International military tribunal for the Far East

The international military Tribunal for the Far East (or Court of Tōkyō or military Tribunal of Tōkyō ), was created the large on January 19th 1946 to judge the war criminal Japanese of the Second world war.

Its creation

In accordance with the Proclamation of Potsdam of July 26th 1945, the general Douglas MacArthur, in the supreme capacity as Commander of the allied Powers in the Far East, created the international military Tribunal for the Far East on January 19th, 1946.

Its mandate

Just like the international military Tribunal of Nuremberg, the Court of Tōkyō was intended to judge the criminals of Classe has .

, The crimes in three categories had been indeed classified:

Class a: crimes against peace, aimed only the highest levels of power and those which had planned and directed the war.
Class b: war crimes.
Class C: crimes against humanity.

Its composition

This court was not with the clean of the term international court, but rather multinational direction.

It was composed of eleven judges, for each victorious country (the United States, Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and Filipino). In this respect, just like the international military Tribunal of Nuremberg, it is regarded more as a court of the winners against overcome, than like an equitable and independent court politically. The president of the Court was the Australien William Webb and the American Joseph Keenan was the Procureur as a chief.

People concerned

The Court aimed three categories of different people:

high ranking officials.
military officers.
officers of lower ranks.

With final, on 80 suspects of crimes of class has, 28 people were continued (19 soldiers and 9 civilians):

Four Prime Ministers: Kiichiro Hiranuma, Koki Hirota, Kuniaki Koiso, Hideki Tōjō
Three Foreign Ministers: Yosuke Matsuoka, Mamoru Shigemitsu, Shigenori Togo
Four Ministers for the War: Sadao Araki, Shunroku Hastened, Seishiro Itagaki, Jiro Minami
Two Ministers for the Navy: Osami Nagano, Shigetaro Shimada
Six generals: Kenji Doihara, Heitaro Kimura, Iwane Matsui, Akira Muto, Kenryo Sato, Yoshijiro Umezu
Two ambassadors: Hiroshi Oshima, Toshio Shiratori
Three business men or drug traffickers: Naoki Hoshino, Okinori Kaya, Teiichi Suzuki
It Minister of Justice Koichi Kido
the radical theorist: Shumei Okawa
the admiral: Takasumi Oka
the colonel: Kingoro Hashimoto

People and cases having been given an exemption

Several people did not appear before the court, because of their supports or of information which they held. In this context, condemned have the appearance of goat-emissary.

Because of a pact of collaboration concluded between MacArthur and the Hirohito emperor, here the people who did not appear:

Shōwa itself ( Hirohito ), which preserved its station in spite of many pressures of abdication coming even from members of its family.
family members imperial implied in the commission of war crimes or in the control of military operations like the brothers of the emperor, Yasuhito Chichibu, project superintendent of the operation Lily of gold, and Nobuhito Takamatsu or of the more distant parents like the prince Hiroyasu Fushimi, the prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, the prince Yasuhiko Asaka, instigator of the Massacre of Nankin, and the prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda.

Several historians criticize this decision to exonerate the Emperor and the imperial family of criminal continuations. (John Dower, Embracing defeat , 1999, Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the making off modern Japan , 2000) According to the historian John Dower, " The countryside concluded to exonerate the Emperor of its responsibility with regard to the war did not know limit. Hirohito was not only presented as being innocent of any formal action which could have made it likely of an inculpation like war criminal, it was transformed into a kind of holy icon not taking even any moral responsibility for the guerre." (Dower, ibid p. 326) According to Herbert Bix, " Measurements really extraordinary companies by MacArthur to save Hirohito of a judgment as war criminal had an impact persisting and deeply distorting in the comprehension of the Japanese with regard to the war perdue." and " Immediately on its arrival in Japan, (the sergeant-general) Bonner Fellers was put at work to protect Hirohito from the part which he had played during and at end of the guerre." and " allowed the principal criminals to coordinate their version of the facts so that the emperor escapes a inculpation." (Bix, ibid p. 545,583)

Moreover, the members of the bacteriological research unit, Unit 731 as Shiro Ishii were not worried in exchange of information on the results of their “work” whose no mention was made in front of the court.

In 1981, the Bulletin off the Atomic Scientists published an article by John W. Powell explaining in detail the experiments of the Unité 731 and the tests with the free air on the civil populations. This article was accompanied by a word of the Dutch judge B.V.A. Röling, the last surviving of the Court, which noted that " Like member of the Court, it is for me a bitter experiment to be today informed that criminal acts of the most contemptible nature, ordered by the central government of Japan, were held with regard to the Court by the government of the United States. " (Daniel Barenblatt, has plague upon humanity , 2004, p. 222)

Many criminals profited from the competitions between the nationalist forces of Chiang and the Communists of Mao to escape justice. Let us mention among them the general Yasuji Okamura, instigator of the houses of comfort where were employed the Femmes of comfort and project superintendent of the sankô sakusen (operation kills all, burns all steals all) or Masanobu Tsuji, instigator of the massacre of Singapore and accessory to the walk of died of Bataan.

In addition, certain politicians, suspectés of war crime, were however not judged by the court. They could take again a political life, after the end of the prohibition of participation in the public affairs, in 1952, as Nobusuke Kishi which was Prime Minister in 1957, or Ryōichi Sasakawa.

For Dower, " Even pacifist Japanese who endorsed the ideals of Nuremberg and Tokyo, and which worked to document and with publiciser the atrocities of the mode shôwa, cannot justify the way in which the lawsuits on the war crimes were carried out; not more than they cannot defend the American decision to exonerate the emperor of its responsibility for the war and then, at the top of the cold war, to release and shortly after to kiss war criminals of extreme-right-hand side shown like the future Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. " (Dower, ibid, p. 562)

The verdict

During the lawsuit, Matsuoka Yosuke and Nagano Osami died of natural causes, Okawa Shumei was interned for mental disorders. For this reason the verdict returned on November 12th 1948 related to only 25 marked out of the 28.

Seven Japanese were condemned to the Capital punishment by hanging on December 23rd, 1948:

Kenji Doihara
Koki Hirota
Heitaro Kimura
Seishiro Itagaki
Iwane Matsui
Akira Muto
Hideki Tōjō

All the other defendants were condemned to sorrows of 7 years, 20 years imprisonment or with perpetuity. Kuniaki Koiso, Toshio Shiratori, Yoshijiro Umezu and Shigenori Togo died in prison during their sorrow. It should be noted that certain criminals occupied later of the very important stations in the Japanese administration, as Mamoru Shigemitsu which was Foreign Minister of the government of Ichirō Hatoyama in 1954.

As from 1954, the condemned surviving ones still in prison were released on word (or for health reason) by new the democratic Liberal party and the return to the capacity of old influential personalities of the mode shôwa like Ichiro Hatoyama and Nobusuke Kishi. These early releases (as well as the untreated cases, as the responsibility for Hirohito) were the reflection of the ambiguous policy of the United States with respect to Japan. The Cold war leaf full sound (with the War of Korea), it was necessary to make of Japan a allied country and the best means was to turn the page as soon as possible. That supported certainly the rise of a Japanese Révisionnisme on the war crimes committed by Japan.

What brought this Court

Just like the Court of Nuremberg, the court of Tōkyō was very political. But it made it possible to set up the bases of an international court. These two courts were thus precursors of an international justice (see the article on the International penal court).

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