YAMASHITA [????-????]

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Names
Family
Yamashita
Sex
Male
Status
Deceased

Yamashita is mentioned several times in Prisoner of the Turnip Heads, including:

  • Pg. 92: "In March ((1942)) Oda decided that having no senior Japanese in Stanley camp was too risky and appointed the former Hong Kong Hotel barber, Yamashita, as camp commandant."
  • Pg. 117: "I always had the impression he knew more than he was letting on. No doubt years of listening to gossip in his barber's shop which was full of service officers and passing on the tit-bits to the Japanese authorities had been the reason he secured the plum post of camp commandant. He was actively disliked by most of us, unlike Nagasawa, as he was moody, overfond of the bottle, and totally unpredictable."

Comments

Notes from John Charter's Diary:

On about March 15 1942, the Chinese supervisor of this camp was replaced by a Japanese supervisor, Mr Yamashita. This change, I believe, had been brought about by representations made by the Camp Committee to the Japanese Gendarmerie, pointing out how unsatisfactory it was for us to have to do all our negotiations about camp affairs through the medium of a Chinese puppet and asking very strongly that a Japanese Supervisor be appointed. Mr Cheng (the Chinese) had been, it was suspected, ‘squeezing’ the internees to a considerable extent. At about that time he became indisposed and is said to have developed TB of the lungs, at any rate, he went and Mr Yamashita came in his place. I was working in the kitchen when he came on his tour of inspection. Imagine my surprise when I found him to be the hairdresser at the Hong Kong Hotel who had often cut my hair. Conditions in camp have greatly improved since he has taken charge of things and it has proved far more satisfactory to negotiate directly with the Japanese than through the Chinese.

Barbara Anslow tells us that when the Lisbon Maru went down, Yamashita took on the task of finding out who had died and who had survived.