Tomoyuki Yamashita

Tomoyuki Yamashita was an Imperial Japanese Army general during World War II. At the forefront of the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, his accomplishment of conquering Malaya and Singapore in 70 days led to the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, calling the ignominious fall of Singapore to Japan the "worst disaster" and "largest capitulation" in British military history. The accomplishment earned Yamashita the sobriquet the Tiger of Malaya. Later in the war, he was assigned to defend the Philippines from the advancing US and Filipino forces. While he was unable to stop the US advance, he was able to hold on to part of Luzon until after the formal Japanese surrender in August 1945.

After the war, Yamashita was tried for war crimes committed by troops under his command during the Japanese defense of the occupied Philippines in 1944. In a controversial trial, Yamashita was found guilty of his troops' atrocities even though there was no evidence that he approved or even knew of them, and indeed many of the atrocities were committed by troops not actually under Yamashita's command. This ruling – holding the commander responsible for his or her subordinates' war crimes as long as the commander did not attempt to discover and stop them from occurring – came to be known as the Yamashita standard. Yamashita was sentenced to death, and executed by hanging in 1946.