And yet the dominant figure in the room was the man who sat erect and immobile and who did not speak.

  As ordered, Yamashita had worn his best green imperial army uniform, replete with knee-high cavalry boots, spurs, and four rows of campaign ribbons. Even sitting, he was a full head taller than the two other Japanese officers who had accompanied him. He was bulky, potato-faced, bull-necked. His head remained shaved, making him appear almost monsterish. Watching him I suddenly found myself wondering if he had found a way to save a lock of hair to be sent home to his wife after his cremation.

  As I watched him I thought again and again of our recent meeting in Muntinglupa’s Bilibid. Yamashita dominated these proceedings without saying a word because he emanated an unusual power: he was not afraid to die. That certainty gave him a chilling charisma, even among the American soldiers who guarded him and the reporters who covered his case. Indeed, he had been quietly preparing to die since the very moment of his surrender. But his honor demanded that he publicly defend the reputation he would leave behind.

  The prosecution presented its opening arguments. First they listed the voluminous “bills of particulars,” outlining the 123 acts in violation of the laws of war that comprised the charges against Yamashita. The charges ranged from allegations that the Japanese had engaged in “a deliberate plan to massacre and exterminate a large part of the civilian population in Batangas Province” to the detailed allegations of “violence, cruelty, and homicide” as well as the “destruction of religious monuments” during the rape of Manila.

  The prosecution recognized that General Yamashita neither committed nor directed the commission of any of the 123 acts. But they pressed their argument that the general breached his duty to control his soldiers, thus permitting them to commit the extensive and widespread atrocities. The precise issue before the court, they argued, was Yamashita’s “personal responsibility for his failure to take appropriate measures when the violations resulted.”

  Witherspoon’s opening argument on behalf of Yamashita covered all the points he had made to me during our first meeting in the chapel of the Muntinglupa Bilibid. Familiar with Western notions of military conduct, Yamashita had insisted on fair treatment of British soldiers after the fall of Singapore, a policy that had been reversed when he was reassigned to Manchuria. He had issued clear, written instructions to all Japanese forces in the Philippines, forbidding improper treatment of civilians and prisoners of war. In Manila, he had withdrawn his own troops in order to spare the city and to concentrate his defenses farther north, leaving behind principally naval forces under dual command from Tokyo. The only order he had ever given these naval forces was to evacuate Manila rather than destroy it, and their commander, Admiral Iwabuchi, who received different orders from Tokyo, did not obey Yamashita. With respect to American prisoners of war, Yamashita had been reproached by his own superiors after initially ordering that our POWs be released from captivity and given one month’s food rations, as soon as the Americans landed at Luzon.

  Witherspoon was withering as he finished his opening statement. He glared at the commission’s members with unconcealed contempt as he spoke. “Can it seriously be contended that a recently arrived commander, beset and harassed by the enemy, staggering under a successful invasion to the south and expecting at any moment another invasion to the north, could gather all the strings of administration in a country as large as this? First of all, these atrocities occurred at times and in areas that made communication of such matters impossible! Land communication was cut off! Japanese wireless communications at their best were worse than ours at their worst and were reserved for matters of operational importance. And not only was General Yamashita physically unable to know of these events but it is ridiculous to assume that those who perpetrated them would then decide to tell him about them! They were taking place in violation of his specific orders!”

  Witherspoon took his seat. His passion had been spent on idle ears. The heat from the klieg lights was all but unbearable. The projectors rolled and the cameras flashed. The members of the commission nodded and sweated and yawned. Yamashita sat unblinking and erect. The spectators craned their necks and whispered, not understanding the legal and moral technicalities of the angry and emotional opening statement. The witnesses rustled and fidgeted in the back of the ballroom, awaiting their turns to show their scars and tell their nightmare stories.

  And that was the last time that General Yamashita’s name was even mentioned for days. The witnesses came forth, sitting only twenty feet away from the stoically watching defendant, giving accounts of unspeakable horror and barbarism. Prepubescent girls, raped and bayoneted and left for dead, now revealed their ugly scars. Elderly men told of friends and family who were forced to kneel in front of pre-dug ditches, where they were bayoneted or decapitated and then kicked nonchalantly into the holes. Women spoke of having babies wrenched from their arms and shot or perfunctorily eviscerated. There were rape victims, stabbing victims, shooting victims, children who had watched their parents die, parents who had watched their children die, wives who had watched their husbands and children being tortured, husbands who had watched their wives being raped, all at the hands of Japanese soldiers. Stark photographs of gruesome scenes were held forth in the trembling hands of people whose faces promised they would never forget.

  It did not matter to General Reynolds and his commission that virtually all of the true perpetrators were already dead. Or that in Tokyo, Prince Asaka was playing his usual morning round of golf with the emperor, forever absolved of the deliberate butchery of Nanking. Tomoyuki Yamashita had been hauled into the room to sit hour after hour, day after day, as the cameras captured the undeniable horror of Manila’s rape. And then he would be sent out to die.

  At the end of the first day, even the American journalists were grumbling about the blatantly contrived and totally predictable res
ults. But no one seemed to understand why. Because the puzzle that they could not comprehend was the one they did not see.

  Watching these proceedings, an eerie reality crept up on me. It was as though I was looking for the first time into a cruelly honest mirror at the person I had allowed myself to become. A few days before, Sam Genius had offered me a peek into that mirror, and I had shied away. But this reality was now inescapable, personalized in the Janus-like faces of Tomoyuki Yamashita and Frank Witherspoon, one decidedly serene and the other eternally enraged as the trial wore on.

  What was in the mirror? Who had I become? A vacant, limpid face. An instrument to be used for the power of others. A cute-mouthed monkey boy, neither serene nor enraged, who had simply become accepting. It had happened over the course of three years, one starstruck day at a time. I had proved my worth to men who were making history, and I was proud of it. I had watched MacArthur struggle with issues that were beyond the ken of my youthful understanding. I had gladly served his vision. And in the process I had lost my own.

  Sam Genius and Frank Witherspoon were standing for something. And I had come to stand for nothing.

  I left the ballroom before the day’s activities had finished. A great confusion washed over me as I drove my jeep toward Divina Clara’s home. I could not deny that an overwhelming, truly historic burden rested on the supreme commander’s shoulders. Nor did I doubt that he was better equipped than anyone else alive to harness and direct the brilliant energies of this former enemy nation called Japan. But what I was watching in the grand ballroom of the high commissioner’s residence reeked with the fetid odor of unnecessary evil. Unnecessary, that was the reality that shamed me. The spoils of a just war, a war fought on behalf of tolerance and human decency, did not give anyone the right to murder a great man for reasons of political expedience and personal jealousy.

  As I neared Divina Clara’s home I found myself regretting that I did not possess the courage of Sam Genius or Frank Witherspoon either one. Perhaps their professions allowed them that courage by couching it in terms of duty. I did not know. All I knew was that I lacked it.

  And there was another problem. It came to me in the black of a Manila night, on feet as quiet as cat’s paws. It lingered by my bed, cloaked in a satin robe. It unknowingly pressed against me as Divina Clara dropped the robe and slid smoothly underneath my sheets. I had been reading fear in her eyes all evening. Naively I had thought she knew about Yoshiko. But her fear was directed inward, just below her heart.

  Her father was on a business trip to Subic, spending a week with her grandmother while he negotiated two new construction projects with the American navy. Her mother slept just down the hallway, and her aunt was in the room below mine. The moon shone brightly through the window slats. The perfumed air of the garden outside romanced me. It startled me when Divina Clara reached my bed, for I had been dreaming about her.

  In my dream I had been walking alone in the mountains overlooking Atami and had come upon the mud-glazed statue of Kanon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy. But looking up at the goddess’s face, I had seen that she had now become Divina Clara. And instead of staring far away toward Nanking, she was looking down the mountain. I followed her gaze. It ended at a nearby beach, where an inn backed into a rocky grotto. Behind the inn the cold waves spewed like fountain bursts, up into the brittle sky. In the courtyard I could see Yoshiko in a blue kimono, looking up at me as I stood next to the goddess. Her smooth face was immeasurably happy, splashed with salt water and lit by the sun. Behind me I could hear the old priestess inside the shrine, beating on her strange tubular instrument, singing sadly, weeping for atonement. But it was not the Matsui shrine, it was the Jay Marsh shrine. And in my dream I knew that the goddess Kanon at my side had been baked from the mud of Manila, joined with the dust of Tokyo. And that the priestess wept for me.

  Divina Clara was naked, warm, and smooth. Once in my bed she reached behind my shoulders and pulled herself against me. I was immediately aroused, but instead of kissing me she pressed her face into a safe place at the hollow of my neck. She was crying.

  “Do you love me, Jay?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “How much?”

  “With all my heart.”

  “How do I know this?”

  I gently pulled her mane of hair, forcing her to look me in the eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  Holding my eyes, she took my hands and slowly pressed them against her smooth stomach. “I tried to tell you this before.”

  With a suddenness that jolted me fully awake, I finally understood. But still I did not want to believe it. “What?”

  “I’m going to have a baby.”

  She scrutinized me as I stumbled in silence. It’s impossible, I kept saying to myself. Impossible. Not now. Not yet. We’re not married. I don’t even have a home. No, I don’t even have a continent.

  “Are you sure?” I finally said.

  “That was the worst answer you could have given me.” She buried her face into a pillow, hiding her tears. “I don’t think you love me.”

  “I do love you!”

  “Not enough.”

  “I do, Divina Clara!”

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know who I can tell. What do we do, Jay?”

  I was reeling from the shock. I had been in the room with the giants, dealing cleverly with issues that would move or even conceal history. But at that moment I realized that I did not really understand women or even the rules that should run the rhythms of my own life. What should I do? I had no answer in the moon-swept night. MacArthur wanted me back in Tokyo. My plane left in less than six hours. But Divina Clara had been holding this secret inside her for—how long? I did not even know. How could I now simply abandon her?

  She stared at me with a look that hinted of betrayal, as if not believing the truth of her own memories. “I want to know, Jay. When will we be married?”

  I searched inside myself but could not come up with an answer. I felt oddly trapped by the very panic in her eyes. “I’ll tell them I want out of the army,” I said. “I’ll tell them as soon as I get back.”

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  She had stopped crying. Despite her emotions she had an almost chilling acuity. It was I who now was under the klieg lights, although it was Divina Clara whose life was at risk. The foreigner always leaves. It was a story told ten thousand times among the warm and trusting women of the Philippines. She had a baby inside her, and an American lover who now was in bed next to her but tomorrow would be in Japan and in a week or a month could be anywhere, from London to Los Angeles.

  “Whenever you want to, Divina Clara.”

  “I don’t like the answers you’re giving me.”

  Tests are never obvious, that had always been Divina Clara’s credo, and I lay helplessly next to her, knowing I was failing mine. Despite my love for her I felt myself harden in my confusion and resentment.

  “Then maybe you should show me your script.”

  “That was unkind.”

  She was crying again. She sat up, her feet now over the edge of the bed, ready to leave. I pulled her back toward me.

  “I’m sorry. I do love you, Divina Clara. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Have you been with another woman, Jay?”

  She was facing away from me. The moon illuminated her upturned face, giving her a glow that seemed almost spiritual. Watching her I felt as though I were dreaming again and that she was fading from me like a ghost, riding out my window on a moonbeam.

  “Why did you ask that?”

  “Why didn’t you answer it?”

  “Because it doesn’t need an answer.” At that moment I loved her hopelessly and hated not only myself but Marquis Koichi Kido, who in his conniving brilliance had delivered into my weakness the very thing I could not refuse. “But since you asked, the answer is no.”

  She stared into my face for a long time, peering closely, reading my eyes in the shadows of th
e moon. Finally she touched my lips.

  “I will believe that,” she said. “Because I want to.”

  I tried to pull her to me but she pressed against my shoulders, holding me away. She gently kissed my forehead, then slid off the bed, picking up her robe. Her eyes continued to probe my face as she pulled the robe around her naked body.

  I ached for her. “Won’t you stay?”

  “No,” she said. “It wouldn’t be honest of me to make love to you right now. And honesty is the purest form of love, don’t you think, Jay?”

  She is the only person I’ve ever met who could analyze her own emotions with such clarity. And that is why her name has always seemed so apt to me. Divina Clara. Divine Clarity. “Yes,” I said. “I love you.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “Soon,” I answered. “When will we be married?”

  There was an odd finality in her penetrating eyes, as if she had reached a secret resolution.

  “I will think about this. And we’ll talk about it when you come back.”

  CHAPTER 21

  It was still dark. From my open window I could hear the jeep churning and downshifting as it made its way along the unlit street, and then its brakes squealing as it pulled up outside the villa’s walls in front of the house. The driver cut the engine, slammed a door, and it became eerily quiet again. Inside the house, everyone else was still asleep. I had already shaved, dressed, and packed. Hoisting my duffel bag, I crept slowly down the hallway and into Divina Clara’s bedroom, careful that the hard leather heels on my military shoes did not click too loudly on the ancient mahogany floor.

  I had longed for her all through an unsleeping night, thinking of this new reality that had abruptly altered the logic of both our lives. Now I stood just inside the doorway, my eyes searching for her in the darkness. The bed was a storm-twisted pile of puffy pillows and satin sheets. Behind the bed, starshine poured through the window slats. A slight breeze lifted the white lace curtains. Suddenly she stirred, and finally I could see her. She was sitting halfway up in the bed, with her back against two pillows. She was awake, and she was looking at me.