High Court's 1946 War Crimes Ruling Resounds

But the tide began shifting in favor of the Americans, and in October 1944, Yamashita was sent to Manila to take over the defense of the Philippines. He was soon cut off from much of his army and fled into the mountains. The troops he left behind in the city went on a drunken rampage in the final months of the war, raping and murdering thousands.

Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the victorious U.S. commander in the Pacific, insisted on holding Japanese commanders responsible for atrocities committed by their troops. The first to be charged was the Tiger of Malaya. In October 1945, a month after Japan's formal surrender, Yamashita pleaded not guilty to "a violation of the law of war" for having "failed to provide effective control" of his troops and for "permitting them to commit brutal atrocities" against Americans and Filipinos.

Five officers under MacArthur's command, none of them lawyers, served as the judge and jury. Prosecutors presented evidence of 123 counts of murder, rape and other atrocities committed by Japanese forces, but none of the crimes were directly linked to Yamashita.

The "trial marked the first time in history that the United States as a sovereign power had tried a general of a defeated enemy nation for alleged war crimes," George Guy, one of Yamashita's court-appointed military lawyers, later wrote. Yet "there had not been one word or one shred of evidence in the entire seven weeks of trial to show that Yamashita had ordered or condoned any of the things that had taken place, or that he had knowledge of them."

On Dec. 7, 1945 -- four years to the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- the presiding American general convicted Yamashita and sentenced him to death. The atrocities were "so extensive and so widespread" that they "must have been willfully permitted by the accused or secretly ordered" by him, the American officers concluded.

MacArthur planned to carry out the sentence immediately. But to his surprise, the Supreme Court voted to hear an appeal lodged by Yamashita's defense team, staying the execution.

In the end, six justices decided the matter was for the military to decide, not the federal courts. "We are not concerned with the guilt or innocence of the petitioners" in habeas corpus cases such as Yamashita's, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote for the majority.

Stone added: "If the military tribunals have lawful authority to hear, decide and condemn, their action is not subject to judicial review merely because they have made a wrong decision on disputed facts."