The Causes of the Bataan Death March Revisited
By Jim Nelson
The fall of the Philippines was the largest defeat of an American armed force in the
history of the United States, and the Bataan Death March was the most brutal series of
war crimes ever committed against surrendering American or Philippine soldiers. The
International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), the Pacific War’s equivalent of
the Nuremburg trials formally established the general extent and kind of atrocities
committed by Japanese troops but did not fully determine all of the causes that
contributed to the Death March. To some degree the IMTFE’s inability to find and
understand all of the causal factors led to a situation in which some of the less culpable
were executed and some of the most culpable escaped justice.
The objective of this article is to briefly delineate the extent and nature of these atrocities
and then to examine in greater detail the multiple causes of the Death March. The article
draws from older analyses of Death March causes such as Stanley L. Falk’s excellent,
Bataan: The March of Death and will be drawing from previously untranslated Japanese
sources which offer several significant and new perspectives on what caused the horrors
of the Bataan Death March. Taken together it is hoped the reader will derive a better
understanding of the whys of the Death March including the cultural, competence,
conspiratorial, personality, and political factors that came together on April 9, 1942, in
Bataan to create one of the most shocking crimes of World War II.
The Extent of the Atrocities
In addition to the Tribunal records, various historians have tried with varying degrees of
success to determine the extent of atrocities. I say tried because the fog of battle and
other factors make determining the exact scale of the atrocities impossible. The Death
March lasted for nearly three weeks starting on April 9, 1942, the day Major General
Edward King Jr. surrendered, until virtually all the POWs were relocated in Camp
O’Donnell, the final destination of the Death March, by about May 1, 1942.
We know that the bulk of American and Philippine troops on Luzon retreated to Bataan
along with somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 Filipino civilians. The generally cited
number of civilians is usually 26,000. The estimates on the number of Filipino and
American troops captured also vary greatly. The number of Americans captured on
Bataan ranges from a low of about 9,000 to a high of about 15,000, and the estimates of
the number of Americans killed during the Death March ranges from a low of 600 to a
high of 1,500. The Philippine troops faired much worse. There were between 60,000
and 70,000 Philippine troops on Bataan at the time of the surrender. Of those, estimates
range from as few as 5,000 to as many as 25,000 who never reached Camp O’Donnell.
The generally accepted total number of defenders on Bataan at the start of the Japanese
final offensive is about 78,000. The generally accepted number of POWs who arrived at
Camp O’Donnell is about 55,000 leading to the generally accepted number of POWs who
died during the March at about 20,000. However, the estimates of how many troops were
captured, how many arrived at Camp O’Donnell and how many died varies because:

An undetermined number of Philippine troops simply melted back into the general
population on Bataan.

On Bataan, record keeping was hampered by the often ad hoc assembly of new units
composed of stranded airmen and sailors fighting as infantry.

When comparing regimental rosters to histories and veteran commentaries, the
rosters were inaccurate given the disbursement of the troops, the dense jungle on
Bataan, and the lack of dependable communications.

No single review of all existing rosters has been made in an effort to extrapolate
percentages of how many men died or were wounded prior to the surrender.

The organizational structure of units captured had already begun to come apart during
their disorganized retreat down the Peninsula, and came further apart after the
surrender when officers were separated from their men by the Japanese or by
circumstance. Further, the units became so intermingled captives might not know
anyone else in their column on the march north to San Fernando.

POWs were considered the responsibility of field commanders until they reached a
POW camp. Then the POWs were transferred to the control of the Prisoner of War
Management Office (Furyo Kanribu) that shared its small staff with the Prisoner of War
Information Bureau (Furyo Johokyoku) whose responsibility it was to compile rosters
of Prisoners. As a result, no accurate POW numbers were available prior to and for
quite some time after the March even though American officers did try to make
estimates of how many men were in Camp O’Donnell.

The Japanese Camp Commander began trying to assemble a count of the prisoners in
his charge, but prisoners arriving over the course of three weeks and a large number
were dying in the camp making this task difficult.

An undetermined number of American and Filipino troops refused to surrender and
escaped to Corregidor Island or escaped into the mountains to become guerilla forces.
Without an exact number of those captured and an exact number of those who arrived at
Camp O’Donnell the death toll of the March will forever remain the subject of debate.
The Nature of the Atrocities
Mortality during the Death March came in all forms. First, there were “natural causes,”
dehydration, sunstroke, disease, exhaustion or wounds, causing men to fall out of the line
of march which in most cases was a death sentence since there were too few guards and
many, rather than chance their prisoners escaping, bayoneted or shot them where they
fell. Some groups had no water for days and died of dehydration. Japanese trucks or
tanks moving south on the same road deliberately ran some down. Some were killed or
knocked unconscious by blows to the head by Japanese troops in the passing trucks.
While Japanese enlisted men used their bayonets on prisoners, Japanese officers used
their swords to behead prisoners. Some men were killed for no reason, some were killed
because they did not follow orders from the guards given in Japanese, and some were
killed because they refused to give up rings or other valuables in their possession.
Ironically, any POW caught with any Japanese battle souvenirs on him was immediately
killed. In one case a Japanese officer killed a man for his Mickey Mouse Watch. Men
were buried alive or were forced at gunpoint to kill their own comrades by guards. There
was one case of mass murder where approximately 400 Philippine soldiers from the 91st
Division were lined up, given cigarettes and then massacred by men from the Japanese
65th Brigade; more on that later. Morbidity and in many cases additional deaths after the
March were caused by beatings, untreated wounds, or additional wounds inflicted during
the March. Unsanitary conditions at rest points caused further spread of tropical diseases
like dysentery. These were the nature of the crimes.
In the Past
Prior to World War II, Japan had a reputation for properly treating its prisoners of war.
Russian prisoners of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 and German prisoners from
World War I generally remarked about the good treatment they had received from the
Japanese. During World War I, Japan captured approximately 4,500 German prisoners
and held them in 15 camps on the Home Islands. Probably the best known of those
camps was Naruto’s fenceless Bando Camp where German POWs mingled with the local
population exchanging ideas from animal husbandry to philosophy while drinking beer
and eating sausages at picnics and attending concerts with Japanese and German music.
Granted most camps were not that idyllic. Some POWs were poorly treated in a few
camps, but there is no evidence of ill treatment even approaching that committed in
World War II.
During the Meiji restoration, Japan was trying to break out of its isolation and trying to
catch up with Europe and the United States in terms of technology, military capability
and was becoming more of a world citizen including active participation in the rules of
warfare. Japan signed and ratified the Hague Convention of 1907 including its provisions
for Prisoners of War and was one of the Convention’s enforcement countries. Although
Japan signed both the Red Cross and the Geneva POW Conventions in 1929, the Privy
Council, due to opposition from the Japanese military, did not ratify the Conventions.
Nonetheless, Japan scrupulously adhered to the Hague Conventions prior to World War
II and almost completely disregarded them in World War II.
The Japanese Army and Navy General Staff had a series of rationales for not adhering to
these agreements according to Keijiro Ohtani in his book Horyo ( POWs).

Since there would be no Japanese POWs because all Japanese were expected to
die before capture, they thought the agreements were one-sided.

They were afraid that the Red Cross representatives who were allowed to visit
with POWs privately might be spies.

They were afraid that if they treated prisoners according to the Conventions,
American pilots would be able to do one-way missions from greater ranges
subjecting the home islands to bombing.

Finally, they felt that if they had to treat POWs according to the Conventions
they would have to treat them better than they treated their own soldiers, but
more on that later as well.
But, what so dramatically changed Japanese attitudes and behavior toward Prisoners of
War?
2nd Class World Citizen
Some theorize that one of the causes for the change in the treatment of American POWs
resulted from the Japanese claims that they were insulted by the Portsmouth Treaty which
had been mediated by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to end the Russo-Japanese War
in 1905, or the American passage of blatantly racist land and immigration laws in the
1920’s, or the “5-5-3 Battleship ratio” in the 1922 Washington Naval Disarmament
Conference, or all three. These hot buttons were propagandized by the Japanese
militarists in an effort to stir up hate toward the United States, so they may have
contributed to some lesser degree to the change of attitude regarding POWs. However,
there was no effort to single out Americans for harsher treatment than that received by
the British and other white POWs. In fact the treatment of Chinese POWs was worse, so
it is likely that their direct effect was minimal.
The Shame of Surrender Codified
Kenjiro Ohtani argues more effectively that for a Japanese soldier being captured was
literally a fate worse than death that placed a permanent stain of great shame not only on
the soldier but also on his entire family. He traced this concept back in Japanese history
and found references to it that harkened back to the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868).
But again, this tradition existed prior to both the Russo- Japanese War and World War I.
So what had changed? Ohtani points out that during the interwar years between World
War I and World War II, Japanese Army leaders saw advantage in having every soldier
fight to the death and codified the shamefulness of capture in the Senjin Kun (Ethics in
Battle) manual that began being issued to Japanese troops as early as January of 1941,
although some troops didn’t see a copy until as late as 1943.
The stated purpose of the manual was to attempt to prevent another Nanking Massacre
where hundreds of thousands of Chinese were systematically murdered and raped when
Japanese troops went on a rampage after capturing the city. But the manual’s heavy
emphasis that surrender was so shameful that killing one’s self was the preferred course
of action in the event capture was imminent, provided an irrefutable logic to Japanese
soldiers that any enemy troops they captured were by virtue of their capture shameful
sub-humans and deserving the harshest of treatment. This perspective was probably
magnified when the POWs, instead of being deeply ashamed of being captured, showed
none of the terrible shame their captors expected making them even more reprehensible
from the viewpoint of the Japanese soldier.
Cruelty Breeds Cruelty
The shame of capture was only one of several “cultural” aspects of the Japanese Army
that led to atrocities. The second aspect of the Japanese Army culture was its atrocious
treatment of its own soldiers, treatment so appalling that it would have been condemned
in all other combatant armies of the War with the possible exception of Russian and
Chinese Armies whose troops were also frequently treated as cannon fodder. The Army
had corrupted the Bushido code where Samurai were respected and treated fairly by their
liege lords and used the code as an excuse to abuse its own soldiers. The Army high
command realized that American and European armies were generally better equipped
and better supplied than the Japanese Army. To counterbalance these shortcomings the
Army heavily promoted this new spirit of Bushido that expected that spirit would
overcome the Army’s inability to provide the level of material support expected in other
armies of the period and brutality would keep dissenters in line. As a result public
corporal punishment was not only allowed it was encouraged.
The old story was that the Japanese Lieutenant, upset by criticism from his Captain,
slapped and kicked the Sergeant, the Sergeant slapped and kicked the Corporal, the
Corporal slapped and kicked the Private, and the Private went to the barn and slapped and
kicked the horse. American and Filipino soldiers were not subjected to this kind of
treatment from officers or even non-coms. It was against American Army policy for
officers or anyone else to go around beating up on those of lesser rank as a means to
maintain discipline. For the POWs, slapping, kicking, and beatings by the Japanese were
unwarranted brutality. For the Japanese soldier, it was a way of army life, and the more
frustrated he became with prisoners who could not understand him or follow his orders,
the more violent he became.
The POWs also replaced the horse as the bottom of the military hierarchy. They often
became the object of the Japanese enlisted man’s frustration, anger and retribution for
past grievances and inequities real or imagined within his own Army. The Japanese
Private finally had someone lower on the totem pole that he could kick, slap, beat, torture
and even kill with complete impunity. Imagine the rush of power these formerly lowest
of the low must have felt when put in charge of POWs.
The Other Side of the Culture Coin
Unlike the average Japanese citizen or soldier whose life was rather insular and more
prone to the effects of militarist propaganda, another part of the Army culture that carried
over from the Meiji period was to have officers make extended visits to Europe and the
United States to study their cultures and military methods as part of the effort to rapidly
bring Japan into the modern world. For some officers this experience only hardened their
ultra-conservative views that Europeans and American were rich, soft and complacent
while other more open-minded officers including Lt. General Masaharu Homma carefully
studied these other cultures and acquired an understanding of and respect for them. The
world view of officers like Homma extended well beyond the narrow mindedness of their
superiors in the ultra militant Tosei (Control) faction. It was these officers of a more
sophisticated and liberal bent that tried to counterbalance the excess of their fanatical
comrades and leaders. Unfortunately, for them their efforts often led to being relieved of
command as was Homma and many of his staff for being “too soft” on the enemy.
Equally unfortunately for the POWs, their efforts to protect the POWs in their charge was
overwhelmed by the fanatics. Were it not for these officers trying to mitigate the criminal
behavior of their colleagues the fate of the POWs would undoubtedly been much worse.
The Propaganda of Hate
Add to this Army culture of violence the hate propaganda built into the Japanese soldier’s
military education and training by ultra-conservative officers and the average Japanese
soldier became a walking time bomb of brutality just waiting to explode. Hate
Europeans, hate Americans, hate other Asians who worked with or fought for their
countries under white officers was a pervasive theme that poisoned the minds not only of
soldiers but the Japanese population in general from children to the elderly.
During and after the war and even today, many Americans think the cruelties perpetrated
on POWs were a flaw in the Japanese culture and cruel streak in the national character.
Attempts by Japanese government officials, educators and corporate leaders to disavow
or minimize these atrocities continue to reinforce and harden that belief in the minds of
many Americans and Europeans and among their fellow Asians. Of course, it is as
ridiculous to characterize the Japanese people as cruel as it is to characterize all
Americans as loud and uncouth, the French as arrogant, or the Germans as cold and
uncaring. National cultures are not cruel, loud, arrogant or cold, but individuals in those
cultures are, and when cruel and heartless fanatics rise to power, take over the
government of a country as the militant leaders of the Japanese Army did, they can
corrupt the body politic as well as their own military institutions.
Birds of a feather
Japan was not alone in having its long history of civilization corrupted by this wartime
anomaly. The Nazis did the same thing to Germany when they began touting Germanic
racial purity and the Thousand Year Reich reigning over Europe. They justified their
invasion of other countries by creating sham attacks on their soil and citizens and
justified other invasions by the supposed need for the innocent sounding lebensraum
“living space.” Their hatred was directed primarily at Jews, the disabled, gypsies, Slavs
and other unter-menchen (sub-humans) and anyone who did not agree with them.
In Japan, General Hideki Tojo and the Tosei faction were equally effective in promoting
their ultra-conservation program after ruthlessly defeating the voices of moderation and
liberalism and taking over the Japanese Government . They touted the purity of the
Yamato race and the concept of the Leading Nation (shido minozoku) fulfilling its destiny
by putting “the eight corners of the world under one roof (hakko ichiu).” They
manufactured the Manchurian rail and Marco Polo Bridge incidents as excuses for the
initial invasions to create the equally innocent sounding Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere (Dai Toa Kyoei-ken) in what was to be their first step to what they thought would
be world domination. Their wrath fell primarily on their conquered Asian brothers,
particularly the Chinese, on their white military and civilian captives and on fellow
Japanese who did not agree with them. These right wing fanatics appealed to the basest
of human instincts, and the Japanese people like the German people were manipulated
into these aberrations and were brought to destruction by them. This pervasive agenda of
hate was also a major but indirect re-enforcer of the horrendous atrocities committed on
POWs. When you know your friends, your family and your society appear to totally
support brutalizing prisoners, it becomes much easier to do.
Homma
In addition to the cultural effects of the militarists on the Japanese nation and Army there
were also the personal characteristics and professional relationships between Japanese
field grade and senior officers that played a major role in the atrocities that followed the
Japanese victory over the American and Filipino troops on Bataan. As mentioned before,
General Homma, Commander of the 14th Army in the Philippines, was one of the more
liberal and well traveled of the Japanese senior officers and was demonstrably opposed to
the atrocities committed under his command. Yet, after the war, it was he who was
blamed for the war crimes committed by his troops in the Philippines and was executed
by firing squad while the real culprits escaped justice. Homma’s culpability was based
mainly upon the fact that he was in overall command of the 14th Army. Homma could
also be accused of not paying close enough attention to both the details of the plan to
remove the prisoners from Bataan and the control the subordinate officers who
contravened his orders to treat the POWs kindly and encouraged their men to commit
vicious atrocities.
Homma came from an affluent family on Sado Island and was
known as the “Poet General.” He spoke excellent English and
had a reputation for being a brilliant tactician and organizer.
He was also described as sensitive, bookish, anti-social and an
anglophile who believed that Japan should not go to war with
England or the United States. The latter traits and the fact that
his first wife turned to prostitution forcing him to divorce her,
all worked against his career, but his intelligence and skill
overshadowed his personal problems and political views and
landed him the command of the 14th Army at the age of 54.
So, it is doubtful his intention was to create a series of atrocities that shocked the world.
This is especially true since he took reasonable steps to prevent the mistreatment of his
prisoners and still meet his primary objective of getting the POWs out of his staging zone
for his assault on Corregidor; more on that later.
Homma’s Nemesis
Homma had several factors working against his effort to have the POW’s treated
properly. The first of these was his relationship with his superiors and some of his more
fanatical subordinates who were conspiring to promote the atrocities he was seeking to
avoid.
The problems began the day he was given command of the 14th Army according to
Masanori Ito’s Teikoku Rikugun no Saigo, Shinko-hen ( The Last of the Imperial ArmyAdvancement). Ito describes Homma’s meeting with Army Chief of Staff Hajime
Sugiyama in some detail. In early November of 1941 Sugiyama secretly invited Lt.
Generals Homma, Tomoyuki Yamashita and Hitoshi Imamura to discuss the coming war
with the United States and Britain and assign them to their new commands. Homma who
felt that war with both of these powers was a mistake and had no lost love for Sugiyama.
He openly challenged him in front of the other officers saying, “Don’t you think it is too
much to ask to capture Manila within fifty days of the outbreak of the war without any
knowledge on the enemy strength and equipment, and that with the limited number of
only two divisions? I think it is more appropriate to ask the opinion of the Army
Commander after thoroughly studying the strength and preparedness on both sides.”
According to Itho, “Sugiyama became blue in the face… and his hands trembling with
anger [as his] gentle look turned to a sour face.” He discharged every one of his pent-up
emotions and said, “This is the conclusions based on the studies of the AGS.”
The ill will between Homma and Sugiyama increased during the campaign. Initially,
Homma was charged with taking Manila, at which point Sugiyama and his staff assumed
the Fil-Americans would surrender. Homma accomplished this charge in less than two
weeks with Japanese troops landing on the Philippines on December 22 entering Manila
on January 2, 1942. According to reporter Masukichi Okada’s Nihon Rikugun Eiketsu-den
(The Extraordinary Characters of the Imperial Army), Lt. General Masami Maeda,
Homma’s Chief of Staff, wanted to stick to the original plan that if the American and
Philippine troops retreated to Bataan they no longer posed a threat and Homma had met
the strategic objective of keeping the Philippine forces from interfering with the primary
thrust of the centrifugal advance, the capture of resources in the Dutch East Indies.
Maeda argued that rather than waste Japanese troops, Homma should simply keep the
Americans and Filipinos blockaded in Bataan and wait for them to surrender or starve
since they had no access to additional supplies or reinforcement, and Homma agreed with
him. Ironically, this same strategy was used by General Douglas McArthur on the
Japanese later in the war when he simply left surrounded Japanese island garrisons like
Rabaul to wither on the vine and saving many American lives.
Sugiyama, however, was furious about American propaganda to the effect that the entire
Japanese Army was unable to crush the heroic little band of Americans and Filipino’s
holding out on Bataan. In a fit of pique at what he saw as an insult to the Army he
changed the original plan to simply cordon off Bataan. He relieved and transferred
Maeda and replaced him with Major General Takaji, Wachi, one of his cronies, and then
demanded that Homma attack Bataan and defeat the Filipino–American force in detail.
Interestingly, Sugiyama was not the only one angry about this kind of propaganda. The
troops on Bataan and Corregidor complained bitterly about William Winter’s radio
broadcasts on KGEI in San Francisco who kept goading the Japanese by saying things
like, “go ahead and try to bomb Corregidor.” They resented the false bravado of someone
in the States urging the Japanese to do their worst when they were on the receiving end of
the bombs and shells.
Sugiyama’s demand to have Homma continue to attack Bataan changed Homma’s
objective significantly. Instead of defeating the defenders of the Philippines in a mobile
running battle on the open Luzon plain where there were no fixed defenses, he was now
faced with attacking a well-entrenched foe fighting for its very survival. To further
complicate his problems his 5th Air Group, the equivalent of a U.S. Numbered Air Force,
was transferred to Burma and the experienced 48th Division, his best division, was
transferred to the 16th Army for its attack on Java. The 48th Division was replaced by
what had been described as a “garrison force” of the 65th Brigade.
Sugiyama was also holding him to the 50-day deadline not just to capture Manila but also
to capture all of the Philippines. As the 14th Army slammed up against the defenses in
Bataan, he lacked the manpower and artillery to succeed. Under these conditions he was
forced to go, hat in hand, to seek reinforcements, which Sugiyama gave him but only
after several attempts to dislodge the defenders failed. At this point Homma had lost a
great deal of face since he was now well past the 50 day deadline.
Sugiyama even tried to get him to commit suicide by authoring and sending him a
missive under the Emperor’s name. Had it actually been from the Emperor Homma’s
only course of action would have been to die at his own hand. There were even rumors
circulating among the Filipinos and Americans that Homma had committed seppku, ritual
suicide, due to his inability to crush the Bataan defenders. To heap insult upon injury,
Sugiyama and his High Command entourage decided to pay Homma a visit and flew to
Manila on April 3, 1942.
Sugiyama and the General Staff arriving in Manila
Friday, April 3, was also the anniversary of the death of the first Japanese Emperor
Jimmu and the date Homma, now reinforced, opened his final offensive to take Bataan,
known by the Americans as the Easter Offensive. Although Homma felt the offensive
would take a month, Bataan’s diseased defenders, out of food and out of ammunition
only lasted six more days before General King surrendered.
As soon as Sugiyama arrived in Manila, he immediately castigated Homma for his
leniency toward the Philippine people and praised the cruel treatment meted out to the
citizens of Singapore. He thought that the Filipino’s were “disobedient and
uncooperative” according to Hisashi Oide in his biography of Col. Masanobu Tsuji titled
Sakusen-sambo (Operation Staff Officer). Sugiyama “complained bitterly” to Tsuji and
Col. Takushiro Hattori, the Chief of General Staff’s Operations Department, and others
that this lack of servile respect he wanted was all because “Homma is too lenient.” To
make sure that his desire for harsher treatment of both POWs and civilians would be
carried out, Sugiyama ordered Col. Tsuji to the Philippines.
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 ultraconservative 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 the gekokujo, the Japanese version of the young Turks. The 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 chief operations
officer where he earned the nickname “god of operations,” although 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.
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 as soon as it was concluded, Sugiyama relieved him, and he 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.
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.”
Deja Vu
One of the two Divisions initially assigned to form Homma’s 14th Army was the
notorious 16th Division that had participated in the Rape of Nanking where an estimated
40,000 Chinese POW’s were murdered. It was the first case where mid to lower ranking
Japanese officers allowed their troops to run amok on both civilians and prisoners of war
and caused an avalanche of protest from governments around the world including even
Hitler’s Germany. Although the Commanding General Iwane Matsui wanted the
perpetrators punished to show that soldiers of the Japanese Army were not barbarians, no
punishment was meted out until after the war. As was the case with Homma, it was
Matsui who paid the butcher’s bill and not the lower ranked officers who were actually
responsible for controlling their troops. Having troops accustomed to committing
atrocities on a massive scale with complete immunity for their crimes on Bataan certainly
did not contribute to any reduction in atrocities.
Crimes of Passion
No army is immune from atrocities resulting from the heat of battle. Soldiers having
fought for hard won ground where many of their friends and comrades were killed have a
natural tendency to seek retribution on opponents trying to surrender when their position
is about to be overrun. Killings of this kind are often overlooked and only very rarely in
modern war become wholesale slaughter of men already in captivity. Nonetheless, this in
addition to Tsuji’s urging was a possible reason for the slaughter of the 400 men in the
Philippine 91st Division by men from the Japanese 65th Brigade. The 65th had probably
suffered more than any other Japanese unit in the campaign. According to Chiyomi
Toyota, his platoon of the 141st Infantry of the 65th received it’s first re-supply of food
in six days on April 9, the day Bataan surrendered, and 70 % of his Company were killed
leaving him as the only surviving platoon leader.
During the Easter Offensive, losses by the 65th were dramatically increased when an
attempted counter attack by the Philippine 41st Division caught some units of the 65th
Brigade napping and reeked havoc on them before being forced back. So it is possible
the Japanese survivors of that attack mistakenly took out their anger on the
91st Division, which was operating in the same area. However, the calm premeditated
manner in which this mass execution took place is more indicative of an ordered
execution than one committed out of the rage of the moment. In addition to the massacre,
there were also reports of the shooting of individuals and small groups of men as they
tried to surrender, and those seem to fit better into the crime of passion rubric.
Incompetence and Bad Luck
According to American Historian Stan Falk in his Bataan: The March of Death, Homma
formed a planning group consisting of Maj. Gen. Yoshikata Kawane, his Transportation
Officer; Col. Toshimitsu Takatsu, his Logistics Officer; Major Moriya Wada, Takatsu’s
Deputy for Supply; Major Hisashi Sekiguchi, from the Medical Corps; and a Lt. who was
responsible for well digging to assure there would be sufficient water for the POW march
out of Homma’s zone of operations. They presented Homma with what appeared at first
blush to be a workable plan to provide POWs with food, water, medical care and
transport for the wounded on their 65-mile journey out of Bataan. Per Homma’s
directive, the plan basically conformed to the POW section of the Geneva Convention.
However, due to a combination of bad luck, neglect, and incompetence on the part of a
number of Homma’s officers, the plan failed miserably.
The Major Objective
First, Sugiyama’s changes to Homma’s objective while holding him to the 50-day
deadline put both Homma and his staff under tremendous pressure to end the campaign
quickly. When Bataan fell, he was already on day 122 and he still had to take
Corregidor. It was taking him more than twice as long as Sugiyama wanted, and Homma
had only accomplished part of his objective. In addition to being way behind Sugiyama’s
schedule Homma also had to ask for additional troops and resources and that meant that
they had to be taken from other units, further slowing the overall “Centrifugal Advance”
in other parts of Asia. Therefore, his primary objective was crushing Corregidor as
quickly as possible, and even with reinforcements and his best effort, it still took him a
month more to get Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright to surrender the Philippine
command. The planning to remove the POWs by Homma’s officers was done in addition
to normal duties and as a result took an understandably lower priority to Homma’s
primary objective taking Corregidor. The plan looked good on paper but contained
several serious flaws.
How Many? How Long?
The first and most significant of these can be attributed to Lt. Col. Hikaru Haba
Homma’s intelligence officer. Based on enemy troop strength and fitness estimates
provided by Haba, Homma expected it would take a month to finish off the defenders on
Bataan. It actually took only six days for his reinforced 14th Army to shatter General
King’s line. Based on the one-month timeline, the planners thought they would have
plenty of time to put the plan in place and would be ready to implement it by the third
week of April, two weeks too late. As a result, they attempted to implement the plan with
only a fraction of the resources they needed in place.
Second, Haba estimated that there were as few as 25,000 and certainly not more than
40,000 defenders when in fact the number was approximately 78,000, nearly double
Haba’s estimate, and the plan was based on his 40,000 prisoner estimate.
Third, according to Homma, Haba had also either failed to accurately assess the fitness of
the defenders or neglected to notify him about their fitness, so neither he nor the planners
knew the enemy was on its last legs. The defenders had been on less than quarter rations
for more than a month and were riddled by tropical diseases for which southern Bataan
was so notorious. As a result, the plan was based in part on how far a healthy well-fed
Japanese soldier could be expected to march in one day, 25 miles, and in part on
Homma’s desire to meet the Geneva Convention standard which specified no more than
12 miles. Food and water supplies were supposed to be placed at approximately those
intervals on the March.
Side Show
Since Homma’s action in the Philippines was considered by Sugiyama and the Army
General Staff as a sideshow for the real objective East Indies oil and rubber and possibly
because the feud between them, he had short shrift for supplies and medicines.
Therefore, his troops often went hungry and without adequate medical care. Because of
the food shortage, rations for Homma’s troops were reduced to as little as 35 ounces per
day, only a third higher than the Americans who were barely staying alive after a month
on only 21 ounces. Therefore, giving food to POWs was widely resented by the Japanese
soldiers. In fact, the 14th Army’s shortage of food was at least a partial cause for Japanese
troops to taking as much of the meager Fil-American supply food they could find in
depots and on individual prisoners. According to the plan the POWs would have enough
of their own rations left for them to march to reach Balanga. It didn’t take into account
that the POWs were being systematically looted of nearly all of their possessions by
Japanese troops before and during the March, so virtually none had food and few had
water. The POWs considered themselves lucky if they were able to retain their canteen,
mess kit, shoes and a hat to stave off the 110 degree heat. It was also not long before the
Japanese relieved many captured doctors of their medical supplies and equipment. This
had an immediate effect on the care they could provide. Later the lack of medical
supplies and equipment increased the death toll among POWs during the March and later
in the camps where 1,600 Americans and about 20,000 more Filipinos died during their
three to five
weeks at Camp
O’Donnell.
The command
and control of
the POW
evacuations
also collapsed
almost as soon
as the March
started. The
responsibility
for command of
the POW
exodus was
split between
two officers.
Col. Toshimitsu
Takatsu was in
charge of
organizing the
prisoners and
guards and
moving the
POWs to
Balanga. POWs
traveling from
the southern tip
of Bataan in
Mariveles
would be
walking nearly
30 miles to
reach Balanga
whereas others
could be
walking as few
as 10 miles with
no food and in
some cases no
water. At
Balanga, Maj.
Gen. Kawane
then assumed responsibility for moving the POWs to San Fernando, 31 miles away. He
was supposed to set up facilities to feed, water and see to the medical needs of the POWs
on the trip up Route 7 at Orani, eight miles north of Balanga, and then at Lubao 15 miles
north of Orani. They would march another eight miles to the San Fernando railhead.
There were to be two hospital accommodating 1,000 POWs at Blanga and at San
Fernando.
From San Fernando the POWs would be packed into narrow gage freight cars, 100 to a
car that was designed to hold 40, and shipped by rail to a siding near Camp O’Donnell.
But communications between the two responsible officers were poor to nonexistent, and
neither knew what the other was or was not doing with the POWs. In the meantime,
Homma, who was busy with his preparations to attack Corregidor, left the POW
problems to his subordinates after issuing an order to the entire command that Japanese
soldiers must treat the POWs with a “friendly spirit.” When a group of war artists and
photographers saw what was actually happening during the March and reported it to
Homma he immediately sent Major General Takaji Wachi, his Chief of Staff orders to do
what he could to help the POWs according to Ito. But by then it was too late, the plan
collapsed, and chaos had already taken over.
In Conclusion
Like all disasters, the Bataan Death March was ultimately the result of many contributory
factors coming together to create a catastrophic event. Most Americans who are only
passingly familiar with the Death March seem to assume that it was the result of some
planned extermination of POWs, but beyond Col. Tsuji’s efforts to have all of the POWs
killed, there is no evidence that supports the contention that Homma had a plan to
systematically torture and murder the POWs. The propagandized attitudes of most
Japanese soldiers and failure of the 14th Army’s high command to implement a workable
plan to remove the prisoners from Bataan were the main contributors that caused the
March to become a nightmarish chaos of atrocities.
A few Japanese officers loaded their captives into trucks, and they rode all the way to San
Fernando without any problems. Others marched the POWs north toward Balanga and
then turned around and marched back to Mariveles and then turned around again and
marched back north with almost no food or water. Some guards allowed their captives to
stop regularly for water. Other guards refused POWs water and shot or bayoneted anyone
who tried to get water at the artesian wells and springs along the road. Some left those
too weak or sick to march to rest and rejoin the next group of prisoners moving north or
placed them in trucks. Many others killed anyone who could not keep up. Some officers
used prisoners for sword practice while others gave captured officers cigarettes and
casually talked about how much they enjoyed their time in the U.S. before the war. As
was mentioned before, some officers simply disarmed their prisoners and left them to
their own devices to get to Balanga. Others lined prisoners up and murdered them.
An excellent example of this schizophrenic behavior was what happened at the two Fil –
American hospitals on Bataan. Once Col. Motoo Nakayama saw that wounded Japanese
had been well treated, the doctors at Hospital One were allowed to continue on with their
business for two and a half months after the surrender virtually unmolested. Hospital
Two’s experience was almost the complete opposite. Some of the Japanese patients in
Hospital Two were bayoneted by their own comrades for having been captured according
to American patients in the same ward. Interestingly, it was Sekiguchi, the medical
corps officer who Homma had delegated to plan the removal of prisoners, who was in
charge of Hospital Two. Japanese troops who were supposed to be guarding the hospital
were allowed to take the patients’ food and looted medicines, medical equipment, doctors
and patients’ personal belongings and destroyed medical records. A female patient was
raped, and the patients were used as human shields when the Japanese surrounded the
hospital with their artillery to keep the batteries on Corregidor from firing back for fear of
hitting the hospital. And so it went on like this for three weeks.
Many of the veterans who were participants in the Bataan Death March on both sides are
gone and past caring about its causes, but the people of Japan and of the United States
need to understand what happened and why it happened if we are to help keep these kinds
of crimes from happening again in our societies or in the societies of others. Perhaps
then, the advocates of hate will be curbed before they go on more rampages of death
against the helpless and innocent. Those who disregard their history are bound to repeat
it.
________________________________________________________________________
A Personal Note About this Article
Two years ago I began writing a book about my father’s experiences on Corregidor and
as a prisoner of war of the Japanese. As I dug deeper into the causes of Japan’s brutal
treatment of Allied POWs, I came across Kinue Tokudome’s website at: http://www.usjapandialogueonpows.org. After a steady diet of articles about how the Japanese
Government and Japanese Corporations refused to recognize the atrocities my father had
experienced, I was surprised to see a website where Japanese were actually trying to
understand what had really happened to the POWs during Japan’s Centrifugal Advance.
My faith in fellow humans was restored knowing there were people in Japan who
accepted the fact that atrocities had occurred and who were making a concerted effort to
better understand the unvarnished truth about what really happened to Allied Prisoners of
War in Japanese hands. I soon began corresponding with Kinue trying to better
understand the Japanese perspective on what had happened to my dad.
As my questions became more esoteric, she referred me to Kan Sugahara, a veritable man
for all seasons, who attended the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy during World War
II, is an excellent translator and editor, and a student of Japanese Naval History.
Although my questions were mainly about the Japanese Army and outside his expertise,
Kan graciously offered to find and translate portions of untranslated Japanese books and
documents that related to the causes of the Death March. Each translation seemed to lead
to more questions and more translations until I realized that a number of the facts Kan
was unearthing from these previously untranslated Japanese documents were providing
me with new and very different perspectives than those in the generally accepted history
about the Philippine Campaign of 1941/42 and its aftermath. I believed that unless I
shared the perspectives that Kan was unearthing I would be depriving other American
historians and the veterans who were on the receiving end of those atrocities a better
understanding of the dynamics that caused horrors like the Bataan Death March. Without
Kan’s and Kinue’s help this article would never have been written and these new
perspectives would continue to remain hidden from anyone not fluent in Japanese.
My father, John Tillman Nelson (1923-2005)
Bibliography
Japanese Sources
Japanese Book and Document sources translated by Kan Sugahara
Ohtani, Keijiro , Horyo (Prisoners of War), Tosho Shuppan Company Ltd. 1978
Sugimori, Hisao, Tsuji Masanobu, Bungei-shunju, 1963
Oide, Hisashi, Sakusen-sambo (Operation Staff Officer), Kojin-sha, March 2003
Okada, Masukichi Nihon Rikgun Eiketsu-den (The Extraordinary Characters of the
Imperial Army)
Ito, Masanori, Teikoku Rikugun no Saigo, Shinko-hen (The last of the Imperial Army
Advancement), Kojin-sha, February 1998
Information provided by Yuka Ibuki
Yuka Ibuki Interview with: Chiyomi Toyota
Chiyomi Toyota, Walking the Death March with the Soldiers of the U.S. and the
Philippines, The Philippine Library No. 45 “The Special Issue on Luzon,” 1992 Japan
American and British Print Sources
Bergamini, David, Japan's Imperial Conspiracy How Emperor Hirohito led Japan into
war against the West, William Morrow & Co., 1971.
Daws, Gavan, Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific, William
Morrow and Company, 1994
Falk, Stanley L., Bataan: the March of Death, Norton, 1962.
Glusman, John A. , Conduct Under Fire, Viking, 2005
Harries, Meirion and Susie, Soldiers of the Sun: Random House, 1991
Kerr, E. Bartlett, Surrender & Survival, William Morrow and Company, 1985.
Knox, Donald, Death March: The Survivors of Bataan, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Publishers, 1981.
Lawton, Manny, Some Survived, Warner, 1984
Martin, Adrian, Brothers from Bataan: POWs, 1942-1945 , Sunflower University Press
Manhattan Kansas - 1992
Morton, Louis, The War in the Pacific: The Fall of the Philippines, Center for Military
History, Washington, DC, 1953
Taylor, Lawrence, A Trial of Generals, Icarus Press, 1981
Toland, John, But Not in Shame, Random House, 1961
Toland, John, The Rising Sun, Bantam, 1970
Tsuji, Masanobu, Japan’s Greatest Victory, Britains Worst Defeat: Capture and Fall of
Singapore, 1942, Spellmount Publishers Ltd. 1997
Tsuji, Masanobu, Underground Escape, Asian Publication, 1952
Victoria, Brian, Zen War Stories, Taylor & Francis, 2003
Ward, Ian, The Killer They Called A God, Media Masters, 1992
Annotated Internet Bibliography
American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor
The largest of the American POW organizations related to the Philippine Campaign
http://harrisonheritage.com/adbc/
American Ex- Prisoners of War
This site has general information on POW’s from several wars plus POW personal Statements
http://www.axpow.org/
Bataan Death March
http://www.bataanmarch.com/
Bataan Remembered
http://members.terracom.net/~vfwpost/Bataan.html
Bataan Museum, Santa Fe, NM
http://reta.nmsu.edu/bataan/index2.html
Battle for Bataan 1942
Online historical article giving a synopsis of the fall of the Philippines with several well selected
photographs.
http://reta.nmsu.edu/bataan/timeline/index.html
Battling Bastards OF Bataan
http://home.pacbell.net/fbaldie/Battling_Bastards_of_Bataan.html
Center for Research: Allied POWS Under the Japanese
http://www.mansell.com/pow-index.html
Fall of the Philippines
A site providing a complete web version of the official U.S. Army history of the Fall of the
Philippine written by Louis Morton
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-PI/
Geneva Convention of 1927
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva02.htm
Hague Convention of 1907
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04.htm
Japan War Crimes
A site primarily listing books for sale on Japanese atrocities and war crimes during the WWII
and the war with China. Includes the Rape of Nanking, comfort woman, slave labor,
treatment of POW’s and Japanese death factories like unit 731
http://www.vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/jpwcrmz.htm#powj
POW Research Network Japan
A fairly comprehensive site containing a Japanese produced listing of all POW camps in Japan and detailing those who
died in those camps.
http://homepage3.nifty.com/pow-j/e/list/index.html
Tsuji, Masanobu
Brief online biographies of Tsuji in English
http://www.warbirdforum.com/tsuji.htm
http://encycl.opentopia.com/term/Tsuji_Masanobu