War crimes Japanese - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

The war crimes Japanese indicate the War crimes which were made by the Japanese during the period of the Japanese imperialism, starting from the end of the 19th century until 1945, mainly during the first part of the era Shōwa. Other terms, such as the Asian Holocaust or the Japanese Atrocities of war, are also used to indicate this period.

The historians and the governments of many countries officially considered the soldiers of the Empire of Japan, namely the Armée imperial Japanese woman and the Japanese imperial Marine, like the persons in charge of the slaughters and other crimes committed against several million Civils or Prisoner of war (PG) during first half of the 20th century.

Definitions

In the broad sense, the war crimes can be defined like a behavior stripped of scruples of which a government or soldiers shows with regard to civilians or combatants an enemy country. Soldiers belonging to the Japanese Empire were shown or convinced to have perpetrated such acts during the period of the Japanese imperialism which extends from the end of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. They were shown to have made a series of violations of the Human rights against civilians or prisoners of war (PG) in the Far East and in the West of the Pacifique. These events reached their paroxysm during the second Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945 and the Asian campaigns and the Pacific of the Guerre of Large Eastern Asia (1941-45).

International law and Japanese

Although the Japanese empire did not sign the Geneva Conventions, which are since 1864 at the base of the commonly allowed definitions of the war crimes, the perpetrated crimes fall under other aspects from the international law and Japanese right. For example, of many crimes committed by Japanese were in infringment with the military Code Japanese and were not carried in front of martial course as this code requires it. The empire also violated international agreements signed by Japan, including the Traité of Versailles, such as the banishment of the use of chemical weapons, and the Conventions of $the Hague (1899 and 1907) on the protection of the prisoners of war (PG). The Japanese government also signed the Pacte Briand-Kellogg (1929), thus making its actions likely to be continued as a crimes against peace, a prevention which had been established during the lawsuit of Tokyo in order to continue the war criminal of " Classify A". War criminals of " Classify B" were those which were convinced of war crimes in their usual meaning, and those of " Classify C" were those which were guilty of crimes against humanity. The Japanese government had also accepted the terms of the Déclaration of Potsdam (1945) after the end of the war. This declaration mentioned in its article 10 two types of war crimes: one was the violation of the international law, such as the ill treatments of the prisoners of war; the other was the fact of making opposition " with the democratic tendencies within the people japonais" and with the civil liberties in Japan.

To Japan, the war crimes term Japanese aims generally only the cases of which had to know the international military Tribunal for the Far East, also known under the name of lawsuits of Tokyo which followed the end of the war of the Pacific. However, the court did not continue the charges of war crimes charged to officers second-rate or less experienced soldiers. Those were treated separately in other cities distributed in the Asia-Pacific area.

The Japanese law does not define the people condemned in the lawsuits of post-war period as of the criminals in spite of the fact that the Japanese governments accepted the judgments delivered at the end of these lawsuits as well as the consequences of the Traité of San Francisco (1952). This is ascribable with the fact that the treaty does not give a report on the legality of the court. If Japan had accepted by the treaty of San Francisco the stops of the courts having had to know war crimes, these stops could have given place to call and have been reversed by Japanese courts, which would have been unacceptable for the international diplomatic world. Nowadays, the Japanese lawyers share on the legal situation of the court of Tokyo a consensus under the terms of which the execution or the imprisonment of a person following the lawsuits according to war is valid, but does not have any relationship with the Japanese penal code.

Time and places

Apart from Japan, different companies use distinct base periods for the war crimes Japanese. Thus, the annexation of the Korea by Japan in 1910 was followed by the abolition of the civil liberties and the exploitation of the Korean people. For this reason, certain Korean use the expression war crimes Japanese for the events which have occurred directly during the period of 1910 to 1945.

In comparison, the Allies of the West did not enter in conflict with Japan before 1941 so that the Nord-Américains, the Australien S and the Européens can consider that the war crimes Japanese aim at events which occurred between 1941 and 1945.

The war crimes Japanese were not always the Japanese fact pure. In each Asian country or of the Pacific invaded or occupied by Japan, it was small minorities to collaborate with the Japanese army or to be even used for it, for various reasons such as economic difficulties, coercion or the antipathy for powers concurrent imperialists.

It was said that the acts made against internationally recognized people as subjected to Japanese sovereignty cannot be regarded as war crimes. Japanese sovereignty of swears former to 1945 on countries like Korea or Formosa was recognized by international agreements such as the Traité of Shimonoseki (1895) and the Traité annexation between Japan and Korea (1910). However, the legality of these treaties is questioned, the local populations were not consulted, there were a resistance armed to the invasions and Japanese occupations and war crimes can also be made during civil wars.

Background

Japanese militarist culture and imperialism

The militarist culture, in particular during the period of Japanese imperialism had a great influence on the control of the Japanese soldiers before and during the Second world war.

During previous centuries, one had taught with the Samurais not to call in question the obedience of which they were indebted towards their suzerains, like not showing the fear with the combat. After the Restoration Meiji and the collapse of the Shogunat Tokugawa, the Emperor became the object of military honesty. During the age Âge of the Empire says at the end of the 19th century, Japan, following the other world powers, built an empire by pursuing this goal in an aggressive way.

As it is the case of the other imperial powers, the Japanese culture evolved more and more to a chauvinistic nationalism since the end of the 19th century until the next century. The emergence of Japanese nationalism is due partly to the adoption of the Shintoïsme like Religion of State and to its incorporation in teaching. The shintoïsme considered that the Emperor was of divine gasoline because it was famous being the descendant of the goddess of the sun Amaterasu. This made it possible to justify the requirement of an unconditional obedience to the emperor and his representatives.

The victory obtained by Japan in the first war Sino-Japanese (1894-1895) marked its accession with the row of world power. With the difference in the other major powers, Japan did not sign the Geneva Convention - which stipulates that it is advisable to hold a human treatment PGs - before the end of the second world war. Nevertheless, the treatment of the prisoners by the Japanese soldiers during the War Russo-Japanese woman (1904-1905) or of the First World War (1914-1918) was comparable with that which the other armies with their prisoners reserved.

Events of the Thirties and Forties

detailed Article: Expansionism of Japan Showa

At the end of the years 1930, the emergence of militarism in Japan in the broad sense created at least surface similarities between the Japanese military culture and that of the soldiers of elite of the Nazi Germany, like the Waffen-SS. Japan also laid out of a Secret police military, called Kempeitai , which resembled the Gestapo Nazi for the role that she played in the annexed or occupied countries.

As in the other dictatorships, irrational brutality, hatred and the fear became banals. Errors perceived like failures or a devotion insufficient with the person of the emperor were seen sanctioned punishments often of physical nature. In the army, the officers attacked and beat the men under their command. The latter, in their turn, made some in the same way on the lower levels of the hierarchy. In the camps of PGs, this had as a consequence that the prisoners, located all in bottom of the scale, were in hillock with the ill treatments.

The severity of the Bushido coupled with the ethnocentrism of Japan in its phase modern imperialist often resulted in brutalities with regard to the civilians and of PGs. After the beginning of a military campaign with large scales against China in 1937, of the cases of murder, torture and rapes made by Japanese soldiers seem to be deliberately forgotten by their officers and generally remained unpunished. Such behaviors were repeated throughout the war of the Pacific.

Crimes

Because of the great degree of suffering caused by the Japanese army during years 1930 and 40, it is often compared with the army of the Third Reich during the period 1933-1945. The historian Chalmers Johnson wrote that:

Etablir which of the two attackers of the Axe, Germany or Japan, was during the second world war most brutal with regard to the people that they martyrisèrent is stripped of direction. The Germans killed six million Juifs and 20 Russian million (C with D of Soviet citizens ); the Japanese massacred not less than 30 million Filipino S, Malais, Vietnamese, Cambodgiens, Indonésien S and Burmese, of which at least 23 million was ethniquement Chinese. These two countries plundered the countries which they conquered on a monumental scale, although Japan flew more, and over more a long period, that the Nazis. The two conquerors reduced in Esclavage million people and exploited them like forced labor - and, in the case of the Japanese, like Prostituée S (of force) for the troops of the face. If you were a prisoner of war Nazi to the hands of the the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not of the Russia), your chances not to survive the war amounted to 4%; in comparison, death rate for PGs with the hands of the Japanese approached the 30%.

Murder of mass

According to R.J. Rummel, professor of political sciences to the University of Hawaii, between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese “killed between: 3000000 and: 10000000 people, probably: 6000000 of Chinese, of Indonésiens, Koreans, Filipinos and Indochinese inter alia, including Western prisoners of war. This Démocide was due has a government scheme and soldier in moral bankruptcy, with a military opportunity and practices like with the military culture.” Rummel supports that, for only the China, the direct consequences of the invasion were which between 1937 and 1945 roughly 3,9 million Chinese, primarily civilians, was directly exterminated by the policies of the mode shôwa and 10,2 civil million perished of the indirect causes related to the invasion.

The most known incident of this period is that of the Massacre of Nankin which has occurred in 1937-38 when, according to the investigations of the international military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese army massacred: 260000 civilians and prisoner of war. Herbert Bix, quoting work of Mitsuyoshi Himeta and Akira Fujiwara estimates that the Politique of the Three Whole (Sankō Sakusen), a strategy of the burned ground used by the Japanese forces in China between 1942 and 1945 and approved by Hirohito itself, responsible for had died for 2,7 million Chinese civilians

The mystery surrounding the exact role of Hirohito is explained in detail in the book which makes authority of David Bergamini. This last translated newspapers of war and depositions near courts into Japanese language and interviewed witnesses directly.

1942, a soldier shôwa exhibe a hunting trophy within the framework of the operation sankô sakusen .

Experiments on human beings and biological war

Special Japanese military units undertook experiments on civilians and of PGs in China. One of most sadly famous was the Unité 731. Its victims were the object of Vivisection S without anesthesia, of amputations and were used to test the biological weapons inter alia experiments. It was not made use of average anaesthetics because it was considered that could deteriorate the results of the experiments. Certain victims are transfered to inject blood of animal origin.

to develop a treatment of engelures, prisoners were put outside in ice-cold water and forced to leave their cold exposed arms. Their arms then were regularly sprinkled water until they are completely cold. The arm was then amputee. The doctor repeated the process since the bottom of the arm of the victim to his shoulder. Once the two arms completely amputees, the doctors made in the same way with the legs until there remains only one head and a chest. The victim was then used for experiments relating to the plague and other disease-causing agents .

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by only Unit 731 are responsible for: 3000 deaths Moreover, “of tens of thousands, perhaps even: 200000 Chinese died of bubonic plague, the cholera, the carbuncle and other diseases…” resulting from the biological war.

One of the most known cases of experimentation on human beings occurred in Japan itself. At least nine of the twelve members of a crew pertaining to U.S. Air Force survived the crash landing of their bomber B-29 Kyushu on May 5th, 1945. The pilot of the bomber was sent to Tokyo for being questioned while the other survivors were dispatched at the department of anatomy of the Université of Kyushu to Fukuoka where they were the object of vivisection and/or were killed. March 11th, 1948, thirty people, whose several doctors appeared before a allied court having to know war crimes. The loads relating to the cannibalism were given up, but 23 people were declared guilty of vivisection and not justified amputations. Five of them were condemned to death, five others with the prison with perpetuity, and the others with sorrows of imprisonment moreover short duration. In 1950, the military governor of Japan, the general Douglas MacArthur, commuted all the capital punishments and reduced the majority of the custodial sentences significantly. All those which had been convinced of vivisection within the framework of the university were free in 1958.

In 2006, the former officer doctor of the Japanese imperial Navy, Akira Makino declared that one had given him the order - as started from its drive - to practice vivisections on approximately 30 civil prisoners in Philippines between December 1944 and February 1945. The surgery which it had to practice included of the amputations and the victims included/understood women and children.

Use of chemical weapons

According to the historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, the Hirohito emperor authorized by specific orders (Rinsanmei) the use of chemical weapons in China. For example, during the invasion of Wuhan from August in October 1938, the emperor authorized the use of pollutant Gas S with 375 recoveries notwithstanding article 171 of the Traité of Versailles and a resolution adopted by the Société of the Nations on May 14th condemning the use of pollutant gases by Japan.

According to documents found in 2004 by Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka in the Australian public records, of pollutant gases were tested on Australian prisoners and Dutch in November 1944 in the Kai islands.

Avoidable famines

The deaths caused by the diversion of the available resources to the profit of the Japanese soldiers in the occupied countries are also regarded as war crimes by many people. In the South Asia - particularly with the Vietnam and in the East of the the Indies Dutchwomen (Indonesia), which counted with the number of the large rice producers - million civilians perished because of an avoidable famine in 1944-1945 (see for example the article on the Famine of 1945 in Vietnam).

Tortures of prisoners of war

One also reports that the Japanese imperial armed forces largely used torture against their prisoners, usually to obtain information quickly concerned with the military intelligence. The tortured prisoners were often carried out thereafter. A former officer of the Japanese army which was useful in China, Uno Sintaro, declared:

One of the means essential to obtain information was the interrogation of the prisoners. Torture was an inevitable need. To kill the victims and to bury them in are a natural sequence. You made it because you do not wish that be discovered. I believed and I acted in this way because I was convinced of what I did. We made our duty as it had been inculcated to us. We did it for the safety of our country. Because of our subsidiary obligations with respect to our ancestors. On the battle field, we never considered that the Chinese were human beings. When you are the winner, the losers seem really miserable. We concluded that the ethnos group Yamato (càd Japanese) was higher

After the war, 148 Japanese were convinced of war crimes by the allied courts. Highest in rank Hong His Ik was the lieutenant-general which was responsible for the organization of the prison camps in Southeast Asia.

Cannibalism

Many written reports/ratios and testimonys gathered by the Australian section for the war crimes of the court of Tokyo, examined by the prosecutor William Webb (future judge as a chief), show that of the Japanese made in several parts of Asia or the Pacific of the acts of cannibalism against allied prisoners of war or civil populations. In certain cases, these acts were the result of the increase in the attacks allied on the Japanese lines of supply and in the deaths and diseases striking the Japanese soldiers because of the famine which followed. However, according to the historian Yuki Tanaka, “the cannibalism was often a systematic activity undertaken by whole companies acting under the command of officers.”

These actions were frequently related to the murder. For example, an Indian prisoner of war , the Havildar Changdi RAM testified that November 12th, 1944 Kempeitai decapitated a pilot. I live the scene of behind a tree and observed some of the Japanese cut out the flesh of his arms, his legs, his hips and his buttocks and bring back it to their districts… They cut it of small pieces and made it fry. ”

In certain cases, the flesh was taken on people in life: another Indian PG, the Lance Naik Hatam Ali (which was to become citizen Pakistan board later) testified that in New Guinea:

the Japanese started to select the prisoners and each day a prisoner was killed and eaten by the soldiers. I saw that personally and nearly 100 prisoners were killed and eaten by the soldiers at this place. Those among us who remained were taken along to another place located at 80 km where ten prisoners died of disease. At this place, the Japanese started again to select prisoners in order to eat them. Those which were selected were brought in a hut where them flesh was taken on their bodies whereas they were still in life. They were then thrown in a ditch where they ended up dying

One of the known officers highest in rank to be convinced of cannibalism was Lt. General Yoshio Tachibana who, with eleven other Japanese soldiers was judged for the execution of aviators of the U.S. Navy and the cannibalism perpetrated on at least one of them in August 1944 on the island of Chichi Jima in the islands Bonin. They were decapitated on the orders of Tachibana. As the military and international laws did not contain provisions specific to the cannibalism, they were judged for murder and “refusal of a honourable burial”. Tachibana was condemned to death.

Forced labor

The Forced labor imposed by the Japanese armed forces on Asian civilians and prisoners of war was also the cause of a great number of deaths. According to a joint study several historians whose Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kibo and Peattie Mark, more than ten million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Kôa-in (Development agency of Eastern Asia) for the forced labor. More: 100000 civilians and PGs died during the construction of the Railroad Burma-Siam.

The bookstore of the Congrès of the United States estimates that with Java, between four and ten million romusha (in Japanese, worker manuals) was forced to work by the Japanese soldiers. Close to: 270000 of these Javanese workers were sent towards other areas of the South-East Asia held by the Japanese. Only: 52000 were finally repatriated in Java, which implies that death rate was of 80%.

According to the historian Akira Fujiwara, the Hirohito emperor ratified the decision personally not to more take account of the constraints of the international law (Conventions of $the Hague) for the prisoner of war salary Chinese in a directive of August 5th, 1937. The same document also specified with the staff officers that it was necessary no more to use the term prisoner of war.

In addition, the Geneva Convention exempted the PG having row of Sergent or more manual work and stipulated that the prisoners subjected to a work were to receive additional rations as well as other food products of first need. During the second world war the provisions of Geneva Convention were mainly respected in the prison camps of war created by the Germans, except for those where were locked up the Soviet PG. It will be noted however that Japan was not at the time signatory of Geneva Convention and the Japanese forces did not apply it.

Women of comfort

The term woman of comfort (慰安婦 ianfu) or military woman of comfort (従軍慰安婦 jūgun-ianfu) was a Euphémisme designating the prostitutes in the Bordel S Japanese soldiers benches in the occupied countries, giving thereafter place to charges of sexual Esclavage the number of women who became women of comfort by the constraint is prone to discussion. Certain sources claim that virtually all the women of comfort had agree to become prostitutes and/or were paid, but others gave a report on research showing a bond between the Japanese army and recruitment forced local women.

In 1992, the historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published documents based on his research in the files of the National institute for the studies of defense. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between the imperial institutions such as Kôa-in and establishments of comfort. When the discoveries of Yoshimi were published in the Japanese mediums on January 12th, 1993, they caused the feeling and forced the government, represented by the secretary of the principal private secretary, Kato Koichi, to recognize some of these facts the very same day. January 17th, during a voyage in Korea, the Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal excuses for the sufferings endured by the victims. The July 6th and August 4th, the Japanese government published two declarations in which he recognized that “establishments of comfort were set up in answer to the military request of the time”, “the Japanese army, was directly or indirectly implied in the installation and the management of the establishments of comfort and the transfer of the women of comfort” and that the women “in many cases were recruited against their will realizing deception or coercion”.

There exist several theories on the ventilation of the women of comfort by country of origin.

Whereas according to certain sources, the majority of these women would be in fact of Japanese origin, others, whose Yoshini, make the point that not less: 200000 women, primarily of Korean or Chinese origin, and coming from other countries like Philippines, Taiwan, Burma, the Netherlands, Australia and the Indies Dutchwomen, were forced to deliver itself to the prostitution.

The estimates on the number of the women of comfort during the war are corroborated by the testimony of those which survived.

In March 2007, a declaration of Japanese the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe started again an international polemic on this subject. Mr Abe had in particular declared that it there had had no slavery imposed by the Japanese armed forces and had questioned the utility of the governmental declarations of 1993. A string of old victims expressed their indignation following these comments, of which Korean Yong-soo Lee.

Plundering

Many historians make the point that the violence of the Japanese soldiers was closely related to plundering. For example, in a book on the gold of Yamashita, treating secret deposits of the products of plundering in the Sphere of Co-prosperity of large Eastern Asia, Sterling and Peggy Seagrave makes the point that the flight was organized on large scales, that is to say by Gangsters members of Yakuza, such as Yoshio Kodama, or by military officers with the pay of the emperor Showa which wished that a maximum of these products go to the government. Seagrave claim that Hirohito indicated for this purpose his/her brother, the prince Yasuhito Chichibu to direct a secret operation called Kin No yuri (gold Lily, according to one of the favorite Haiku of the emperor).

Reactions of the post-war period

Lawsuits of Tokyo

The lawsuit of Tokyo which were carried out by the allied powers declared guilty war crimes of many people, in particular old the Prime Ministers (ever elected) Koki Hirota, Hideki Tōjō and Kuniaki Koiso. Many military chiefs were also declared guilty. Two people convinced to be war criminal of class has played a part in Japanese governments of post-war period. Mamoru Shigemitsu was Foreign Minister as well during the war as in the government Hatoyama of the post-war period and Okinori Kaya was Minister for Finance during the war and became Minister for Finance in the government of Hayato Ikeda. They did not have however a direct link with the war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces and no foreign government raised objection when they took up duty.

The emperor Showa and all the family members imperial implied in the war like the prince Yasuhito Chichibu, the prince Asaka, the prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda, the prince Higashikuni and the prince Fushimi, were exonerated from criminal continuations by Douglas MacArthur. Several historians criticize this decision. According to John Dower, even the Japanese activists who endorsed the charters of Nuremberg and Tokyo, and which worked to document and with publiciser the atrocities of the mode shôwa, " cannot defend the American decision to exonerate the emperor of his responsibility for the war and then, at the top of the cold war, to release then to bind to war criminals of extreme-right-hand side shown like the future Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. " . For Herbert Bix, " measurement really extraordinary catches by Mac Arthur to save Hirohito of a lawsuit as war criminal had an impact persisting and deeply distorting as for the comprehension of Japanese with regard to the war perdue."

Other lawsuits

In addition to the lawsuits of Tokyo, other continuations for war crimes were also led to staff costs Japanese in many other cities in Asia and in the Pacific between 1945 and 1951. Approximately: 5600 Japanese were continued in more: 2200 lawsuits. The judges chairing the courts came from the the United States, of China, the the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Soviet Union, New Zealand, India and the Filipino . More: 4400 Japanese were declared guilty and approximately a thousand of them were condemned to the capital punishment. The lawsuit having related to the greatest number of defendants was that concerning 93 marked Japanese of the summary execution of more than 300 PGs combined in the Massacre of consecutive Laha to the Bataille of Ambon.

Official excuses

The Japanese government considers that it is advisable to make a distinction between the legal point of view and the moral point of view. Consequently, while supporting that Japan violated the international law nor no treaty, the Japanese governments officially recognized the sufferings caused by the Japanese army and of many excuses were presented by the Japanese government. For example, the Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama declared in August 1995 that Japan “by its domination and its colonial aggression, caused terrible damage and suffering for the people of many countries, as private individuals for those of Asian nations”, and it expressed his “feeling of major remord” and presented his “sincere excuses”. In the same way, on September 29th, 1972, Japanese the Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka had declared that “ the Japanese part is intensely conscious of the serious damage that Japan because in the past with the Chinese people by the war and reproaches it highly ”.

However, the official excuses are often regarded as insufficient by many survivors of these crimes and/or by the families of the victims deceased. The question of the official excuses is discussed because many people afflicted by the war crimes Japanese support that no excuse was presented for precise acts and/or that the Japanese government purely limited itself has to express regrets or remord". Some claim that in certain countries the media or hide the efforts of reconciliation authorized by Japan, including the generous assistances of Japan, particularly in the countries where the media are under official control that it is formal or only factual It is claimed moreover that this reflects a feeling anti-Japanese.

In Japan, some affirmed that what is required is that Japanese the Prime Minister and/or the emperor deliver themselves to the '' dogeza '', in which a person kneels and inclines her head towards the ground - a very formal way to present its excuses in the company be-Asian to which Japan does not seem to want to lend itself. Some quote the example of the chancellor Willy Brandt, which knelt in front of the monument with the victims of the Ghetto of Warsaw in 1970, like an example of an act of excuse and reconciliation strong and effective, although everyone is not agreement.

Quoting the act of Brandt in example, John Borneman, professor of anthropology in Cornell declares that “an excuse represents a nonmaterial exchange or purely symbolic system by which that which made the fault lowers its own statute as anybody. ” He adds that once this type of excuse is presented, the injured part must forgive and to seek the reconciliation, without what the excuse does not have any effect. The injured part can reject the excuses for several reasons, one of them being to avoid the reconciliation because, “by keeping alive the memory of the wound, the refusal prevent an assertion of mutual humanity by instrumentalisant the capacity which sticks to the statute of permanent victim. ”

Consequently, some make the point that the reserve of a country to accept the gestures of conciliation posed by Japan can be due to the fact that this country estimates that Japan dropped sufficiently only to present sincere excuses. In addition, others say that this country chooses to reject the reconciliation in order to guarantee a permanent statute of victim which would be a way of establishing some to be able on Japan.

Compensations

There exists a largely widespread perception that the Japanese government did not agree the legal responsibility to provide allowances and, that consequently direct for this refusal, it did not compensate the individual victims for the atrocities made during the war. In particular, several important defense associations of the Human rights and the women's rights claim that Japan has always a moral and/or legal responsibility to compensate the individual victims, in particular the sexual slaves enlisted by the Japanese soldiers in the occupied countries and known under the name of Femmes of comfort.

The Japanese government officially accepted the compensation requests of the victims of war crimes as stipulated by the Déclaration of Potsdam. The details of these compensations were regulated by bilateral treaties with the countries concerned, except for the North Korea, because Japan recognizes only the South Korea like only government of the Korean peninsula. In the case of PG of the Western allies, the compensations were granted the victims by the means of the Croix-Rouge. The entire amount paid by Japan rose with: 4500000 GBP . However in a certain number of Asian countries, the compensation requests were is abandoned for political reasons or paid by Japan which estimated that they would be used to provide individual compensations. They however were not allotted to the victims by the governments of the countries concerned. Consequently, of many individual victims in Asia did not perceive any compensation.

Consequently, the position of the Japanese government is that the compensation requests additional must be deposited by the beneficiaries attached to their respective governments. It is resulted from it that all the individual requests for compensation deposited in front of Japanese courts failed. It was in particular the case for a British ex-prisoner of war which failed in its attempt to continue the Japanese government in order to obtain a payment complementary under compensation. The consequence of this action was however that thereafter, the government of the United Kingdom granted a supplement of allowances all the British ex-prisoners of war. There was in Japan of the complaints because the international mediums had simply reported that the old PG had required allowances and had omitted to specify that it asked in fact a compensation complementary to that paid previously by the Japanese government.

A small number of requests were also increased in front of the courts states-uniens, but they all were rejected.

During negotiations with South Korea, the Japanese government had proposed to pay individual compensations with the Korean victims, as that had been the case for PGs Western. The Korean government asked on the contrary that Japan make him a total payment, which was made. The funds thus poured were used for economic development. The content of these negotiations was not revealed by the Korean government before 2004 although they had been of public notoriety in Japan.

Some make the point that like the governments of China and Taiwan gave up their complaints tending to obtain allowances in cash, the responsibility moral and/or legal to grant allowances rests from now on in the hands of these governments. These criticisms also underline that although these governments gave up their complaints, they signed treaties which recognized the transfer of the Japanese colonial possessions to their profit. Consequently, it would be erroneous to claim that these governments did not accept any compensation for Japan, these governments having had the possibility individually of compensating the victims thanks to the products for these transfers.

Although recognizing any responsibility for the women for comfort, Japan set up in 1995 the Fond of the Asian Women which grants financial equalizations the people who make the point that they were forced prostituer during the war. Although the organization was created by the government, from the legal point of view it was made up like an independent foundation. The activities of the bottom were prone to controversy in Japan like among the international organizations supporting the women concerned. Some claim that such a bottom falls under the permanent refusal of the successive Japanese governments to face their responsibilities whereas others estimate that the Japanese government for a long time fulfilled its obligations with respect to the individual victims and now restricts itself to correct the failures of the governments on which these same victims depend.

Intermediate allowances

The term allowances intermediary was applied to the removal of all the industrial facilities (in particular militaro-industrial installations) and their attribution with the allied countries. This operation was carried out under the supervision of the allied occupying forces. This reallocation was described as intermediary because it did not put a final point at the payment of the compensations. This was regulated by the bilateral treaties. In 1950, the réattribuées installations rose with 43.918 parts of machinery, evaluated with: 165158839 JPY (in 1950). The ventilation of the distribution is established as follows: China 54,1%, Netherlands, 11,5%, Filipino 19% and the United Kingdom 15,4%.

Compensation under the terms of the treaty for San Francisco

Compensations based on the credits Japanese women for overseas

The Japanese credits of overseas aim all the credits held by the government, the companies, the organizations and the citizens Japanese in the occupied countries. In conformity with the clause 14 of the treaty of San Francisco, the allied forces confiscated all these credits, except for those being in China, which were the subject of clause 21. It is considered that Korea could also take advantage of the rights deriving from clause 21.

Allowances with the allied prisoners of war

Clause 16 of the Traité of San Francisco specified that Japan was to transfer its credits and those from its citizens being in countries in war with any allied country or in neutral countries, or assimilated, at the Red Cross which would be charged to sell them and to distribute the product of it to the former prisoners of war and their beneficiaries. Because of this clause, the Japanese government and citizens discharged a total of 4.500.000 GBP at the Red Cross.

Allied territories occupied by Japan

The clause 14 of the treaty specified that Japan would negotiate with the allied powers whose territories had been occupied by Japan and who had suffered damage because of the Japanese forces in order to compensate these countries for this damage.

Thus, Philippines and the Southern Vietnam accepted allowances in 1956 and 1959. Burma and Indonesia did not appear among the original signatories of the treaty, but signed later bilateral treaties in conformity with the clause 14 of the treaty of San Francisco.

The last payment was made to Philippines on July 22nd, 1976.

Discusses in Japan

A largely widespread feeling apart from Japan wants that there exists in Japan a reserve with speaking about these events and/or to admit that they were war crimes. However, the discussed events of the imperial time are discussed openly in the media, where the various political parties and ideological movements take rather different positions. What differentiates Japan from the Germany and the Austria is that in Japan, there does not exist limitation of freedom of speech compared to this question, whereas in Germany, Austria and in other European countries, the Négation of Shoah constitutes a penally reprehensible infringement.

Until the years 1970, these debates were regarded as a subject of marginal interest in the media. In the Japanese mediums, the political opinions marked in the center and on the left generally meet in the daily newspapers, whereas the opinions of right-hand side are expressed especially in store. The debates concerning the war crimes were primarily confined in the leading of store tabloïds where the calls to make fall America imperialist and with ressusciter the veneration for the emperor coexisted with the pornography. In 1972, in order to commemorate the standardization of the relations with China, the Asashi Shimbum , a liberal famous daily newspaper published a series of articles on the war crimes in China including the Massacre of Nankin. This opened the door with debates which since then did not cease. Years 1990 are generally regarded as the period during which these questions took a real importance so that incidents like that of the massacre of Nakin, Yasukuni Shrine, the Femmes of comfort, the precision of the school books of history and the validity of the lawsuits of Tokyo were the subject of debates, even on television.

As the Japanese lawyers have a consensus on the fact that the Japanese forces technically did not make violations of the international law, much of elements of right-hand side in Japan used this position to make the point that the lawsuits of the war crimes were the fruit of a justice dictated by the winners. They regard the people convinced of war crimes as " Martyrs of Shōwa " (昭和殉難者 Shōwa Junnansha?), Shōwa being the name allotted to the reign of Hirohito. This interpretation is vigorously fought not the Japanese pacifist groups and the political left. In the past, these groups tried to make the point that the lawsuits had a certain legal base, that is to say under the terms of the Geneva Convention (notwithstanding the fact that Japan was not signatory), or under the terms of an indefinite concept of right or international consensus. In an alternative way, they have also advanced the argument that, although the lawsuits could not have basic legal valid, they were nevertheless right, which is in conformity with the popular opinion in Occident and in the remainder of Asia.

At the beginning of the 21e century, an renewed interest for the imperial past of Japan gave birth to from new interpretations from a group which received at the same time the label of new right-hand side and that of new left. This group stresses that many acts made by the Japanese forces, whose incident of Nankin (the massacre term is usually not used) constituted violations of the Japanese military code. It is considered since so courts charged to judge the war crimes had been consisted the Japanese government of post-war period, much among those which had been marked would have been declared guilty and carried out in conformity with the provisions of the Japanese military code. Consequently, the bankruptcies morals and legal in question are ascribable to the soldiers and at the Japanese government who did not fill the duties that the constitution put at their load.

The new left line/also considers that the Allies did not commit any war crime against Japan because Japan was not a country signatory of Geneva Convention and, that as winners, the Allies had all the rights to ask for a form of compensation to which Japan agreed by various treaties.

However, on the basis of logic same, the new left line/considers that the suspectés Chinese murder of activity of guerilla was perfectly legal and valid, including for some of those killed in Nankin for example. They also consider that many Chinese civilian victims are the result of the Politique of the burned ground of the nationalist Chinese. Although one can make the point that the use of this kind of tactic is legal, new line/left regard that some of the deaths caused by this policy is allotted by error to the Japanese army.

In the same way, she considers that those which tried to continue the Japanese government in order to be compensated could not be based on a legal or moral cause.

The new left line/also adopts an approach minus sympathetic nerve of the Korean claims to a statute of victim because before its annexation by Japan, Korea was vassal Dynastie Qing and, according to it, Japanese colonization, although undoubtedly lasts, constituted a progress compared to the preceding capacity in terms of human rights and economic development.

They also advance the argument that Kantōgun (also known under the name of Armée with Guandong) was at least partially guilty. Although Kantōgun was nominally subordinated to the Japanese high command at that time, its command showed a significant autonomy, as its implication in the plot aiming shows it at assassinating Zhang Zuolin in 1928 as well as the incidental of Mudken of 1931, which led to the creation of the Mandchoukouo in 1932. Moreover, at that time, the official policy of the Japanese high command was to confine the conflict in the Manchuria. But by challenge with the high command, Kantōgun invades China itself, fascinating pretext of the Incident of the bridge Marco Polo. However, the Japanese government failed to translate into martial court the officers responsible for these incidents, but also accepted the war against China and much from those which were implied accepted promotions (it was also the case of certain officers implied in the massacre of Nankin). Consequently, the argument which wants that the government was the hostage of the soldiers on the ground appears not very convincing.

The question of the personal liabilities of Hirohito in these failures constitutes a point of friction between the new right-hand side and the new left. Officially, the new imperial constitution, adopted under the emperor Meiji, conferred the full powerss on the emperor. Its article 4 prescribed that “the emperor is the chief of the empire, it joins together in its person the rights rising from sovereignty and exerts them according to the provisions of this Constitution” and article 11 provided that “the emperor exerts the supreme command of the Army and the Navy”.

For the historian Akira Fujiwara, the thesis according to which the emperor, as a body of responsibility, could not reverse the decisions of the cabinet is a myth ( shinwa ) manufactured after the war. Others claim that Hirohito deliberately worked its reign with the image of the Constitutional monarchy British, and that it always accepted the decisions and consensuses obtained by the high command. According to this approach, the moral and political bankruptcy is primarily the fact of the Japanese high command and of the cabinet, whose majority of the members were condemned thereafter at the time of the lawsuit of Tokyo as war criminals of Class has, except the family members imperial like the princes Yasuhito Chichibu, Asaka, Higashikuni, Fushimi and Tsuneyoshi Takeda.

Reinterpretations discussed apart from Japan

Certain activists established apart from Japan also try to provide discussed reinterpretations of the Japanese imperialism. For example, the sights of a South Korean ex-officer and commentator of right-hand side, Ji Man-Won, caused controversies in Korea and in other countries. Ji spoke in praise of Japan to have modernized Korea and declared, about the women reduced in sexual slavery: “the majority of the old women who claim to have been of the women of comfort or the sexual slaves of the Japanese soldiers during the second world war are impostors”. In Korea, such assertions are generally regarded as abusive, defamatory for the people concerned and negationnists, but are born from political tensions within country like Korea or China between democratic movements and benches in which the use of the Japanese history, or the contribution to the feelings anti-Japanese, constitutes a useful tool for the two sides.

Later research

As for research relating to the war criminals Nazis, of official research and investigations are always in hand. During years 1990, the South Korean government started to undertake research concerning certain individuals who would have grown rich while collaborating with the Japanese army. In South Korea, one also claims that, in the political climate of the Cold war, much of people and/or their associates and their parents were able to obtain influence with fortunes which they had piled up while collaborating with the Japanese and helped to cover or to avoid research on the war crimes to avoid being themselves blamed. Fortunes which they had been able to constitute during the years of collaboration, enabled them to make profit the members from their families of an higher education.

Nongovernmental organizations and private individuals also began their own research. For example, in 2005, a South Korean independent journalist, Jung Soo-woong, located in Japan certain descendants of the people implied in 1895 in the assassination of the empress Myeongseong de Choson (the Min queen), the last empress of Korea. The assassination had been carried out by the Company of the Black Ocean, perhaps acting on behalf of the Japanese government, because of the implication of the empress in attempts at reduction of the Japanese influence in Korea. Jung recorded the excuses of these people.

As research continues, of news of evidence are regularly updated. It was claimed that the Japanese government had intentionally destroyed the reports/ratios relating to the Korean women of comfort. Some quoted books of Japanese inventory and tables of people employed on the battle fields like proof of this assertion. For example, one of the names being reproduced on the list was that of a woman of comfort which declared that it had been forced prostituer by the Japanese. It was indexed as nurse. It was the case for at least a dozen other women of which it was obvious that they were women of comfort and not nurses or secretaries. At the present time, the South Korean government examines the hundreds of names appearing in these lists.

The sensitive information relating to the Japanese occupation of Korea is often difficult to obtain. Many claims that this is due to the fact that the Japanese government took the practice to cover many incidents which would have differently given place to serious criticisms international. For their part, the Koreans often expressed their aversion of the experiments on human beings carried out by the Japanese imperial Army where people were used as human samples in experiments as macabre as the tests relating to the Azote or in biological development programs of Armes (see Unité 731 and Shiro Ishii). Although clear and perturbing testimonys survived, they are largely refuted by the Japanese State, even to date.

Major incidents

Massacre of the hospital Alexandra
Iles Adaman
Marche of died of Baatan
Railroad of Burma
Massacre of Changjiao
Attaque of Changteh to the chemical weapons
Femmes of comfort
Bateaux of the hell
Japanese Expérimentations on Chinese
Attaque of Kaimingye to the biological weapons
Massacre of Laha
Massacre that Manila
Massacre of Nankin
Massacre of Parit Sulong
Massacre of Pahjiayu
Steps of died of Sandakan
Massacre of Political Sook Ching
of the Three Whole
Massacre of the plantation Tol
Unit 100
Unit 200
Unit 731
Unit 516
Unit 543
Unit 773
Unit 1855
Unit 2646
Unit 8604
Unit I.E.(internal excitation) 1644
Massacre of the island of Wake
War crimes in Manchoukouo

References

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