Homma Masaharu, Lt-General

Homma Masaharu, Lt-General (1887–1946),Japanese Army officer who, by May 1942, had completed the capture of the Philippines from MacArthur's US and Filipino forces.

The son of a wealthy landowner, Homma was born on Sado Island off the north-west coast of Japan. A gifted, cultured man, more westernized than his army colleagues and not at all bound, as most of them were, by the Bushidō code, he passed out top of the Military Academy, had two tours of duty with the British Army, and by 1935 was a major-general. He took part in the China incident before being appointed to command Fourteenth Army for the invasion of the Philippines in December 1941. This took much longer than the 50 days allowed by Imperial Japanese Headquarters and after the last American forces had surrendered, on Corregidor, Homma neither expected nor received congratulations. He was recalled to Japan in August 1942 and remained unemployed throughout the remainder of the war. In January 1946 he was tried by the US Military Commission for being responsible for the many war crimes committed by his men, one of which was the Bataan Death March. Homma claimed he had never heard of this dreadful event, but this did not save him and he was executed by a firing squad. See also Far East war crimes trials.