Sept 2 is the day back in 1945 when Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Japanese Imperial Army surrendered from his mountain lair & hiding place in Kiangan, Mt. Province.
He did not want to surrender to Filipino Guerillas whom he believed would kill him right away. He was most probably right. He agreed to surrender only to the American military forces.
Thus, from Kiangan he was escorted by American military men who brought him to Baguio City for his surrender. He was tried in Manila at the current US Embassy premises and later executed by hanging.
Yamashita had been found guilty on many charges of atrocities committed by Japanese troops under his command against American war prisoners and civilians in the Philippines. Dressed in civilian clothes and accompanied by a Buddhist priest and an interpreter, he was led from his barbed-wire enclosed prison camp in Los Baños, Laguna before dawn. He was escorted to the gallows quietly so as not to alarm the 10,000 Japanese prisoners held in surrounding stockades. Ω
(SOURCE: The National Library of Australia