History of the Tokyo Trials

In addition to the trials at Nuremberg in Germany, the Allies set up a tribunal to bring to trial the leaders of Japan, another member of the Axis powers in World War II. Japan’s campaign to conquer or control Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean had begun in 1931 when its forces occupied the province of Manchuria in China. Six years later, Japan invaded the Shanghai-Nanjing region of China and occupied the city of Nanjing. There, Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were killed in a savage campaign of rape, torture, and mass murder by Japanese forces. Similar acts were committed by Japanese forces in other areas of China and during their wartime occupation of Manila in the Philippines.

At their final wartime conference, held in July 1945 at Potsdam, Germany, Allied leaders agreed on a policy for post-war Japan and stated their intention to hold the Japanese responsible for war crimes, including inhumane treatment of Allied prisoners:

But many others who might have been indicted were not. Historian John Dower describes the choices of whom to prosecute—choices that were later criticized:

[T]he absence of certain groups and crimes [in the Tokyo indictments] was striking. No heads of the dreaded Kempeitai (the military police) were indicted; no leaders of ultranationalistic secret societies; no industrialists who had profited from aggression and had been ultimately involved in paving “the road to war.” The forced mobilization of Korean and Formosan colonial subjects was not pursued as a crime against humanity, nor was the rounding up of many tens of thousands of young non-Japanese who were forced to serve as “comfort women” providing sexual services to the imperial forces. The Americans who controlled the prosecution chose to grant blanket secret immunity to one group of Japanese whose atrocious crimes were beyond question, namely, the officers and scientific researchers in Unit 731 in Manchuria who had conducted lethal experiments on thousands of prisoners (they were exempted from prosecution in exchange for sharing the results of their research with the Americans). The prosecution did not seriously pursue evidence concerning the Japanese use of chemical warfare in China.

The most notable absence among those indicted was that of Emperor Hirohito, the leader of Japan throughout the entire pre-war and wartime period. The decision not to try him was made by General MacArthur; it reflected the American policy of leaving the emperor on the throne as a way of helping the Japanese people accept their defeat, the occupation, and the guiding principles that MacArthur would follow to turn Japan into a democracy.

The same concerns about ex post facto (“after the fact”) justice that were expressed about the Nuremberg trials  were raised about the Far East tribunal, but there, too, they were dismissed. One important difference, however, was that at the Tokyo trials, defendants were held responsible for crimes of omission—the failure to act to prevent war crimes from occurring or continuing. This played a significant part in the conviction and subsequent execution of two of the defendants: General Iwane Matsui, who directed the campaign to capture Nanjing, and Koki Hirota, who was Japan’s foreign minister at the time of the Nanjing atrocities. The prosecution presented evidence that both had known of the atrocities but had done nothing to stop them. The final judgment against Hirota read:

The tribunal is of the opinion that Hirota was derelict in his duty in not insisting before the Cabinet that immediate action be taken to put an end to the atrocities, failing any other action open to him to bring about the same result. He was content to rely on assurances which he knew were not being implemented while hundreds of murders, violations of women, and other atrocities were being committed daily. His inaction amounted to criminal negligence.

Seven other defendants at the Tokyo trials were convicted of either crimes against peace or war crimes, and they were executed. The others were sentenced to prison terms; no one was acquitted.

In addition to criticisms made during and after the Tokyo trials that they were simply “victor’s justice,” some people also claimed that the tribunal and its indictments reflected a strong racial bias. Only three of the 11 judges presiding at the trials were Asian. Justice Radhabinod Pal, who was from India, noted that the Japanese leaders were being prosecuted and convicted for starting a war of conquest against countries like Indonesia (colonized by the Dutch), Indo-China (colonized by the French), and Malaysia (colonized by the British), all of which had been “acquired by such aggressive methods” as the Japanese were accused of using. Historian John Dower notes that Justice Pal also commented, with no little sarcasm, on the ways in which the positive rhetoric of imperialism and colonialism of the Europeans and Americans became transmogrified [changed] when associated with Japan: “As a program of aggrandizement of a nation we do not like, we may deny to it the terms ‘manifest destiny’, ‘the protection of vital interests’, ‘national honour’ or a term coined on the footing of the ‘white man’s burden’, and may give it the name of ‘aggressive aggrandizement’ pure and simple.”

A cursory read, and mine was cursory as the amount of information is incredible, should convince you why Netanyahu and his co-accused do not care a hoot about the charges brought against them.  If the Emperor of Japan can walk free, so can he and his co-accused.

Here is a research guide for those who want to take a more comprehensive look.  https://peacepalacelibrary.nl/research-guide/tokyo-trial