Cherish the peace: Tokyo Trial prosecutor dies at 99
Print Edition
Gao Wenbin, an assistant Chinese prosecutor for the Tokyo Trial of Japanese war criminals, died yesterday at the age of 99.
He was the last living member of the 17-member delegation of Chinese judges and prosecutors who represented China at the trials of Japanese war criminals at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known as the Tokyo Trial. The tribunal ran from May 3, 1946, to November 12, 1948.
Born to a typical family in Shanghai, Gao studied at the law school of Soochow University, then China’s foremost law school. Soon after he graduated, the Japanese government surrendered, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close.
“It was the happiest and most exciting moment in my life,” he wrote in his memoirs. “The Japanese will get payback for their crimes.”
As the trials of Japanese war criminals used Anglo-American law and the official languages were English and Japanese, the Chinese delegation needed assistants and translators good at both law and English. Having learned Anglo-American law at Soochow University, Gao was selected.
In May 1946, Gao boarded a US military aircraft and embarked on a journey that had a huge significance for his life and China.
Gao routinely worked day and night to on translation and documentation.
Gao uncovered a key piece of evidence. When he read a Japanese newspaper published in December, 1937, he discovered an article with a photo that described two Japanese soldiers claiming to play a “killing game” in Nanjing. The two claimed that they had killed 211 Nanjing citizens.
Gao immediately mailed several copies of the newspaper to the Chinese government. The government asked the Allied forces headquarters to arrest the two. The pair were later sentenced to death.
The Tokyo Trial was the largest and longest trial in human history, and involved more countries than any other similar war crimes trials.
It lasted more than two and a half years with 817 court sessions and 419 people called as witnesses. As many as 4,336 pieces of evidence were admitted, and 48,412 pages of trial transcripts were recorded.
In November, 1948, the verdicts and sentences were announced over seven days. Twenty-five Class-A criminals were found guilty and seven were sentenced to death.
In his later years, Gao urged the establishment of a museum for the Tokyo Trial.
Gao later taught maritime law and international law at the Shanghai Maritime University, and he always told his students to “remember history and cherish the peace.”
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