Yamashita was clearly innocent of what happened in Manilla.He had no real cxontrol over the troops in Manilla who were navy.Yamashita had oredered Manilla to be evacuated.The navy troops disregarded his order. Yamashita had even not much effective control over his own army troops as command and control had completely broken down. In general a military commander should certainly never get a death penalty when he did not order or commit warcrimes.Automatically making a commander criminally responsable for any act committed by one of his soldiers already goes much too far. And then there is the fact that there was no international penal law during the second world war.An officer was therefore only bound by the military criminal law of his own country. Yamashita clearly should never have gotten the death penalty. The Yamashita trial was a show trial and therefore a disgrace for Macarthur.
