Manila massacre

• 1. Introduction

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  The Manila massacre unfolded over a single month in early 1945, leaving at least 100,000 Filipino civilians dead in what had been one of Asia's most storied capital cities. The Battle of Manila ran from the 3rd of February to the 3rd of March 1945, and during its bloody course, Imperial Japanese troops turned their fury on the people they were supposed to be occupying. Schools, hospitals, churches, convents: none offered sanctuary. The questions this story raises are not simply military ones. They reach into the law of war, the limits of command responsibility, and the line between a soldier who pulls the trigger and a general who looks away.

• 2. The Order Ignored

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  General Tomoyuki Yamashita had already decided Manila was indefensible. Calculating that the Sierra Madre mountains of northern Luzon offered far better ground, he ordered a complete withdrawal of all Japanese troops from the capital in January 1945. That order was disregarded by roughly 10,000 Japanese marines under Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, who chose to hold the city. When United States Army forces advanced into Manila to drive the Japanese out, those marines were trapped, surrounded, and furious. During lulls in the urban fighting, they turned on the civilians around them. Violent mutilations, rapes, and massacres swept through San Juan de Dios Hospital, Santa Rosa College, Santo Domingo Church, Manila Cathedral, Paco Church, St. Paul's Convent, and St. Vincent de Paul Church. The troops that Yamashita had tried to remove were now committing some of the worst atrocities of the Pacific war.

• 3. A City Under Siege

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  Japanese forces left a precise documentary trail of their intentions. A military order captured during the battle read: "All people on the battlefield with the exception of Japanese military personnel, Japanese civilians, and special construction units will be put to death." Even women who had joined resistance networks were named as targets. Between the 6th and the 22nd of February 1945, roughly 6,000 non-combatants interned in San Agustin Church in Intramuros were killed; many starved or were used as human shields. On the 10th of February alone, Associate Justice Anacleto Diaz, his two sons, and about 300 others were killed by machine gun fire on Taft Avenue and Padre Faura Street. At the Palacio del Gobernador, a survivor named Dr. Antonio Gisbert described being among fewer than 50 people who lived through the massacre of more than 3,000 men who had been herded into Fort Santiago before being killed two days later. Between the 10th and the 23rd of February, about 4,000 detained persons were starved, tortured, burned alive, or left to die inside Fort Santiago's walls.

• 4. Systematic Violence

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  The Bay View Hotel in the Ermita district was designated by Japanese command as a rape center. Testimony at the subsequent war crimes trial described 400 women and girls being rounded up from Ermita, then subjected to a selection process that chose 25 deemed most beautiful. Many of those selected were 12 to 14 years old. Japanese enlisted men and officers then raped them in rotation at the hotel. At a German club where allied Germans had taken refuge, Japanese soldiers entered and bayoneted infants and children as mothers pleaded for mercy. The violence against 28-year-old Julia Lopez, who was named in testimony, was among the cases documented in graphic detail. Japanese forces also conducted mop-up operations through north Manila, executing more than 54,000 Filipinos, including children, as they swept through town after town. Pregnant women were among those murdered. Filipino civilians attempting to flee were shot on the spot.

• 5. Scale of the Killing

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  Some historians, working from higher casualty estimates for the full battle, argue that the Manila massacre alone killed between 100,000 and 500,000 people, separate from other causes of death during the fighting. The lower bound of 100,000 dead was the combined toll from all causes during the Battle of Manila. American artillery and firepower bore their own share of responsibility: a Japanese estimate attributed 40 percent of total Filipino deaths during the battle to American firepower, and American guns were judged most responsible for the destruction of Manila's architectural and cultural heritage. The De La Salle College massacre on the 12th of February took 16 brothers of the college among its 41 dead. On the 14th of February, about 100 non-combatants were killed at Ateneo de Manila from bombs thrown by Japanese troops. The Masonic Temple massacre in February took at least 100 lives. City block by city block, a capital that had been called the Pearl of the Orient was reduced to rubble.

• 6. Command on Trial

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  Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, whose marines had held Manila in defiance of Yamashita's withdrawal order, committed suicide near the end of the battle before he could be tried. The legal reckoning fell instead on General Tomoyuki Yamashita and his chief of staff Akira Muto. Their trial began in October 1945. The prosecution built a case that extended well beyond Manila: the Palawan massacre of 139 American prisoners of war, the execution of Philippine Army General Vicente Lim in December 1944, wanton killings of guerrillas and civilians without trial, and the massacre of 25,000 civilians in Batangas Province. Yamashita's Kempeitai, the Japanese Army's secret military police, was alleged to have committed war crimes on POWs and civilian internees under his direct command. Philippine Army Generals Lim, Simeon de Jesus, and Fidel Segundo were reportedly beheaded alongside hundreds of others in mass graves by Army soldiers in Manila on Yamashita's orders, before he even left the city.

• 7. The Yamashita Standard

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  Yamashita's defense lawyers argued a chain-of-command technicality: the Manila atrocities were committed by the Navy, not the Army, and Iwabuchi answered to a naval chain of command outside Yamashita's authority. Former war-crimes prosecutor Allan Ryan later argued there was no evidence Yamashita had ordered the massacres, was positioned to prevent them, or even suspected they were coming. The two dissenting justices on the United States Supreme Court called the trial a miscarriage of justice, an exercise in vengeance, and a denial of human rights. But Brigadier General Courtney Whitney, Chief of the Government Section for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, countered that Yamashita's lawyers were using a technicality to excuse a broader systematic campaign. Five of the seven Supreme Court justices agreed; the appeal failed five votes to two. General MacArthur, five other generals, and the Supreme Court all held Yamashita responsible on the grounds that he made no attempt to discover or stop atrocities being committed by troops under his overall command. President Harry S. Truman declined to pardon him or commute his sentence. The principle that a commander bears responsibility for atrocities committed by forces under his authority, even absent a direct order, entered international law as the Yamashita standard. Yamashita was hanged on the 23rd of February 1946 in a camp south of Manila. Muto followed on the 23rd of December 1948.