.

Following Tojo’s downfall in December 1943, Homma was selected as minister of information by the incoming Prime Minister, Kiso Kuniaki. He was found guilty on February 11, 1946, and sentenced to the by firing squad. The Fourteenth Army, headquartered in Formosa, contained only two divisions, the 16th and the 48th, supported by service and logistical elements.

His ancestors were farmers and estate owners. As head of the Japanese War Ministry’s press section, Homma defended the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and eventually commanded troops in northern China. The High Commissioner’s residence is in the background.

For a World War II Japanese general, Homma was an attractive personality, and his execution disturbed a number of Americans in the occupation forces.

Brushing aside resistance, his army raced for Manila but was delayed, despite its control of the air, at the Calumpit bridges while General Douglas MacArthur’s forces hastened to Bataan. His wife sought a personal meeting with MacArthur, which was granted, to ask for his pardon, but MacArthur refused.

During World War I he was sent to France as an observer on assignment to the British command along the western front. He maintained the atrocities had been committed by underlings (primarily his chief of staff, Colonel Masanobu Tsuji) assigned to handle the large number of prisoners after the capture of Bataan while he concentrated on taking Corregidor, and that he had not known about the Bataan Death March until after the war.

Homma was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

He felt a repeated sense of urgency to step up his attack, notwithstanding inferior numbers and stubborn resistance, because of General Yamashita Tomoyuki’s successful offensive in Malaya (now Malaysia). But head-quarters had underestimated the number of prisoners to be handled and to be encamped at sites on Luzon; consequently, Japanese logistics collapsed and the Bataan death march resulted.

The Fall of the Philippines (1953). Homma served as an observer on the Western Front in 1914 and later, in a more active capacity, during the Sino-Japanese War. His character, a curious mix of brutality and sensitivity (he was known as the Poet General for his love of poetry and literature), made him a controversial commander who would openly disagree with the details of his orders (extraordinary behaviour in the context of the Japanese Army), and he was one of the few highly placed Japanese military officers to publicly declare his opposition to a war with the Allies.

ww2dbaseGiven command of the Japanese Fourteenth Army for the invasion of the Philippines (Dec 1941) his strategy, although somewhat erratic, was essentially brilliant (as even MacArthur would later admit).

Homma was executed on the 3rd of April 1946.

General Douglas MacArthur in his review of the case wrote: If this defendant does not deserve his judicial fate, none in jurisdictional history ever did. Even $1 per month will go a long way! By December 1941 Homma, with the rank of lieutenant general, was the supreme commander of all Japanese army units scheduled to invade the Philippines.

Many were not convinced that Homma was directly involved with the atrocities, and believed MacArthur engaged in an act of personal revenge by rushing Homma's (and Yamashita's) trial to a speedy end. His anger boiled on May 5 when General Jonathan Wainwright, commander of FilAmerican forces, declined to surrender all units in the islands—striking his clenched hands on a table, he threatened to keep fighting on Corregidor.

Besides, there was displeasure with his forbearance toward the Filipino populace and his refusal to circulate anti-American propaganda.