FRAME WORK OF EX PANGLIMA SILAM

LEUTENENT GENERAL TOMOYUKI YAMASHITA LEADERSHIP

INTRODUCTION
We have just received your reply. The Japanese Army will consider nothing but
surrender.
- Tomoyuki Yamashita(Quoted in But Not in Shame: The Six Months After Pearl HarborPage 216 - by John Toland 1961)

General Yamashita is remembered in Japan as a military leader whose

personal career was victimized by that very factionalism in the military that had
so much to do with dragging Japan into the euphoria of war and the humiliation
and suffering of defeat. His honorary pen name was Hobun and he was well
known as Tiger Malaya during the World War II.

AIM
This paper will analyse the leadership qualities of General Yamashita to
determine qualities he did possess. As we know leadership can be define as "a
process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of

others in the accomplishment of a common task" according from Wikipedia.

Studies of leadership have produced theories involving traits, situational
interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and values, charisma, and
intelligence, among others.

Leadership in todays world requires far more than a large stock of

gunboats and a hard fist at the
Hubert H. Humphrey (19..)

One Leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves
Albert Camus (19..)

SCOPE
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
a) Early Life
According to Kenworthy (1953), Yamashita was son of a medical doctor
and born on November 8, 1885, in Shikoku. . His mother, Yuu, was the daughter
of a wealthy farmer. He had two sisters, and an elder brother who followed in his
father's footsteps and became a doctor while Yamashita was sent to involve in a
military career. He was graduated from the Central Military Academy in Tokyo
aged 20 and fought in the 1914 campaign against German possessions in
eastern China. Though he had difficulty passing the entrance exam for the Tokyo

War College, he graduated from there in 1916. After that, he married Hisako, the
daughter of General Retired Nagayama.
b) World War 1 and World War 2 career
After he graduated from the Staff College on 1916, he was quickly
promoted to Major General by 1934. However he was said to be associated with
the attempted coup dtat in Tokyo, led by the Imperial Way faction, a group of
radical young officers who had long admired him. His career seemed cut short
with the only options open for him being either resignation or an obscure posting
to Korea. He chose the command in Korea. However, the move gave him the
opportunity to distinguish himself during the Sino-Japanese Crisis of 1937 and
he was promoted to Lieutenant-General in November 1937 for his leadership in
the conflict. Apparently, his rival General Hideki Tojo sought to have him
removed and had Yamashita served in North China and Manchuria between
1938 to 1939. The indefatigable Yamashita returned to Tokyo only in July 1940
and had by then been promoted to Inspector General of Aviation. In January
1941, he toured military establishments in Germany and Italy and was posted to
Manchuria as Commander, Kwantung Defence Army.

c)

Style of Command and Leadership

i) Review of general leadership

In military, when one thinks of the great military figures of World War II,
the names most likely to come to mind are, naturally, those from the winning
side; names like General Eisenhower, General Patton, General MacArthur or
Field Marshal Montgomery. Not as often remembered is the name of General
Yamashita of the Japanese Imperial Army. Nevertheless was General
Yamashita, nicknamed the Tiger of Malaya who inflicted the most stunning
defeat ever suffered by the forces of the British Empire. One would think the
man who accomplished what so many at the time considered absolutely
impossible, the capture of the British fortress-city of Singapore, would be better
known. It was possibly the most astounding single victory of the entire war and
yet, while the fall of Singapore has certainly not been forgotten, little is ever said
about the man who carried it out. There are presumably a number of reasons for
this, but it may also be possible that part of the reason is that the fate of General
Yamashita after the war must stand as one of the great injustices of the period
which the presiding Allied powers would prefer to be forgotten. However he was
reminding as a ruthless militarist leader in that era.

ii)

Analysis his leadership style

Even though Yamashita was known as a ruthless militarist leader in that

era, he still had a number of people that adore him during his legacy in Malaya
and Singapore. Anne Marie (1992) state that George Guy have stated that
"Yamashita had never been a 'political' General and that he had earned his high
rank bysheer effi~iency." He also found that Yamashita had a "reputation for

fairness and for being a firm and strong disciplinarian and that he had never
been part of the extremist. On the contrary, Yamashita had actually been
opposed to the war with the Allies.

Therefore we can said that Yamashita actually have a path-goal

leadership style. The idea is the leader must help the team find the path to their
goals and help them in that process (House, 1971). Path-goal theory identifies
four leadership behaviors which are:

Directive leaders
Supportive leaders
Participative leaders
Achievement-oriented leaders.
Tunner and Muller (2005)
Besides that, Path-Goal model is a theory based on specifying a
leader's style or

behavior

that

best

fits

the

employee

and

work

environment in order to achieve goals (House, Mitchell, 1974). The goal

is to increase an employee's motivation, empowerment, and satisfaction
so that they become productive members of the organization.
Path-Goal is based on Vroom's (1964) expectancy theory in which
an individual will act in a certain way based on the expectation that the
act will be followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that
outcome to the individual. It is clearly that we can see towards in

Yamashita leadership style. He have state his goal that he will take over
Malaya and Singapore within 100 days but he have make it earlier which
is only in 70 days even though he does not plan it from the beginning. It
is show that Yamashita has succeeded to encourage her subordinates to
work with him to achieve his goal. Besides that, all the Japanese Army
have been injected to use force against the United States and Britain to
circumvent American economic sanctions levelled against her. Japanese hopes
rested upon their ability to seize control of the southern regions of Asia, the socalled Southern Resource Area. With conquest of this vital region, Japan
reasoned it would be free of dependence on western powers for essential raw
materials. A final element in the decision to advance on Malaya and Singapore
was the desire to "emancipate oppressed peoples of Asia" from years of British
rule (Tsuji, 1961).
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
i.

Success relate with World Wars

In between 1918 and 1936, Yamashita had spent several years in military

attach posts in Switzerland, Germany and Austria as well as on the Japanese

Army staff, culminating in the post of Chief of Military Affairs in the Army. When
young officers wanting faster military modernisation attempted a coup against
more conservative high-command elements in 1936, he convinced the Emperor
to order both factions to return to barracks, avoiding civil war but putting
Yamashita into temporary imperial disfavour.

He was soon posted to the minor theatre of Korea for 18 months, but
afterwards rose to command a division in China. In 1940 he was appointed
Inspector-General of Japans air force and sent back to Europe to observe
German and Italian military strategy and technology. On his return from Europe,
Yamashita urged his staff officers to never suggest that Japan should declare
war on Great Britain and the United States. Even so, on 6 November 1941 he
was put in command of the three divisions of Japans 25th Army, which was
already preparing to invade Britains colony in Malaya and capture Singapore.
He trained his troops in living off the land and travelling fast by foot or bicycle a
tropical version of the Blitzkrieg tactics that Germany had used in France in
1940. His force landed on the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbour (7
December 1941) and its rapid advance left the British thinking they were facing
a far larger force.
However, they had outrun their own supply lines and were short of food,
shells and ammunition by the time Yamashitas troops entered Singapores
outskirts. Already outnumbered four to one and fearful of a long siege,
Yamashita wished to cut the campaign short before British reinforcements could
arrive. He therefore ordered a short, but extremely heavy barrage, correctly
assuming that this would finally break the British will to fight on.

Interestingly enough, the Japanese had no experience in the unique

requirements of military operations in a tropical or jungle environment. The army
had been engaged in Manchuria since 1931 and was very proficient in coldweather warfare. Colonel Tsuji's research group hoped to resolve this problem
by creating a pamphlet for each of the soldiers to read during transport to
Malaya. Called Read This Alone-And The War Can Be Won, it summarized the
results of the group's research while explaining the hazards of tropical warfare.
Additional steps taken to help gain experience in the conditions expected for the
amphibious assaults were rehearsal landings on Kyushu, Canton, and Hainan
Island. Each exercise was increasingly similar in scope, geography, and climate
to what would be experienced in Malaya.

Furthermore, his successes in Malaya and Singapore earned Yamashita

the nickname the Tiger of Malaya and he immediately began planning similar
landings against Australia. He deserved to been remind as that name because
his remaining only 30,000 men with their hands full when facing the roughly
100,000 defenders of Singapore under GOC Lieutenant General A.E. Percival
during the war (Alan, 1994). However, only five months after Singapores
surrender; other envious Japanese generals got him posted to China, by then a
minor theatre of the war.

ii.

Failure and influence

In July 1942, Yamashita was posted to Manchuria without visiting Tokyo

or gaining an audience with the Emperor. But by 10 February 1943, Yamashita
was promoted to General. He was appointed Commanding General of the 14th
Area Army to defend Philippines from an impending American invasion. On 2
September 1945, he surrendered to the Allied Forces at Keangan, Luzon,
Philippines. Representing the Japanese Army in Philippines, General Yamashita
at first refused to acknowledge Japan's formal defeat. He only surrendered
when his troops were surrounded in Northern Luzon by American forces headed
by Major General Leavey, the Special Representative of Lieutenant General
William D. Styer, Commanding General of American Forces Western Pacific
Area.

Yamashita was tried by an American Military Tribunal in the ballroom of

the US High Commissioner's residence in downtown Manila. He was charged
for failing to control his troops from committing brutal atrocities against the
people of the United States and its allies and dependencies, particularly the
Philippines where Yamashita was in command when his troops resorted to wild
massacres and rapes in Manila. The American Tribunal invariably focused the
trial on Japanese atrocities in Philippines rather than British Malaya. He was
hanged at Los Banos camp on 23 February 1946 after being convicted of brutal
atrocities

committed

by

the

Japanese

troops

under

his

command.

Conclusion

As we know, General Yamashita is a victorious leader but he had end up

his life in Manila on February 23, 1946. He had been hanged up. This is the fate
of this officer, a first-class fighting man, affirmed something new in the annals of
war. Yamashita lost his life not because he was a bad or evil commander, but
simply because he was a commander, and the men he commanded had done
unspeakably evil things. His last words were, loyally, "I will pray for the
Emperor's long life and his prosperity forever." It shows that how faithfully
Yamashita to his country and his Emperor.