In a shell-scarred, balconied Manila ballroom Japan's General Tomoyuki Yamashita, onetime "Tiger of Malaya" and "Beast of Bataan," was on trial for his life. He looked incredibly tame and safe, a froglike man in a green uniform who sat shaven-headed, sleepy-eyed, almost motionless at a long table. Occasionally he smiled. In the ordered courtroom uniformed attorneys shuffled papers, entered objections, laboriously introduced exhibits.
Through newly repaired windows came faint, peaceful sounds from the wrecked city. But as witnesses talked from the stand, the nerves of many a spectator ached for the sound...