On
this date, February 15, 1942, The British surrendered Singapore to the
Japanese. About 80,000 Indian, United Kingdom and Australian soldiers become prisoners
of war, the largest surrender of British-led military personnel in history. Colonel
Tsuji was one of the Japanese War Criminals during World War II. I will post
information about him from Wikipedia and other links.
 |
|
Masanobu Tsuji
(辻 政信
Tsuji
Masanobu)
|
Nickname
|
The God of Operations
|
Born
|
October 11, 1901
Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan |
Died
|
ca.1961 (age 59-60)
|
Allegiance
|
Empire of Japan
|
Service/branch
|
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA)
|
Years of service
|
1924–1945
|
Rank
|
Rikugun Taisa (Colonel)
|
Battles/wars
|
World War II (Pacific War)
|
Masanobu Tsuji
(辻 政信 Tsuji Masanobu, 11 October 1901 – ca.1961) was a
tactician of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War and later a
politician. He was responsible for developing the detailed operational plans
that allowed for the successful Japanese invasion of Malaya at the outbreak of
the war. He would also go on to take part in planning the final offensive
during the closing stages of the Guadalcanal campaign. While he was never
indicted for war crimes after World War II, subsequent investigations have
revealed that he was involved in or contributed to the execution of various war
crimes throughout the Pacific war including the massacre of Chinese
civilians in Singapore, the mistreatment and executions of prisoners
of war during the Bataan Death March,
the executions of captured government officials of the Philippines, and other
war crimes in China. Masanobu Tsuji was regarded as the most notorious Japanese
war criminal to escape trial after the war. He was a leading proponent of the
concept of gekokujō, "leading from below" or
"loyal insubordination" by acting without or contrary to
authorization.
 |
|
Memorial statue of Masanobu Tsuji at Aratani
machi, Yamanaka onsen, Kaga, Ishikaw
|
Biography
Masunobu
Tsuji was born in the Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan. He received his secondary
education at a military academy and then graduated from the War College.
Tsuji
served as a staff officer in the Kwantung Army in 1937-1939. His aggressive and
insubordinate attitude contributed to the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars,
particularly the Changkufeng Incident/Battle of Lake Khasan and the Nomonhan
Incident/Battle of Khalkhin Gol.
During
the Pacific war he served mainly in Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, and
Guadalcanal. He served as a staff officer under General Tomoyuki Yamashita and
was largely responsible for planning the successful Malayan invasion campaign.
At Guadalcanal, Tsuji planned and led the last two attempted assaults by the
Japanese forces to expel the Americans from the island. Tsuji personally
returned to Tokyo after these failures to urge the evacuation of the troops
from Guadalcanal. He impressed the Emperor with his frankness.
In
Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45, Max Hastings wrote, "Col Masanobu Tsuji [was] a fanatic repeatedly wounded
in action and repeatedly transferred by generals exasperated by his
insubordination. Tsuji once burned down a geisha house to highlight his disgust
at the moral frailty of the officers inside it. His excesses were responsible
for some of the worst Japanese blunders on Guadalcanal. He was directly
responsible for brutalities to prisoners and civilians in every part of the
Japanese empire in which he served. "
After
Japan's surrender in September 1945, Tsuji went into hiding in Thailand for
fear of being tried on war crimes charges. When it was clear he would not be,
he returned to Japan and wrote of his years in hiding in Senkō Sanzenri
(潜行三千里, lit. Lurking 3000 li), which became
a best seller. His memoirs made him famous and he later became a member of the
Diet. In April 1961, he traveled to Laos and was never heard from again.
Presumably a casualty of the Laotian Civil War, he was declared dead on July
20, 1968.
Honors
- Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette.
- Order of the Sacred Treasure, 3rd Class.
- Order of the Golden Kite, 4th Class and 5th Class.
- Decoration of Manchuria, 4th Class and 5th Class.
- Commemoration Medal of the Coronation of Emperor Showa.
- Commemoration Medal of the Census.
- Commemoration Medal of the Founding of Manchuria.
- Commemoration Medal of the 2,600th Year after the Accession of Emperor Jimmu.
- Campaign Medal of the Chinese Incident.
- Campaign Medal of the Manchurian Incident.
 |
|
Japanese Col. Masanobu
Tsuji is shown in this April 1961 file photo in Laos. He shaved his head bald,
disguised himself in the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk. (AP Photo) [PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10945]
|
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.us-japandialogueonpows.org/Nelson.htm
The God of Operations
Putting Tsuji in Manila may not have seemed
significant without knowing Tsuji’s background. Born the son of a humble
charcoal maker in Ishikawa Prefecture on an uncertain date at the turn
of the century, Tsuji proved to be a brilliant student at the Nagoya Yonen
Gakko military school and went on the Military Academy in Tokyo,
graduated from the Japanese War College and was attached to the Army General
Staff in 1921. A rabid ultra-conservative from the start, he immediately
hooked up with Tojo’s Tosei faction and proved to be an adept
conspirator in the defeat of other factions and in helping bring the likes of
Tojo, Sugiyama, and Lt. General Renya Mutaguchi to power. He could easily
be characterized as a fanatical genius.
How fanatical? In the 30’s he divorced his wife and
left her and his children to commit his life completely to the Tosei
faction’s objective of putting the militarists in charge of the Nation. He
believed his enemies could not kill him. As a precursor to the POW
“Hellships,” in June of 1941 while training troops for the Malay invasion, “he
packed thousands of fully equipped Japanese soldiers into the sweltering holds
of ships, three to a tatami [a 3X6 foot flooring mat] and kept them
there for a week with little water.” This was done just to see how many
would be able to still fight when they were let out according to a web
biography of Tsuji at www. fortunecity.com.
Meirion and Susan Harries in their book Soldiers
of the Sun accurately described him as an “exceptionally intelligent staff
officer with a flair for operational planning--- talent vitiated by
megalomaniac ambition, violent prejudices, and a ruthless disregard for human
life.” They also characterize him as one of the “death and glory eccentrics”
who were so popular with Tojo and the Army General Staff and the “most
outstanding example” of "gekokujo," the Japanese version of the young Turks which literally
translated means the victory of inferiors over superiors. Gekokujo
consisted of Army officers in their 30’s who were “too impatient,
immoderate and ambitious,” and who were in the habit of taking matters into
their own hands in their efforts to promote their views of what the Army and
nation should be. General Imamura, arguably Japan’s most
capable General, “ saw the genius in Tsuji---- but also the madman” according
to John Tolland in his book The Rising Sun.
Tsuji was an instigator in Maj. Gen. Ryukichi
Tanaka’s 1932 Shanghai incident contrived to inflame Japanese hatred for the
Chinese according Sogo Takagi, the biographer of Japanese Zen Master Gempo
who was the spiritual leader of the militarists in Manchuria. It was also
Tsuji’s habit to turn on former superiors, and it wasn’t long before he turned
against Tanaka. When Tanaka published an article in a Tokyo officers club
magazine arguing that Japan would lose a war with the United States, “Tsuji
publicly called him a coward” according to Oide’s reading of Tanaka’s Rivalry
History of the Japanese Military Clique.
According to Oide, Tsuji’s also called pre-war
Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye “Japan’s number one coward” for entertaining
efforts to peacefully resolve Japanese American differences. David
Bergamini in his Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, claims that Tsuji went
even further, wanting Konoye killed and became one of the planners of the
“railroad bomb” plot. The plotters intended to kill Konoye by setting off
a bomb on a scheduled trip from Toyko to Yokosuka, but Konoye
resigned and Tojo took over as Prime Minister making the assassination
unnecessary.
On a more personal level he, like many of the Nazi
leaders, was an ascetic. He derided other officers for their interests in
comfortable quarters, night clubs, prostitutes or anything else that might
distract them from what he thought should be their only purpose in life, making
war. He was reputed to have once set fire to a giesha house full of
officers to correct their thinking. On another occasion he turned in one
of his colleagues for corruption to the military police, and that officer
committed suicide. When another officer was looking for Tsuji, he was
told, “Oh, that crazy man lives in a filthy little room behind the stables.”
Tsuji was a “war lover,” and as war approached, he
re-dedicated his life starting it and waging it without mercy on those he saw
as enemies, both foreign and domestic. War for war’s sake suited him
perfectly and he constantly pressed for war first against the Russians, and
then after the Japanese were defeated by Zhukov in the Nomonhan Incident, he
turned his sights on starting a war with the Americans and British. He believed
that anyone who wanted peace should be immediately sent to the front lines as
punishment.
Just before the start of the war Tsuji was
responsible for planning the Malay portion of “Strike South.”
He even did some of his own reconnaissance by air and spying on the
ground. He was then attached to General Yamashita’s 25th Army
as deputy chief operations officer where he earned the nickname “god of
operations,” and took total credit for the campaign even though he was only the
Deputy planner. Some of his fellow officers claimed it was less his
planning skill and more his connections that allowed him to strip the Japanese
Army of its best units for the attack on Singapore.
Once Singapore fell, Tsuji quickly demonstrated his
willingness to commit war crimes as the officer responsible for ordering the Sook
Ching or Operation Clean Up incident. Under the guise of preemptory
attack against possible Chinese Communist guerillas, he drafted the orders to
kill somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 Chinese residents of Singapore.
This fact clearly demonstrates he was both predisposed to and fully capable of
initiating the most unspeakable of atrocities when he felt they suited his
purposes. Even though the killing went on for nearly a month, Yamashita
and his staff only learned of Tsuji’s actions well after the fact since the 25th
army had been moved to Sumatra leaving only an occupation force in Singapore.
 |
|
Masanobu Tsuji
(辻 政信
Tsuji
Masanobu)
|
With Malice of Forethought
By the time Tsuji was ordered to the Philippines,
his star was rapidly on the rise. His planning of the Malaya
campaign had won him the gift of a sword from the Emperor, the highest of honor
a Japanese soldier could receive. In the meantime, Homma’s star was rapidly
waning, Sugiyama wanted to relieve Homma before the end of the Philippine
Campaign and and in August 1942 he did, and Homma was never
given another command.
Almost as soon as the “god of operations” arrived
in Homma’s headquarters, a rumor campaign attributed to Tsuji and the true
believers who followed him began according to numerous sources both Japanese
and American. It intimated to Homma’s other officers and men that
Sugiyama thought that all Bataan POWs should be killed, the Americans because they
were colonialists who exploited Asians and the Filipinos because they had
betrayed their fellow Asians by supporting the Americans. Examples
needed to be made of those who resisted the will of Japan. Tsuji further
rationalized that dead prisoners required less time, energy and resources to be
drawn away from the real objective of driving the defenders of Corregidor into
the sea.
As soon as Bataan fell, Tsuji began using one of
the tricks he had gotten away with in the past. He and his followers
began calling officers in the field and ordering them to kill all the prisoners
under their control, attributing these orders to Sugiyama and the Army General
Staff. Most senior officers disregarded these “orders.” Col.Takeo Imai of
the 141st Infantry received a call from Lt. Col. Umeichi Matsunaga
saying orders from the Army General Staff via Tsuji were to shoot any prisoners
he had under his control. Imai demanded written orders and just in case
written orders did arrive, he had the Filipino and American forces under his
control disarmed and released them sending them up the main road to Balanga
under their own recognizance. In that way he had no prisoners to
shoot. Another Tsuji follower, Major Masayoshi Towatari, phoned Captain
Sokoichi Fujita that his unit, the 142nd Infantry, was to annihilate the
POWs. Fjita refused outright and demanded a Court Marshal for refusing to
obey the order. About an hour later Towatari, called him back and
rescinded the order fearing a Court Marshal might expose Tsuji’s entire plot to
have the prisoners murdered.
Unfortunately, Tsuji’s fake orders did not always
fall on deaf ears. Both the 141st and 142nd
infantry regiments were from the 65th Brigade as was the 122nd.
It was troops from the 65th Brigade, probably from the 122nd,
that did follow the false orders and proceeded to tie and line up about 400
Filipino soldiers from the 91st Division. The officers started
decapitating them with their swords on one end of the line, and the enlisted
men started bayoneting them to death starting on the other end.
Tsuji also urged the assassination of Filipino
political leaders including Jose Santos, a justice of the Philippine Supreme
Court, who was hung, and Manual Roxas who escaped Tsuji’s clutches and became
the President of the Philippines immediately after the war.
Tsuji’s campaign to murder the prisoners may have
been rejected by some senior and middle grade officers, but the rumors that
Tsuji was in charge of the POW operation and that he was acting on orders
directly from the Sugiyama permeated the ranks. The junior officers,
guards and other Japanese troops moving south for the attack on Corregidor who
were already predisposed to killing prisoners thought the rumors gave them
license to commit atrocities with impunity. Those Japanese troops and
junior officers who had not swallowed the fanatic views of Tsuji and his fellow
conspirators paid little attention to this “belly talk,” and treated POWs
decently in at least one case allowing them to ride in trucks to the rail head
at San Fernando and providing them with or allowing them to seek food and
water. Therefore, it would be unfair and inaccurate to characterize all
Japanese troops who were in contact with the POWs as murderous brutes.
The majority, who were brutes, committed atrocities on such a large and
horrible scale during the Bataan Death March that their actions have completely
overshadowed any acts of Japanese kindness and civility toward their captives.
 |
|
Masanobu Tsuji
(辻 政信
Tsuji
Masanobu) [PHOTO SOURCE: http://cn.anoword.com/image/search/k/%E8%BE%BB%E6%94%BF%E4%BF%A1/f/0]
|
Some closing notes on Tsuji.
Tsuji had a well-earned reputation for fearlessness
in battle, but after Japan surrendered, this advocate of having others die or
commit atrocities for their country, donned the robes of a Buddhist monk to
hide from British and American War Crimes Prosecutors. His fellow
conspirator in the Bataan Death March atrocities, Sugiyama, shot himself in the
head and his wife took a dagger to her throat because they could not bare the
shame of surrender. Tsuji, still a hard-core rightist, went to work for a
new master, Chang Kaishek, where he applied his planning skills to the killing
of Chinese Communists before returning to Japan.
In Japan in 1952 Tsuji came out of hiding and
published his escape memoir Underground Escape: 7500 Leagues in Disguise
which was a best seller, and he rode his new found popularity to a seat in the
lower then upper house of the Japanese Diet in the oddly named far right
Liberal Democratic Party which to this day promotes neither liberalism nor
democracy. In 1959 he was tossed out of the LDP for being too far right and
for turning on the party leader and fellow war criminal Nobusuke Kishi.
He then was back to spying again and made a trip to Indochina supposedly on
behalf of Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda. He was last seen leaving Vientiane
Laos for Hanoi on April 20, 1961, and was never seen or heard from again
leading to all kinds of speculation as to his fate and a further of the far
right’s mythologizing of the “god of operations.”
 |
|
A 1959 file photo of Japanese Colonel
Masanobu Tsuji. Newly declassified CIA records, released by the US National
Archives and examined by the Associated Press, document more fully than ever
how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by US
intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. He vanished in Laos in 1961 and
was never seen again. AP [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2007-02/27/content_814517.htm]
|
OTHER LINKS:
No comments:
Post a Comment