On December 7, 1941, Japanese naval aircraft launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, catching U.S. forces completely off guard. The attack killed 2,400 American sailors and soldiers and wounded 1,200 more. Over half of the military aircraft on the ground were damaged or destroyed.
The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan launched its invasion of the Philippines. American and Philippine armies in the region finally surrendered on May 8, 1942.
One month before that surrender, on April 9, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army began a forced march of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war. The 65-mile transfer became known as the Bataan Death March. It was characterized by severe physical abuse and wanton killings, claiming more than 18,000 lives.
The Japanese Lieutenant General responsible for this war crime was Masaharu Homma. He would become known as the Beast of Bataan.
Homma was born on November 27, 1887, in the city of Sado, Japan. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in May 1907 and from the Army Staff College three years later.
He spoke fluent English and studied at Oxford University in England. He loved Western movies and was nicknamed the Poet Shogun because of the paintings and poems he wrote during the First World War.
Homma had a deep respect for the West and served as a military attaché in the United Kingdom for eight years. In 1918, he served with the British Expeditionary Forces in France and was awarded the Military Cross.
By the end of World War I, he was already a father of two children with his first wife, Toshiko. From 1930 to 1932, he was again sent as a military attaché to the United Kingdom.
In 1932, he was part of a Japanese delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. He then served in the press section of the Army Ministry from 1932 to 1933.
From 1933 to 1935, Homma commanded the Imperial Japanese Army 1st Infantry Regiment. He was later promoted to command the Army’s 32nd Infantry Brigade from 1935 to 1936.
In 1937, he was appointed aide-de-camp to Prince Chichibu, a brother of Emperor Hirohito. With the prince, Homma made a diplomatic tour of Western Europe, attending the coronation of King George VI in London.
The visit continued to Germany, where he attended the Nuremberg Rally and met Adolf Hitler. In July 1938, Homma was promoted to lieutenant general.
With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Homma was appointed commander of the Army’s 27th Division in China from 1938 to 1940. He directed the blockade of foreign concessions in Tientsin and led negotiations with the British.
After the fall of Nanjing in December 1937, Homma publicly declared that unless peace was achieved immediately, it would be disastrous. As many as 300,000 civilians and numerous unarmed Chinese soldiers were killed in Nanjing over the course of two months.
On December 8, 1941, the Japanese launched their invasion of the Philippines. Homma was tasked with commanding the Japanese 14th Army, which consisted of more than 43,100 men.
Homma ordered his troops to treat Filipinos not as enemies but as friends, and to respect their customs and religion. In one instance, he halted his column and ordered his soldiers to tighten their formation, believing that soldiers behind them might be looting and raping.
His approach toward Filipino civilians earned him the enmity of his superior, General Hisaichi Terauchi. Terauchi sent unfavorable reports about Homma to Tokyo.
Subversion was also growing within Homma’s command. A small group of insubordinates sent out secret orders in Homma’s name against his policies, including ordering the execution of the Filipino Chief of Justice, Jose Abad Santos, and the attempted execution of former Speaker Manuel Roxas. Homma found out about the attempted execution in time to stop it.
On January 7, 1942, the Battle of Bataan began. It was fought by the United States and the Philippine Commonwealth against Japan and represented the most intense phase of the Japanese invasion.
General Douglas MacArthur, commander-in-chief of U.S. and Filipino forces, consolidated all his Luzon-based units on the Bataan Peninsula. Despite their lack of supplies, American and Filipino forces managed to fight the Japanese for three months.
The American surrender at Bataan on April 9, 1942, was the largest United States surrender in history, with 76,000 soldiers surrendering in the Philippines altogether.
After the battle, Homma and his staff encountered almost twice as many captives as his report had estimated. This created an enormous logistical challenge. There was not enough mechanized transport for the wounded, sick, and weakened masses.
More than 60,000 Filipino and 15,000 American prisoners of war were forced into the Bataan Death March. At the beginning, there were rare instances of kindness by Japanese officers and soldiers who spoke English, such as sharing food and cigarettes.
This was quickly followed by unrelenting brutality, theft, and even knocking men’s teeth out for gold fillings. During the march, prisoners received little food or water and many died.
They were subjected to severe physical abuse, including beatings and torture. The sun treatment was a common form of torture, where prisoners were forced to sit in sweltering direct sunlight without helmets or head coverings.
Anyone who asked for water was shot dead. Some men were told to strip naked or sit within sight of fresh cool water. Trucks drove over some of those who fell or succumbed to fatigue, and clean-up crews killed those too weak to continue.
Prisoners were randomly stabbed with bayonets or beaten. The Japanese did not provide medical care, so U.S. medical personnel tended to the sick and wounded with few or no supplies.
Part of the death march took place in trains in sweltering, brutally hot metal boxcars. At least 100 prisoners were pushed into each unventilated boxcar. The trains had no sanitation facilities, and disease continued to take a heavy toll.
Staff Sergeant Earl Larson later recalled that the boxcars were from the World War I era. He said prisoners were packed in so tight they could not sit down, and if someone had to go to the toilet, they went right there where they were.
Among Allied soldiers, Homma became known as the Beast of Bataan. Sources report death numbers ranging from 5,000 to 18,000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths during the march.
About 10,000 to 12,000 men eventually escaped from the march to form guerrilla units in the mountains. The total distance of the march from Mariveles to San Fernando and from Capas to Camp O’Donnell is reported as between 60 and 69.6 miles.
The death march was later judged by an Allied military commission to be a Japanese war crime.
Despite the Japanese victory, Homma’s deteriorating relationship with the Chief of Imperial Japanese Army General Staff led to his removal from command shortly after the fall of Corregidor. He was thereafter commander of the 14th Army in name only.
In March 1942, MacArthur, his family, and his staff escaped to Australia. Upon his arrival, MacArthur gave a speech in which he promised, “I shall return to the Philippines.”
Japanese forces in the Philippines were ordered to surrender by Tokyo on August 15, 1945, after the dropping of atomic bombs on mainland Japan and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
At the time, Homma was retired from the military and lived in semi-seclusion in Japan. The Imperial General Headquarters had regarded him as not aggressive enough in war and too lenient with the Filipinos in peace. In August 1943, he was forced into retirement.
After the surrender of Japan, American occupation authorities arrested Homma and extradited him to the Philippines. He was tried in Manila by an American tribunal on 48 counts of violating international rules of war relating to the atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bataan Death March.
The responsibility of selecting the venue, defense, prosecution, jury, and rules of evidence belonged to General Douglas MacArthur, a man Homma had beaten on the battlefield.
During his defense, Homma claimed he was so preoccupied with plans for the Corregidor assault that he had forgotten about the prisoners’ treatment. He said he did not learn of the atrocity until after the war, though his headquarters were only 500 feet from the route of the march.
Homma stated in court, “I came to know for the first time in court of the atrocities, and I am ashamed of myself that these atrocities have happened.”
On February 11, 1946, Homma was convicted of all counts and sentenced to death. Originally, he was to be hanged, but at the request of his second wife, Fujiko, he was executed by firing squad.
Homma’s wife visited Douglas MacArthur to urge a careful review of her husband’s case, but MacArthur affirmed the tribunal’s sentence.
Masaharu Homma was executed by firing squad by American forces on April 3, 1946, in Los Baños in the Philippines. He was 58 years old.
General Douglas MacArthur wrote in his review of the case, “If this defendant does not deserve his judicial fate, no man in jurisdictional history ever did. There can be no greater, more heinous, or more dangerous crime than the mass destruction under guise of military authority or military necessity of helpless men incapable of further contribution to war effort.”
Homma’s wife, Fujiko, said, “I am grateful to my husband and want my daughter to marry a man like him. I want to teach my son to be a man like his father and to be a loyal Japanese citizen.”
There were no tears shed for Masaharu Homma.