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Rejection of Tokyo Trial threatens peace
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Like the Nazi war crimes trial in Nuremberg, the prosecution 60 years ago in Tokyo of Japanese war criminals in World War II carries far-reaching implications for post-war peace and the world order.
Although more than six decades have passed since the Tokyo Trial, conducted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) from January 19, 1946, to November 12, 1948, its outcomes and significance still fuel scholarly discussion and heated debate.
The trial’s legacy was revisited in a seminar at Fudan University’s School of Law on March 5.
It is particularly fitting to examine the war crimes legacy at a time of a growing revisionist tendency in Japan to question and even doubt the legitimacy of the Tokyo Trial.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for example, clearly signaled his disapproval of the trial when he told Parliament’s Upper House Budget Committee last March, “Judgment of the war was not rendered by Japanese. Rather, culpability was established by the victorious Allied powers.”
In fact, the Tokyo trial has been dogged by controversy ever since the International Military Tribunal was founded to indict and try Japanese war criminals. It is occasionally branded “the victors’ justice” and thus frequently repudiated by some Japanese, Gao Xiudong, professor at the Chinese University of Foreign Affairs, told the forum.
Revisionism
Japanese revisionists dispute the legality of trying 28 Class-A war criminals and many Class-B and Class-C war criminals. They describe it as “illegal.”
Some revisionists criticized the introduction of the little-tested legal doctrine, namely crimes against peace, said Yuma Totani, associate professor at the University of Hawaii.
She said retroactive application of the new law was perceived to be tantamount to the imposition of “victors’ justice” on the vanquished nation. This line of thinking quickly gained traction and has since been a refrain in Japanese denial of the trial’s legitimacy.
At the other end of the political spectrum are Japanese critics who also regard the Tokyo Trial as “victors’ justice,” because Allied judges and prosecutors deliberately pulled their legal punches out of political expediency.
The biggest complaint of these Japanese is that Emperor Hirohito, arguably the No. 1 culprit, was spared indictment largely thanks to General Douglas MacArthur’s intentions to appease Japan’s rightists and maintain public order by granting the emperor immunity. MacArthur was the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Japan.
And although the trial convicted 28 high-ranking political and military leaders for Class-A crimes, many Japanese atrocities were not addressed at all — such as the use of chemical and biological weapons, forced labor, and comfort women (abducted women systematically forced to work as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels).
The failure to prosecute these crimes rendered the justice achieved at the Tokyo Trial inadequate and flawed, argued Zhu Dan, a visiting fellow in the International Criminal Court.
These unresolved “forgotten crimes” have occasionally come back to haunt us. Over the past few years, former comfort women, slave laborers and other victims of wartime atrocities have sought compensation from Japan, with little success.
A reason often cited for absolving Japan of compensation for these crimes is that the issues were not discussed at the Tokyo Trial and, thus, were supposedly “settled.”
In late February, 37 former Chinese laborers filed a class action lawsuit in a Beijing court, suing two Japanese companies for enslavement and exploitation during the war. Given past records, their prospect of legal success is bleak.
That said, the failure to establish accountability on these issues does not nullify the significance of the Tokyo Trial, said Zhu, the visiting fellow at ICC.
“The greatest value of the Tokyo Trial is that by applying the law it warned those who seek to resurrect militarist ghosts,” Professor Gao said.
It was only after Japan owned up to its wartime atrocities and renounced the use of force in its pacifist constitution that it secured the forgiveness of the world, especially some of its victims, he added.
Critics’ negation of the Tokyo Trial will not only undermine reconciliation efforts with Japan’s neighbors, but also threaten peace in Asia, said Gao.
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