Tokyo Trials

All you want to know about Tokyo Trials

"Tokyo Trial" redirects here. For the film, see Tokyo Trial (film).
International Military Tribunal for the Far East was convened at “Ichigaya Court,” formally Imperial Japanese Army HQ building in Ichigaya, Tokyo.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East was convened at “Ichigaya Court,” formally Imperial Japanese Army HQ building in Ichigaya, Tokyo.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal or simply as the Tribunal, was convened to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of crimes: "Class A" (crimes against peace), "Class B" (war crimes), and "Class C" (crimes against humanity), committed during World War II. The first refers to their joint conspiracy to start and wage the war, and the latter two refer to atrocities including the Nanking Massacre. War crimes charges against more junior personnel were dealt with separately, in other cities throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

The tribunal convened on May 3, 1946, and was adjourned on November 12, 1948.

Twenty-five Japanese military and political leaders were charged with Class A crimes, and more than 5,700 Japanese nationals were charged with Class B and C crimes, mostly over prisoner abuse. The crimes perpetrated by Japanese troops and authorities in the occupation of Korea and China, particularly Manchuria (Manchukuo), were not part of the proceeding. China held 13 tribunals of its own, resulting in 504 convictions and 149 executions.

The Japanese Emperor Hirohito, and all members of the imperial family such as Prince Asaka, were not prosecuted for any alleged involvement in any of the three categories of crimes. As many as 50 suspects, such as Nobusuke Kishi, who later became Prime Minister, and Yoshisuke Aikawa, head of the zaibatsu Nissan, and future leader of the Chuseiren, were charged but released without ever being brought to trial in 1947 and 1948.

Contents

Creation of the court

The legal basis for the trial was established by the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (CIMTFE) that was proclaimed on 19 January 1946 by General Douglas MacArthur. CIMTFE set down the laws and procedures by which the IMTFE trials were to be conducted, including the types of crimes. On 25 April 1946 in accordance with the provisions of Article 7 of the CIMTFE the original Rules of Procedure of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East with amendments were promulgated. [1][2][3]

A panel of eleven judges presided over the IMTFE, one each from victorious Allied powers (United States, Republic of China, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Provisional Government of the French Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British India, and the Philippines).

Prosecutors

Country Prosecutor
Chief Prosecutor (USA) Joseph Keenan
Australia Justice Alan Mansfield
Canada Brigadier Henry Nolan
Republic of China Xiang Zhejun (Hsiang Che-chun)
Provisional Government of the French Republic Robert L. Oneto
British India P. Govinda Menon, who later became a judge of the Madras High Court and later, in the Supreme Court of India.
Netherlands W.G. Frederick Borgerhoff-Mulder
New Zealand Brigadier Ronald Quilliam
Philippines Pedro Lopez
UK Arthur Comyns-Carr
USSR Minister S.A. Golunsky

Judges

Country Judge Remarks
Australia Sir William Webb Justice of the High Court of Australia; was the President of the Tribunal; delivered a separate opinion
Canada Edward Stuart McDougall Former Judge of the High Court of Canada King's Bench Appeal Side
Republic of China Major-General Mei Ju-ao Attorney and Member of the Legislature
Provisional Government of the French Republic Henri Bernard Avocat-General (Solicitor-General) at Bangui; Chief Prosecutor, First Military Tribunal in Paris; delivered a dissenting opinion
India Radhabinod Pal Lecturer, University of Calcutta Law College; Judge of the Calcutta High Court; delivered a dissenting opinion.
Netherlands Professor Bert Röling Professor of Law, Utrecht University; delivered a dissenting opinion
New Zealand Harvey Northcroft Judge Advocate General of New Zealand
Philippines Colonel Delfin Jaranilla Attorney General, High Court Member; delivered a separate opinion
UK Hon Lord Patrick Judge (Scottish), Senator of the College of Justice
USA John P. Higgins Chief Justice, Massachusetts Superior Court
Major-General Cramer Replaced Judge Higgins in July 1946
USSR Major-General I.M. Zarayanov Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR member
The judges
The judges

Charges

Count Offence
1 As leaders, organisers, instigators, or accomplices in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to wage wars of aggression, and war or wars in violation of international law.
27 Waging unprovoked war against China.
29 Waging aggressive war against the United States.
31 Waging aggressive war against the British Commonwealth.
32 Waging aggressive war against the Netherlands.
33 Waging aggressive war against France (Indochina).
35,36 Waging aggressive war against the USSR.
54 Ordered, authorised, and permitted inhumane treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs) and others.
55 Deliberately and recklessly disregarded their duty to take adequate steps to prevent atrocities.

Specific Documents of Evidence

Wide view of the Tribunal, depicting the bench of judges on the left, defendants on the right, and prosecutors in the back.
Wide view of the Tribunal, depicting the bench of judges on the left, defendants on the right, and prosecutors in the back.

In April 2007, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi and the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility supplied specific documents about war crimes committed by the Japanese during the war. These exposed documents were used in 1948 sentences during the tribunal. The documents concern the issue of "Comfort Women" who were women forced to work in the brothels that serviced soldiers and other men during the years of World War II. Document No. 5330 precisely mentioned the forced use of women for sexual use during the war. Quotes from this document include: "The Tokeitai (Special Naval Police) had ordered to keep the brothels supplied with women; to this end they arrested women on the streets and after enforced medical examination placed them in the brothels." Other text in the document includes: "Women who had had relations with Japanese were forced into the brothels, which were surrounded by barbed wire. They were only allowed on the streets with special permission." [4]

Sentences

 This article or section contains weasel words, vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed.

There were 28 defendants tried, mostly military and political leaders. Two defendants (Matsuoka Yosuke and Nagano Osami) died of natural causes during the trial. Okawa Shumei apparently had a nervous breakdown during the trial and was removed. [5] Seven others were sentenced to death by hanging for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. They were executed at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on December 23, 1948:

Sixteen more were sentenced to life imprisonment. Three (Koiso, Shiratori, and Umezu) died in prison, while the other thirteen were paroled in 1955:

Two defendants received finite sentences. Foreign minister Shigenori Tōgō was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and died in prison in 1949. Foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu was sentenced to 7 years but was paroled in 1950 and went on to serve as foreign minister again in Prime Minister Ichirō Hatoyama's cabinet.

The defendants
The defendants

Subsidiary and related trials

According to Japanese tabulation, 5,700 Japanese individuals were indicted for Class B and Class C war crimes. Of this number, 984 were initially condemned to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced. The number of death sentences by country is the following : Holland 236, Great Britain 223, Australia 153, China 149, USA 140 France 26 and Philippines 17. [6] Additionally, the Soviet Union and Chinese Communist forces held trials for Japanese war criminals.

The Khabarovsk War Crime Trials held by the Soviets tried and found guilty some members of Japan's bacteriological and chemical warfare unit (Unit 731). However those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial as General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological weapons.[citation needed]

In 1981, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published an article by John W. Powell detailing Unit 731 experiments and germ warfare open-air tests on civilian populations. It was printed with a statement by judge B. V. A. Röling, the last surviving member of the Tokyo Tribunal. Röling wrote that "As one of the judges in the International Military Tribunal, it is a bitter experience for me to be informed now that centrally ordered Japanese war criminality of the most disgusting kind was kept secret from the Court by the U.S. government." [7]

Criticism

The IMTFE shared many of the same criticisms as the Nuremberg Trials, including the ex post facto nature of the IMTFE. The critics are divided between those who argue that the trial was the victor's justice and those for whom the trial was essentially a legal procedure to exonerate the imperial family from criminal responsibility.

It is also argued by some, such as Solis Horowitz, that IMTFE had an American bias, because unlike the Nuremberg Trials, there was only a single prosecution team, which was led by Joseph B. Keenan, an American, although the members of the tribunal represented eleven different Allied countries. [8]

The IMTFE had less official support than the Nuremberg Trials. For example, Chief Prosecutor Joe Keenan, a former US assistant attorney general, had a much lower position than Nuremberg's Robert H. Jackson, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Dissenting opinion and Victor's Justice

Justice Radhabinod Pal, the Indian justice at the IMTFE, argued that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the use of the atom bomb by the United States from the list of crimes, and judges from the vanquished nations on the bench, signified the "failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate." [9] In this he was not alone among Indian jurists of the time, one prominent Calcutta barrister writing that the Tribunal was little more than "a sword in a wig".

Pal's objections were also substantive: he found that the entire prosecution case, that there was a conspiracy to commit an act of aggressive war, which would include the brutalization and subjugation of conquered nations, weak. About the Rape of Nanking in particular, he said, after acknowledging the brutality of the incident ( and that the "evidence was overwhelming" that "atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population... and prisoners of war"), that there was nothing to show that it was the "product of government policy", and thus that the officials of the Japanese government were directly responsible. Indeed, he said, there is "no evidence, testimonial or circumstantial, concomitant, prospectant, restrospectant, that would in any way lead to the inference that the government in any way permitted the commission of such offenses." [9]

In any case, he added, conspiracy to wage aggressive war was not illegal in 1937, or at any point since. [9]

A procedure to exonerate the imperial family

Hirohito and imperial stallion Shirayuki
Hirohito and imperial stallion Shirayuki

Many historians criticize the work made by Douglas MacArthur and his staff to exonerate Emperor Showa and all members of the imperial family implicated in the war such as prince Chichibu, prince Takeda, prince Asaka, prince Higashikuni and prince Hiroyasu Fushimi [10].

As soon as 26 November 1945, MacArthur confirmed to admiral Mitsumasa Yonai that the emperor's abdication would not be necessary. [11] Before the war crimes trials actually convened, SCAP, the IPS and shôwa officials worked behind the scenes not only to prevent the imperial family being indicted, but also to slant the testimony of the defendants to ensure that no one implicated the Emperor. High officials in court circles and the shôwa government collaborated with allied GHQ in compiling lists of prospective war criminals, while the individuals arrested as Class A suspects and incarcerated in Sugamo prison solemnly vowed to protect their sovereign against any possible taint of war responsibility. [12]

According to Herbert Bix, Brigadier General Bonner Fellers "immediately on landing in Japan went to work to protect Hirohito from the role he had played during and at the end of the war" and "allowed the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperor would be spared from indictment." [13]

Bix also argues that "MacArthur's truly extraordinary measures to save Hirohito from trial as a war criminal had a lasting and profoundly distorting impact on Japanese understanding of the lost war" and "months before the Tokyo tribunal commenced, MacArthur's highest subordinates were working to attribute ultimate responsibility for Pearl Harbor to Hideki Tojo." [14] According to the written report of Shûichi Mizota, the interpreter of admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, Fellers met the two men at his office on March 6 1946 and told Yonai that : "it would be most convenient if the Japanese side could prove to us that the Emperor is completely blameless. I think the forthcoming trials offer the best opportunity to do that. Tôjô, in particular, should be made to bear all responsibility at this trial. [15]

For John W. Dower, "This successful campaign to absolve the Emperor of war responsibility knew no bounds. Hirohito was not merely presented as being innocent of any formal acts that might make him culpable to indictment as a war criminal. He was turned into an almost saintly figure who did not even bear moral responsibility for the war", "With the full support of MacArthur's headquarters, the prosecution functioned, in effect, as a defense team for the emperor." [16] and "Even Japanese activists who endorse the ideals of the Nuremberg and Tokyo charters, and who have labored to document and publicize the atrocities of the shôwa regime, cannot defend the American decision to exonerate the emperor of war responsibility and then, in the chill of the Cold war, release and soon afterwards openly embrace accused right-winged war criminals like the later prime minister Nobusuke Kishi. [17]

Three judges wrote an obiter dictum about the criminal responsibility of Hirohito. Judge in chief Webb declared that "No ruler can commit the crime of launching aggressive war and then validly claim to be excused for doing so because his life would otherwise have been in danger...It will remain that the men who advised the commission of a crime, if it be one, are in no worse position than the man who directs the crime be committed." [18]

Judge Henri Bernard of France concluded that Japan's declaration of war "had a principal author who escaped all prosecution and of whom in any case the present Defendants could only be considered as accomplices."[19]

For judge B. V. A. Röling however, nothing objectable could be found in the Emperor's immunity and five defendants, Kido, Hata, Hirota, Shigemitsu and Tôgô should have been acquitted.

60th anniversary

In a survey of 3,000 Japanese conducted in 2006 by Asahi News as the 60th anniversary approached, 70% of those questioned were unaware of the details of the trials, a figure that rose to 90% for those in the 20-29 age group. Some 76% of the people polled, however, recognized a certain degree of aggression on Japan's part during the war, while only 7% believed it was a war strictly for self-defense. [1]

See also

References

Movies

Books

  • Bass, Gary Jonathan. Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Trials. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
  • Bix, Herbert. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
  • Brackman, Arnold C. The Other Nuremberg: the Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987.
  • Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: New Press, 1999.
  • Frank, Richard B. (1999). Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Penguin Books. 
  • Holmes, Linda Goetz (2001). Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs. Mechanicsburg, PA, USA: Stackpole Books. 
  • Horowitz, Solis. "The Tokyo Trial" International Conciliation 465 (Nov 1950), 473-584.
  • Lael, Richard L. (1982). The Yamashita Precedent: War Crimes and Command Responsibility. Wilmington, Del, USA: Scholarly Resources. 
  • Maga, Timothy P. (2001). Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trials. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2177-9. 
  • Minear, Richard H. (1971). Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press. 
  • Piccigallo, Philip R. (1979). The Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crimes Operations in the East, 1945-1951. Austin, Texas, USA: University of Texas Press. 
  • Rees, Laurence (2001). Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II. Boston: Da Capo Press. 
  • Sherman, Christine (2001). War Crimes: International Military Tribunal. Turner Publishing Company. ISBN 1563117282. 

Web

Notes

  1. ^ Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
  2. ^ Within documents relating to the IMTFE it is also referred to as the Charter
  3. ^ Rules of Procedure of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East 25 April 1946
  4. ^ Evidence documenting sex-slave coercion revealed | The Japan Times Online
  5. ^ One of the erratic things he did was, hitting the bald head of the former prime minister Hideki Tojo, shouting "Inder! Kommen Sie!" (Come, Indian!) in German, and the list goes on. Therefore, the presiding judge Sir William Webb (The President of the tribunal) concluded that he was mentally ill and dropped the case against him[citation needed]. From the beginning of the tribunal, he said that the court was a farce, therefore, some people still believe that he was faking his madness in order to be released.
  6. ^ John Dower, Embracing defeat, 1999, p.447
  7. ^ Daniel Barenblatt, A plague upon humanity, Harper Collins, 2004, p.222.
  8. ^ Horowitz, Solis. (1950). "The Tokio Trial". International Conciliation 465 (Nov): 473–584. 
  9. ^ a b c "The Tokyo Judgment and the Rape of Nanking", by Timothy Brook, The Journal of Asian Studies, August 2001.
  10. ^ John Dower, Embracing defeat, W.W. Norton, 1999, Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the making of modern Japan, Perennial, 2001
  11. ^ Dower, ibid. p.323
  12. ^ Dower, ibid. p.325
  13. ^ Bix, ibid., p.583
  14. ^ Bix, ibid. p585
  15. ^ Kumao Toyoda, Sensô saiban yoroku, Taiseisha Kabushiki Kaisha, 1986, p.170-172, Bix, ibid. p.584.
  16. ^ Dower, ibid., p.326
  17. ^ Dower, ibid. p.562
  18. ^ Röling and Ruter, The Tokyo judgement : The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 29 April 1946-12 November 1948, volume 1, p.478
  19. ^ ibid. p.496


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