A Biography of Lt-General Yamashita
Tomoyuki
(1885-1959)
"Tiger Of Java",
Commander Japanese 1st Army
General Tomoyuki Yamashita, was one
of the most capable leaders of the Imperial Japanese Army. Like Yamamoto, he
had opposed the continuation of the war with the Soviet Union,
but showed great skill in fighting, once the negotiations failed. He led the
25th Army in the defense of Harbin, where it defeated a Soviet army twice its
size by repeated advances through the supposedly impassable snowy terrain. Yamashita
was hailed as "the savior of Harbin", but was then sent to a
backwater command in Taiwan by his enemy of long standing, General Tojo.
After Tojo's execution and the
eradication of his faction, and the reorganization of the IJA in the Great
Reform, Yamashita returned from this exile, to take command of the Imperial
Japanese Army, with the task of attack the Dutch East Indies. His plan,
composed of multiple landings in the island of Java between Batavia and
Surabaya, was a complete success. He conducted a stubborn, well-run attack, and
in a month he expulsed the Dutch from Indonesia. For this, he was known as the
“Tiger of Java” Tragically, after his triumph, Yamashita lost his life in a car
accident only six weeks after the Dutch surrendered in Batavia.
Yamashita was born on November 8th,
1885, in a small village on the island of Shikoku. His father was a local
doctor. At 12, he enrolled at the Kainan Middle School, 25 miles from the
village. This was a school founded to educate samurai families’ scions. But the
shogunate that supported the samurai had ceased to exist 20 years earlier.
Japan was under the Meiji constitutional monarchy, which wanted to build a
modern and powerful Japan through industrialization and building a strong army
and navy. Kainan started to train boys in preparation for the newborn army. In
1900, Yamashita was sent to the cadet academy in Hiroshima. He became a skilled
practitioner of kendo and was fourth in his class. After graduating, he set off
for Tokyo, to the Central Military Academy. With the advent of the
Russo-Japanese War in 1904, training was stepped up. But he graduated too late
and held a peacetime appointment with the Eleventh Regiment in Hiroshima.
After several intents, he could
enter into the prestigious General Staff College in Tokyo, where advancement
studies could be taken. He was posted to Switzerland with the Imperial Japanese
Embassy as assistant to the Military Attaché. He became friends of a Imperial Japanese Army captain, Tojo
Hideki, the general who was to lead Japan into war. Yamashita travelled through
Germany and became proficient in the language. He was soon posted to Vienna as
Military Attaché, where he stayed for three years.
On his return to Japan, he was promoted
to colonel and commanded the Third Regiment, one of the strongest in the
Japanese Army. His friend, Colonel Tojo, was now deeply involved in political
in-fighting, which eventually led to an attempted military coup by a group
opposing Tojo's. During all this, Yamashita refused to take sides and was
eventually appointed by the Emperor to put on trial, then execute the rebels.
Yamashita made many enemies, including Tojo. He was promoted to Major-General
and assigned to Keijo (today Seoul), which had been a Japanese colony since
1910. He was then involved in the Sino-Japanese war and commanded a division
that excelled. However, the weakness of the modern Japanese Army came to the
fore. The new command system meant there were abuses. Command of a region was
delegated to divisional and regimental commands which in turn passed it down
the line. Thus a captain would have life or death authority over an area. Rape,
murder and looting by Japanese troops became rife. By 1938, majors and
Lt-Colonels were running the army from staff positions. Yamashita's division
had stricter control and didn't fall into excesses. When the Soviet-japanese
War commenced, he was sent to Harbin, where he fought brilliantly against the
Soviet Army. But Tojo, who controlled the Kwantung army, forced Yamashita to
quit its army, and he was sent to train Taiwanese colonial troops in Taihoku.
In this city he languished, but his demise was a bless in disguise, since he
was spared in the general purge of the IJA after its defeat at the hands of the
Soviets.
In the last half of the 1950s, the
relations between Japan and the Netherlands deteriorated to the point of war.
Yamashita was then recalled to lead the campaign against the Dutch East Indies.
Yamashita embarked on a three-pronged attack, beginning at the Dutch New
Guinea, then to Borneo. With his path cleared, he launched a brilliantly
executed multiple landing on Java, where he defeated the Dutch defenders and
liberated the archipelago.
The capture of Indonesia was a
carefully planned attack which had started when a team led by Colonel Masonobu
Tsuji researched every aspect of tropical warfare for six months in Taiwan and
Palau. But the advance was even swifter than anticipated with Dutch, German and
local forces retreating in disarray due to miscommunication, lack of training
and equipment. The Japanese troops proved nimble, taking Java literally on
bicycles.
On February 28th 1959,
the Dutch troops fell back to hold the roads to Batavia. After been routed by
Yamashita, these forces had to beat a retreat to the city. Although short on
food and water, Yamashita demanded the Dutch surrender. He gambled, saying the
strength of the Japanese forces would destroy the Dutch. With no water
supplies, the general Van Der Laat decided to surrender in March 2nd.
He surrendered a fighting force of about 85,000 to the 36,000 Japanese troops.
Yamashita's feat ranks as one of the greatest and swiftest victories in
history. He had been given 100 days to capture the entire Dutch colonial empire
in Asia, and he did it in 70 days, losing 20,000 men to the 138,000 lost by his
enemies. Yamashita and his 1st Army were honoured in Japan, but
Yamashita never got his hero's welcome. Traveling between Batavia and Bandung,
he suffered and odd car accidents, and he lost his life. Yamashita is thought
to be a pure military man and brilliant soldier, and in his honor, the Imperial
Japanese Army Academy was named after him.
