By 1932, he was chief of military affairs at the imperial headquarters in Tokyo, and two years later he was promoted to major-general. Born in 1885, he graduated from the army academy at the age of 20, in the year that his country’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War marked its emergence as a Great Power.īetween the two world wars he held a variety of military and diplomatic posts. Yamashita’s career almost exactly spanned the period of the rise and fall of Japan’s imperial army. Image: WIPL The twisting path to high command It was sunk within a week of arrival in theatre. The abandonment of the sinking Repulse, one of two capital ships sent to support Singapore. Who was Yamashita, and what part did his skills as a commander play in Japan’s remarkable victory? He is the confident individual, physically rather taller and heavier than the average Japanese soldier, who is to be seen in film footage of the time.Īt Singapore City’s Ford automobile works, he is pictured facing a dejected Percival across the table, demanding an immediate ceasefire. Less well known to a Western audience, however, are the personality and achievements of the Japanese general who led the invasion: Tomoyuki Yamashita. Its loss was one of the darkest moments of the Second World War for the Allied cause, and a severe blow to Britain’s century-old imperial position in southern Asia. The Singapore base was at the centre of Britain’s Far East defences. In the classic photograph, the British commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Percival, is seen walking to meet the victors, accompanied by soldiers carrying the white flag alongside the Union Jack.
Numerous books have been written on the campaign, and black-and-white images of the surrender are shown repeatedly in TV documentaries on the period. Churchill had ordered the garrison to fight to the last. Yet a British and Commonwealth garrison of 130,000 soldiers surrendered to them.
Was the captor of Singapore the greatest Japanese general of the Second World War? Photo: Mary Evansīy the time they reached Singapore, a combination of casualties and exhaustion meant that barely half of the original 60,000-strong force could be classed as combat-effective. General Tomoyuki Yamashita (1885-1946), known as ‘the Tiger of Malaya’ and ‘the Beast of Bataan’.
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