Back in Manila, he was tried by an american War Crimes Board, formed under the direction of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and headed by Maj. Gen. Russell B. Reynolds. He was subsequently found guilty and hanged on February 23rd, 1945.
Yamashita is notorious in Philippine history for the torture and brutal killing of close to 50,000 civilians during the last days of the Japanese occupation. He is also known for the legendary "Treasure of Yamashita" - the wealth, mostly in gold, amassed by the Japanese's looting of asia during the war. According to legend, the treasure is buried in a systematic system of caves in the mountains surrounding Baguio, where we made his last stand. Fact or conspiracy theory?
Why am I posting about this? Yesterday, I got a pleasant surprise in the mail. One of my patients is a WWII veteran, and in casual conversation at the office once, we traded stories about the war in the Philippines. I told him how my great grandfather was an american sergeant who came to the Philippines with Gen. Arthur MacArthur at the turn of the century, and how he was imprisoned by the Japanese with the rest of the americans in the University of Santo Tomas. My patient was with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and he retold how he was involved in rigging up the telecommunication and sound system for the Yamashita trial in Manila.
He mailed me a photograph taken during the trial, and a bill (Japanese peso currency in the occupied Philippines, or what my grandparents referred to as 'Mickey Mouse money') which he had autographed by General Yamashita. In the photo below, you will see his signature both in script and in Japanese characters. Here, you can compare these with an independent sample of his signature.
How cool is that? Thank you!
1 comment:
Wow, that's really cool!
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