Shamed by the United States into abandoning her floundering war crimes trials and investigations, Australia decided to have one last attempt at snaring the other "tiger." The original "tiger of Malaya" was, of course, the victorious Lt. General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of Japan's 25th Army who was ultimately executed by the Americans. The "other tiger" was Lt. General Takuma Nishimura, commander of Japan's elite Konoye Imperial Guards Division, Emperor Hirohito's personal troops. The Australians decided his fate with a secret judicial lynching on Manus Island. Ian Ward's book is accompanied by two appendices of telling documents the military ordered withheld from public release.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
A meticulously researched book. Ward's examination of procedures is clinical and remorseless. -- The Courier Mail, Brisbane, Australia. October, 1996.
What the author hammers is the rush to justice, the desire for vengeance and the appeasement of the Australian public... -- Sunday Mail, Adelaide, South Australia. October, 1996.
What the author hammers is the rush to justice, the desire for vengeance and the appeasement of the Australian public... -- Sunday Mail, Adelaide, South Australia. October, 1996.
About the Author
Ian Ward was the South East Asian correspondent for the Daily Telegraph London for nearly 30 years. During these three decades he reported on regional conflicts. He is now a military historian and lives in Singapore.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Falling Into the Tiger Trap,
This review is from: Snaring the Other Tiger (Paperback)
Ian Ward's "Snaring the Other Tiger" draws on extensive research in the National Archives of Australia. Therefore it should be a good, solid, work of history. However, from my own research into those same War Crimes files, I can say that Ward's main conclusions have been miscarried, due to his subjectivity...
Although this book contains some insightful eyewitness statements and enlightening photographs of General Nishimura, it has also been publicly criticised by author Lynette Silver ("The Bridge at Parit Sulong") for suppressing some key Archival evidence. While Silver's own book has many problems, and her criticism comes across as overly shrill, Ward does indeed appear to have disregarded some vital evidence held in the official files. The reason for his behaviour was probably because Ward already possessed conflicting texts implying that the key investigator of Nishimura's case, Captain James Godwin, had been an embittered and biased person who had tampered with the official documents. Sadly though, Ian Ward has been seriously misled in this belief. The damning "evidence" about Godwin's character was created by a forger named James MacKay in the mid-1990s. I am quite confident in stating this, as I am the co-author of an analysis of MacKay's historical forgeries, published in the "Journal of Military History" in 2007. (On Page 3 of Ward's book, there's even an effusive acknowledgement to James MacKay - which Ward probably now regrets!) The following sections of "Snaring the Other Tiger" should *not* be accepted as accurate history: Page 114-115. Most of the text on these pages is derived from MacKay's "Betrayal in High Places" (hereafter: "BIHP") and is not historical. The half-page "Godwin diary" quote - which Ward uses to condemn Godwin's character - is copied from BIHP p101 and is completely fictitious. However, one area where Ward did not accept MacKay's word is where Ward mentions Godwin's "smattering of Japanese". After interviewing Godwin's relatives, Ward must have developed doubts about MacKay's repeated assertion that Godwin had acquired a very high proficiency in spoken and written Japanese language during his time as a POW in Japan. p129-131. The purported Godwin diary entries, and the reports on Godwin's state of mind, are all fictitious and straight out of BIHP. Ward's extensive analysis is therefore baseless. p132-133. Ward's careful comparison of the differences between MacKay's fakes (originally BIHP p237-241) and the genuine Court documents should have convinced him that Mackay was a forger. Instead, amazingly, Ward assumes the opposite, that the Court documents had been manipulated by a vindictive Godwin! Ward even accepted purported copies of the "original" documents from MacKay without question, and published photographs of them on p330-333. The obvious format and typeface discrepancies of the fakes, not to mention MacKay's purple prose, should have warned Ward that he was being conned. p134-135: The American "censure" of Godwin that Ward repeats is complete fiction, from BIHP p208 and p215, as are the "Godwin diary" entries that Ward discusses in these two pages. p136-138, The accusation by Ward that Godwin flouted the Official Secrets Act, by deciding to smuggle out documents, is again wholly founded on MacKay's fake storyline from BIHP p217, p219 and p221. (In fact, the small file of documents which Godwin did keep as a souvenir, after his Tokyo War Crimes office was closed down, merely contained Godwin's own - completely unclassified - carbon copies of his Weekly Reports. The file containing these papers was only a few centimetres thick in its entirety - certainly not a tea chest full, and Godwin never attempted to publish them - contrary to MacKay's story. The signed originals of all of these documents can be seen today, undisturbed, in the National Archives of Australia.) p139. Ward's discussion that Godwin had stolen a valuable document, "clearing Nishimura of the stigma of guilt over the Chinese Massacre," is probably the most risible conclusion in this book. (See the note about p334-339 below.) p140-142. Ward performs further extensive but doomed analysis of discrepancies between MacKay's fakes and Court documents, and repeats MacKay's assertions that Godwin made off with an enormous file of stolen papers, weighing "200 pounds". None of this has any basis in truth. Page 246. Ward's own doubts about Godwin are echoed here, but his evidence - about the American "complaints", Godwin's "clandestine cache" and the purported vindictive Godwin diary "quotes" - is entirely MacKay fiction. p330-333. Photographs of two obvious typewritten MacKay fakes. p334-339. Ward gets excited over another MacKay fake "confirming" the Colonel Tsuji cover-up. (Tsuji was the subject of Ward's own 1992 book, "The Killer They Called a God".) Ironically, MacKay probably used TKTCAG as his source in creating this faked report! (Originally p122-125 of BIHP.) It is a sobering illustration of the blindness of human nature that Ward could not even recognise his own work being fed back to him by the forger MacKay. (And Ward was obviously keen to trumpet this "discovery", since this Appendix is entirely irrelevant to the subject matter of the rest of this book, namely General Nishimura and the massacre at Parit Sulong.)
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another example of justice going off the rails,
By Tom Munro "tomfrombrunswick" (Melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Snaring the Other Tiger (Paperback)
The behavior of the Japanese was so appalling during the war that there was immense pressure for them to be punished for what had happened. The desire for retribution created questionable decisions in a number of cases. General Tomoyuki Yamahsita had conquered Malaya and was one of Japans more successful military leaders. Late in the war he was responsible for the defense of the Philippines. The reason he was put on trial and executed related to the treatment of Phillipino civilians prior to the siege of Manilla. Detachment of Marines under his command raped and killed large numbers of innocent civilians before fighting a bloody Defence of the city. The incident was a horrendous one but the reality was complex. Yamahsita had decided that the best way to resist the American forces which had superiority in tanks and aircraft was to retreat to the hills in North Luzon and to fight a guerilla war. He ordered his units to carry out those orders but the marine units in Manilla rebelled and declared that they wanted to fight for the capital. In there view a retreat would lead to a loss of honor. At his trial these facts were not in dispute. Yamahsita however was convicted and sentenced to death. The rational was that as the commander of the Philippines he had a responsibility for all of the units nominally under his command. This extended to rebellious units who were defying his command. His execution has been viewed by Japan as a miscarriage of justice and an example of judicial murder. Ian Ward has written a book about the trial of General Takuma Nishimura the most highly ranked Japanese officer tried by Australia. It suggests that again justice may have miscarried. The background to the incident is that of the Parit Sulong Massacre. On January 22 1942 units of the Australian 8th Division retreated from Parit Sulong leaving in a hospital some 150 badly injured men. What happened was that Japanese soldiers dragged these 150 men from their hospital. They were then shot some who survived the bullets were bound with fencing had petrol poured on them and set them alight. One man Lt Ben Hackney escaped as he had not been tied to the others but was later recapturec. During his captivity Hackney decided that the perpetuators of this act should be brought to justice. Other prisoners suggested that he write down what had happened so that he would be able to give evidence after the war. His memory of the incident was that a high ranking Japanese General had spoken to the men who carried out the massacre directly prior to the incident and he assumed that he was responsible for giving the order. That man was identified as General Nishumura. The trial came down to a simple question. Had General Nishumura ordered the death of the captives or had it been an un-authorized act carried out by some of his subordinates. The prosecuting authority did not call witnesses but relied on depositions. The Defence simply called Nishumura who gave evidence that he had not made any orders for the prisoners deaths. The case was finished within a day and was something of a record for a capital case. As the subordinate officers were not called they could not be cross examined. In a case such as this there would normally would have been considerable cross examination. It was the practice in these sorts of trials to give a considerable sentencing discount to such witnesses for instance in this case they would avoided the death penalty. Witnesses have a lot of reasons to lie and to implicate others. The author of the book however raises further material of relevance. The investigation of this case was Captain Godwin. Godwin had been a prisoner of war and during his confinement had been tortured and starved. He lost 75% of his body weight when a prisoner. It seemed that he developed considerable hatred for his captors as a result. He prepared the case against Nishumura. During his investigation he came across Lt Seizaburo Fujita. Fujita freely admitted to being the officer who ordered the deaths of the Australian prisoners. He was not arrested and it would seem clear that the interrogation of Fujita was poor and carried out in such a way to ensure finding material that implicated Nishumura rather than looked at the case objectively. The statement taken from him appeared short and coached. Other material he gathered appeared to have been summarized and edited to remove important discrepancies between witness statements. Further stole a document from the Japanese archive to stop it going into evidence. It was a Japanese report by the officer who carried out the massacre that to some extent assisted the Defence case. The Defence in Australian war crimes trials was provided by Japanese Civil Lawyers who had limited experience in criminal trials no knowledge of Australian Law and whose living arrangements made it difficult for them to consult with other lawyers. (They were detained as prisoners) After Nishumura was was found guilty he was sentenced to death. His lawyers then returned to Japan and interviewed the witnesses who had given the depositions which had resulted in conviction. All of them said that Godwin in taking the depositions had told them what he wanted them to say and made threats that they would be arrested if they did not say the right thing. Affidavits from these witnesses were not successful in getting a retrial. Clearly if the lawyers representing Nishumura had been able to prepare the trial properly by obtaining this evidence prior to the trial the outcome would have been different. Ironically one of the Tribunal members who heard Nishumura's case was hospitalized immediately after the hearing. It would seem that he was probably insane during the proceedings. All in all if the author is correct this trial is one that brings no credit on Australia.
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