Snaring the other tiger - Ian Ward

As a storm lashed the currugated iron execution chamber as the Army's dawn ritual sniffed out the lives of the last five Japanese soldiers that Canberra would be sending to the gallows as convicted war criminals. The climax to the Manus Islands Trials wrapped-up a post-war legal process Prime Minister Robert Menzies himself called a "wretched state-of-affairs".;Among the final five executed on the island was 62-year-old Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura. Next to Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yahashita, Nishimura was the most important and prominent enemy officer in the Malayan Campaign. He was widely recognized as "the other tiger". Under his command, the elite Konoye Imperial Guards had overwhelmed the Australians on the Muar Front. The fall of Malaya and surrender of Singapore on August 15, 1945 represented one of the worst disasters in British and Australian military histories.;The Americans executed yamashita on February 26, 1946, but the British narrowly failed to execute Nishimura in 1947 for a series of Singapore massacres in which he played no part whatever. The Australians then became hell-bent on snaring Nishimura, "the other tiger", before the time of retribution ran out. This is the story of how the Army tried and executed an innocent man, with the connivance of some of the highest political and judicial offices in the land.