Description
To avoid needless violence and civilian deaths, and to preserve as large a force as possible to continue defensive operations in rural Luzon, Imperial Japanese Army General Tomoyuki Yamashita had ordered a complete withdrawal of Japanese troops from Manila. However, 10,000 marines under Vice Admiral Iwabuchi Sanji disobeyed Yamashita's orders and remained in Manila along with some IJA stragglers.
Various credible Western and Eastern sources agree that the death toll was at least 100,000, tallying to around 10% of the population of the city. The massacre was at its worst in the Battle of Manila, in which the Allies shelled the city of Manila to drive out the Japanese. By the time the Japanese were driven out, the city was in ruins, becoming the second most destroyed Allied capital city during the war, the first being Warsaw in Poland. During lulls in the battle for control of the city, Japanese troops took out their anger and frustration on the civilians caught in the crossfire. Japanese troops looted and burned, and brutally executed, tortured, decapitated and sexually abused women, men and children alike, Red Cross personnel, prisoners of war and hospital patients.
The Manila massacre was one of several major war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army, as judged by the postwar military tribunal. Although General Yamashita had ordered all Japanese forces under his command to withdraw from Manila, and had no control over those who chose to disobey his orders, he was nonetheless judged to be responsible and executed. The Yamashita standard — regarding a commander's responsibility for action taken by anyone under his command — is based upon his trial. This decision is still controversial today.
Read more about this topic: Manila Massacre
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)