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WWII Trials of Japanese War Criminals 'In Doubt'

Not only does this Daily Yomiuri editorial question the guilty verdicts handed down by Post WWII Allied War Crimes Trials, it also argues that George W. Bush's opinions about the Yalta conference between Truman, Churchill and Stalin are 'revisionist.'

August 15, 2005

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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.

  

Prime Minister Koki Hirota; Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo; Foreign
Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu: Heroes or War Criminals?


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Fourteen Class-A war criminals, including the seven who were executed, are interred in the Yasukuni Shrine. Among the 14 is Shigenori Togo, the former foreign minister who attempted in vain to prevent Japan from going to war and who explored ways to bring about an early peace after the war began.

Complicating the controversy is the fact that figures like Togo have also been designated "Class-A war criminals."

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 Japan to the world body in 1956, Shigemitsu represented Tokyo, and when he died, a silent prayer was offered at the General Assembly.

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 India during the trial, was of the opinion that the trial itself was "a ritualized vengeance" by the winner against the loser, and concluded that each of the accused must be found not guilty and should be acquitted on all charges.

[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 Japan


Judges of the Tokyo Trial. Judge Pal is in the Back, First Left

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Yet, 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 Japan recovered its sovereignty.

In addition to Pal, many U.S. and European experts expressed doubt over the nature of the Tokyo Trial under international law.

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. France and the Netherlands were "fighting wars of aggression again" to recolonize Vietnam and Indonesia, respectively, against national liberation forces.

On May 7 in Riga, Latvia, U.S. President George W. Bush referred in a speech to the Yalta agreement on the world's postwar arrangements, which was signed at a meeting in the Crimea by Allied leaders from Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. He said "it will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history" because it led to the "captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe" under the "iron rule of another empire [the Soviet Union]."

This can be considered a "revision of history" by Bush. For Japan, the Yalta Conference was also a forum of "conspiracy" where the United States provoked the Soviet Union into violating the Japanese-Soviet treaty of neutrality and into committing an act of aggression against Japan.

Nonetheless, there is no denying that the war caused awful suffering to the people of East Asia, leaving Japan to live with a sense of historical guilt.



Churhill, Roosevelt, Stalin at Yalta: A Conspiracy Against Japan?


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Even though the war resulted in the early independence of Asian nations colonized by Western countries, Japan did not start the war for that purpose. The war also caused great misery and pain for the Japanese people.

Yet back then, there were some in the political and military fields and in public and private sectors who opposed Japan going to war. Why, then, did Japan plunge into such a reckless war?

Was the Cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo solely responsible for the war against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands? What about the responsibility of the preceding cabinet under Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe?

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 Japan from making an early peace and increasing the number of victims both at home and abroad, despite the worsening state of the war for Japan?

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.

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