Your Most Trusted Source of Foreign
News and Views About the United States
|
August 15, 2005
Home Page (English)Monday marks the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the government-sponsored memorial service for the war dead will be held at Nippon Budokan in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo.
Included among those who will be mourned there will be the so-called Class-A war criminals. Invitations for the Bodokan service have been sent to families of the bereaved, but this ceremony has never become a particular topic of controversy among the public.
On the other hand, the enshrinement of Class-A war criminals with other war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo has often been of controversy, both at home and abroad.
While our memory of the war is fading, the issue of the Class-A war criminals interred at the shrine remains undiminished. Being the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, the fact that the the issue is being discussed more intensely than usual indicates its complexity.
Why is the issue so complicated? One of the reasons is that the involvement of those classified as Class-A war criminals, when examined individually, was diverse.
For instance, the judges representing the victorious Allied powers at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo Trial) were divided over former Prime Minister Koki Hirota. Of the seven Class-A war criminals sentenced to death, Hirota was the only civilian. Six judges voted for the death sentence and five voted against.
Fourteen Class-A war criminals, including
the seven who were executed, are interred in the Yasukuni Shrine. Among the
14 is Shigenori
Complicating the controversy is the fact
that figures like
Beside these 14, there were 11 other "Class-A war criminals," including former Finance Minister Okinori Kaya. Kaya was sentenced to life imprisonment but paroled in 1955, and went on to serve as Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda's justice minister.
Also included in the 11 was former Foreign
Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, who was sentenced to imprisonment but paroled
in 1950 and later served as Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama's foreign minister.
When the U.N. General Assembly agreed to admit
DOUBTS ABOUT TOKYO TRIAL
One of the underlying factors preventing the issue of the "Class-A war criminals" from fading is the lingering doubt about the nature of the Tokyo Trial itself.
Judge Radha Binod Pal [See Photo], who represented
[Editor's Note: The indictment at the Tokyo Trial accused the defendants of promoting a scheme of conquest that "contemplated and carried out ... murdering, maiming and ill-treating prisoners of war (and) civilian internees ... forcing them to labor under inhumane conditions ... plundering public and private property, wantonly destroying cities, towns and villages beyond any justification of military necessity; (perpetrating) mass murder, rape, pillage, brigandage, torture and other barbaric cruelties upon the helpless civilian population of the over-run countries]."
—READ Judge Pal's Dissenting Opinion in Defense of JapanYet, the General Headquarters of the Allied
Powers forbade the public release of the dissenting judgment until the 1951
San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect and
In addition to Pal, many
For instance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said the Tokyo Trial was not a judicial tribunal but merely a tool for political power.
ALLIED AGGRESSION
On the other hand, violations of international
law and other acts of aggression were carried out by some of the victorious
Allied powers while the Tokyo Trial was being held. The Soviet
Union, for example, placed about 600,000 Japanese prisoners
of war into slave labor camps in Siberia.
On May 7 in Riga,
This can be considered a "revision
of history" by Bush. For
Nonetheless, there is no denying that the
war caused awful suffering to the people of East Asia, leaving
Even though the war resulted in the early
independence of Asian nations colonized by Western countries,
Yet back then, there were some in the political
and military fields and in public and private sectors who opposed
Was the Cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki
Tojo solely responsible for the war against the
Who really was responsible?
The death sentence handed down to Hirota
was unjust and we wonder if he was responsible for the war. What about the responsibility
of those who blocked
If the Tokyo Trial is thought to have been in many ways questionable and unfair, it may be advisable for the Japanese people to reconsider who bears the responsibility for the war.
In doing so, it will be necessary to review the facts some distance from the concept of "war criminals" as it was defined within the political framework of the victorious nations. Such a review can also be made at some distance from the logic of the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 "Class-A war criminals" are enshrined along with other war dead. But whatever the meaning of the historic milestone of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, this may be the right moment to begin a national debate over our history.