Tokyo trials

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In the Tokyo Trials ( Japanese 東京 裁判 , Tōkyō Saiban , officially: International Military Tribunal for the Far East ( 極 東 国際 軍事 裁判 , Kyokutō Kokusai Gunji Saiban )) some of the political and military leaders of the Japanese Empire were established by the victorious powers after the Second World War charged and convicted of waging war of aggression and war crimes.

execution

Tōjō Hideki during the trial in Tokyo

In addition to military commanders, politicians, diplomats and high-ranking state officials were on trial. The political philosopher and propagandist Ōkawa Shūmei was an exception. The commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Japan, Emperor Hirohito , was neither charged nor summoned as a witness. This and the behavior of General Douglas MacArthur and Brigadier General Bonner Feller , who tried to protect Emperor Hirohito and the imperial family from prosecution after the war, has been criticized by historians John Dower and Herbert Bix , among others . The responsibilities of the imperial family were downplayed and Tōjō Hideki - who was Japan's prime minister most recently - was portrayed as the main culprit. MacArthur and Fellers had significant influence on the post-war order of Japan and on the American decision to keep Emperor Hirohito on the throne.

The charges were brought on April 29, 1946. The negotiations began on May 3, 1946, and the verdict was announced on November 12, 1948.

Accuser

International Military Tribunal for the Far East 1946, Presiding Judge: William F. Webb

No.	Accuser	Country
1.	Joseph Berry Keenan (Chief Prosecutor)	United States
2.	Sergei Alexandrovich Golunski	Soviet Union
3.	Sir Alan James Mansfield	Australia
4th	Henry Grattan Nolan	Canada
5.	Xiang Zhejun	China
6th	Arthur Comyns Carr	United Kingdom
7th	Robert L. Oneto	France
8th.	P. Govinda Menon	British India
9.	Frederick Borgerhoff-Mulder	Netherlands
10.	Ronald Henry Quilliam	New Zealand
11.	Pedro López	Philippines

Other Prosecutor's Team: Solis Horowitz, Willis E. Mahoney

Charges

• Conspiracy against world peace (Pleas 1 to 36). The legal basis here was u. a. the Briand-Kellogg Pact , which outlawed wars of aggression. Japan had acceded to this internationally binding treaty.
• Murder (pleas 37 to 52)
• War crimes and crimes against humanity (Pleas 53 to 55). The legal basis here were u. a. the Hague Land Warfare Regulations with Japan as signatory state and the Geneva Convention . Japan had not acceded to the Geneva Convention, but it was considered customary international law .

In the end, 55 counts were merged into ten. Two points, "conspiracy of Japan , Italy and Germany to world domination " and " Invasion in Thailand " were for lack of evidence does not negotiate.

Charge	content
1	[Participation] as a leader, organizer, instigator, or accomplice in the planning or execution of a joint plan or conspiracy to wage wars of aggression and a war or wars in violation of international law
27	Wage an unprovoked war against China
29	Waging a war of aggression against the United States
31	Waging a war of aggression against the British Commonwealth
32	Waging a war of aggression against the Netherlands
33	Waging a war of aggression against France (Indochina)
35, 36	Waging a war of aggression against the USSR
54	Order, authorization and permission for the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and others
55	Willful and reckless neglect of the duty to take appropriate steps to prevent atrocities

Judge

Chairman (President): William F. Webb

No.	Judge	designating state
1.	John Patrick Higgins , succeeded by Myron C. Cramer	United States
2.	Ivan Michejewitsch Sarjanow	Soviet Union
3.	William Donald Patrick	United Kingdom
4th	Henri Bernard	France
5.	Bernard VA Röling	Netherlands
6th	Mei Ju-ao	China
7th	William F. Webb	Australia
8th.	Harvey Northcroft	New Zealand
9.	Edward Stuart McDougall	Canada
10.	Radhabinod Pal	British India
11.	Dolphin Jaranilla	Philippines

Defendants and judgments

No.	Defendant	position	judgment	Charges ( 1 )
				1	27	29	31	32	33	35	36	54	55
1.	Tōjō Hideki	General, Prime Minister , Chief of Staff	Death sentence	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.		U	S.	A.
2.	Mutō Akira	Lieutenant General	Death sentence	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	U		U	S.	S.
3.	Itagaki Seishirō	general	Death sentence	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	U	S.	S.	S.	A.
4th	Matsui Iwane	general	Death sentence	U	U	U	U	U		U	U	U	S.
5.	Kimura Heitaro	general	Death sentence	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.				S.	S.
6th	Doihara Kenji	General, head of the Japanese intelligence service in Manchukuo	Death sentence	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	U	S.	S.	S.	A.
7th	Hirota Kōki	Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Ambassador to the Soviet Union	Death sentence	S.	S.	U	U	U	U	U		U	S.
8th.	Nagano Osami	admiral	Died before the end of the trial on January 5, 1947
9.	Hashimoto Kingorō	Colonel	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	U	U	U				U	U
10.	Oka Takazumi	Vice admiral	life imprisonment (released 1954)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.				U	U
11.	Satō Kenryō	Lieutenant General	life imprisonment (released 1956)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.				U	U
12.	Minami Jirō	General, Governor General of Korea	life imprisonment (released 1954)	S.	S.	U	U	U				U	U
13.	Shimada Shigetaro	Admiral, Minister of the Navy	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.				U	U
14th	Hata Shunroku	Field Marshal General	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.		U	U	U	S.
15th	Araki Sadao	General, Minister of War	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	U	U	U	U	U	U	U	U
16.	Oshima Hiroshi	Lieutenant General, Ambassador to the German Reich	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	U	U	U	U				U	U
17th	Umezu Yoshijirō	General, Commander of the Kanto Army	life imprisonment (died in prison in 1949)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.			U	U	U
18th	Hoshino Naoki	Office Director of Manchukuo	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	U	U		U	U
19th	Koiso Kuniaki	General, Governor General of Korea , Prime Minister	life imprisonment (died in prison 1950)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.			U	U	S.
20th	Suzuki Teiichi	Lieutenant General, Head of the Planning Office	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.		U	U	U	U
21st	Hiranuma Kiichirō	Prime Minister	life imprisonment (died in prison 1952)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	U	U	S.	U	U
22nd	Kido Kōichi	Imperial seal keeper, minister of culture, minister of social affairs, minister of the interior	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	U	U	U	U	U
23.	Kaya Okinori	Finance minister	life imprisonment (released 1955)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.				U	U
24.	Tōgō Shigenori	Foreign Minister, Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Germany	20 years imprisonment (died in prison in 1950)	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.			U	U	U
25th	Shiratori Toshio	Ambassador to Italy	life imprisonment (died in prison in 1949)	S.	U	U	U	U
26th	Shigemitsu Mamoru	Foreign Minister, Ambassador to England	seven years imprisonment (released 1950)	U	S.	S.	S.	S.	S.	U		U	S.
27.	Ōkawa Shūmei	Political philosopher, ultra-nationalist, thought leader and propagandist of the theory of war	suffered a nervous breakdown on the first day of the trial, was admitted to a mental hospital and released as a free man in 1948
28.	Matsuoka Yosuke	Foreign Minister, Representative to the League of Nations	died before the end of the trial on June 26, 1946

¹ S: guilty; U: innocent; A: other

The defendants during the trial in Tokyo

The majority vote of judges from the USA, Great Britain, the Soviet Union , the Republic of China, Canada and New Zealand was accepted as the verdict . Judges from the Netherlands , France , India , the Philippines and Australia published individual minority votes. In particular, the acquittal vote of the Indian judge Radhabinod Pal , who viewed the trials as victorious justice, became known - even if only abroad; the publication of his vote in Japan was forbidden by the occupying powers. Of particular interest are the convictions for "waging a war of aggression against the USSR", since the USSR had announced peace mediation between Japan and the USA before the end of the war, but surprisingly declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945 Yalta was forced. The indictment on this point is based on the military conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union in 1938/39 . The death sentences were carried out in Sugamo Prison in Tokyo on December 23, 1948, the 15th birthday of Prince Akihito .

literature

• Arnold C. Brackman : The other Nuremberg. The untold story of the Tokyo was crimes trials. Morrow, New York NY 1987, ISBN 0-688-04783-1 .
• John L. Ginn: Sugamo Prison, Tokyo. An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a US Participant. McFarland & Company, Jefferson NC et al. 1992, ISBN 0-89950-739-5 .
• Tim Maga: Judgment at Tokyo. The Japanese War Crimes Trials. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington KY 2001, ISBN 0-8131-2177-9 .
• Frank Michelin: Le procès des criminels de guerre japonais. L'Histoire . No. 271, 2002, pp. 54-62.
• Richard H. Minear: Victors' Justice. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (= Michigan Classics in Japanese Studies. 22). Reprinted Edition. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 2001, ISBN 1-929280-06-8 .
• Philipp Osten: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial and Japanese Law (= Berlin Law University Writings. Criminal Law. 16). BWV - Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-8305-0376-8 (also: Berlin, Humboldt University, dissertation, 2002).
• Radhabinod B. Pal: International Military Tribunal For The Far East. Dissentient Judgment Of Justice Pal. Kokusho Kankoukai Inc., Tokyo 1999, ISBN 4-336-04110-5 ( full text ).
• R. John Pritchard (Ed.): The Tokyo War Crimes Trial. The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. 22 volumes. Garland, New York NY et al. 1981.
• Annette Wieviorka (Ed.): Les Procès de Nuremberg et de Tokyo. Éditions Complexe, Brussels 1996, ISBN 2-87027-612-5 .

Essays

• A hole . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1979, pp. 128 ( Online - Feb. 12, 1979 ).
• Franziska Seraphim : War Crimes Trials in Asia and Global Cultures of Remembrance. In: Christoph Cornelißen , Lutz Klinkhammer , Wolfgang Schwentker (eds.): Cultures of memory. Germany, Italy and Japan since 1945 (= Fischer. 15219, The time of National Socialism. ). 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-15219-4 , pp. 77-92.

Japanese secondary literature

• Awaya Kentaro: Tōkyō Saiban Shiryō. Tōkyō 1994.
• Awaya Kentaro: Tōkyō Saiban e no Michi. Tōkyō 1994.
• Awaya Kentaro: Tōkyō Saibanron. Tōkyō 1989.
• Noboru Kojima: Tōkyō Saiban. Tōkyō 1974.

English and German secondary literature

• Ian Buruma: Inheritance of Debt. Coming to terms with the past in Germany and Japan. Hanser, Munich et al. 1994, ISBN 3-446-17602-0 .
• Bernard VA Röling: The Tokyo Trial and Beyond. Reflections of a Peacemonger. Edited and with an introduction by Antonio Cassese . Polity Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 0-7456-1006-4 .
• Solis Horwitz: The Tokyo Trial. In: International Conciliation. No. 465, 1950, ZDB -ID 220444-7 , pp. 473-584.
• Chihiro Hosoya, Nisuki Ando, ​​Yasuaki Ōnuma, Richard Minear (Eds.): The Tokyo War Crimes Trial. At International Symposium. Kodansha, Tokyo 1986, ISBN 0-87011-750-5 .
• Philip R. Piccigallo: The Japanese on Trial. Allied was Crimes Operations in the East, 1945–1951. University of Texas Press, Austin TX et al. 1979, ISBN 0-292-78033-8 .

Movie and TV

The trial is the subject of a Chinese film by Gao Qunshu , The Tokyo Trial (111 min.), Which was released in 2006 and received much attention there , in three language versions: Mandarin, English and Japanese.

In 2016, the Japanese broadcaster NHK produced the Tokyo Trial mini-series, distributed outside Japan by Netflix , which shows the events from the judges' perspective.

In 2015 the trials were the subject of the arte film Death by hanging - the war crimes trial in Tokyo .

Web links

Commons : International Military Tribunal for the Far East  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Judgment - International Military Tribunal for the Far East Complete documents of the negotiations with all charges and judgments
• War crimes trial collection online, Harvard Law School Library
• A master's thesis on the Japanese film Puraido (1998), which deals with the Tokyo trials ( memento of June 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (archived at Internet Archive )
• Philipp Osten: The Tokyo war crimes trial and its reception in Japan

Individual evidence

1. ^ Philipp Osten: The Tokyo War Criminal Trial and its Reception in Japan - Japan and International Criminal Law. In: Saarbrücker Bibliothek, December 2003.
2. ↑ Ken'ichi Mishima, Wolfgang Schwentker (ed.): Historical thinking in modern Japan. An annotated collection of sources (= monographs from the German Institute for Japanese Studies. 56). Iudicium, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-86205-044-4 .
3. ↑ Edward Behr: Hirohito. Behind the myth. Villard, New York NY 1989, ISBN 0-394-58072-9 ; Herbert P. Bix: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. HarperCollins, New York NY 2000, ISBN 0-06-019314-X .
4. ^ Herbert P. Bix: Hirohito and the making of modern Japan. Perennial, New York NY 2001, ISBN 0-06-019314-X , pp. 583-585; John W. Dower: Embracing defeat. Japan in the Wake of World War II. Norton et al., New York NY 1999, ISBN 0-393-04686-9 , pp. 324-326.
5. ↑ Winfried Scharlau : The General and the Kaiser. The American occupation of Japan 1945–1952. Hauschild, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-89757-197-8 .
6. ↑ Malcolm J. Thurman, Christine A. Sherman: War crimes: Japan's World War II atrocities. Turner, Paducah KY 2001, ISBN 1-56311-728-2 , p. 16.
7. ↑ Death by hanging on YouTube , arte TV, 2018

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Tōjō is the family name, Hideki the first name.

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