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During his first administration, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo claimed that "those convicted as Class A criminals are not considered war criminals under Japanese law." In 2013, the first year of Abe's second administration, he further claimed that "the Allied Forces gave convictions from a victor's point of view." Such claims originated from the dissenting opinion the Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal, one of the eleven jurists of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), attached to the judgement, arguing that the definition of "invasion" was not clear under international law. Claiming that the Tokyo trials were dispensing victor's justice is a repetition of similar arguments made over the Nuremburg trials that ended in 1946. And the very same arguments over the Nuremburg trials were almost wholly inherited by Radhabinod Pal's dissenting opinion, especially the one that a definition for wars of aggression does not exist in international law and that it is no more than a label assigned by a victor to a loser.

Meanwhile, the opinion arose that the IMTFE should deal with Japan's invasion and annexation of Korea as a crime against peace. This was because recognizing Japan's war crimes from when 62 countries including Japan signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact had left out the crime of invading Korea that began well before the pact was made in 1928. So, it was up to Korea to prove it had been invaded by Japan.

Warning to End Wars

During the Second World War, the Allied Forces were already attempting to form a consensus on punishing war criminals after the war. The Inter-Allied Declaration on Punishment for War Crimes made through a meeting held on January 13, 1942 at St. James's Palace, London expressed the determination to condemn the reign of terror in German-occupied territories and to charge and punish brutalities against civilian populations. The declaration was followed by warnings against Japan. The Chinese delegate Wunz King who attended the meeting at St. James's Palace stated that his government intended to apply the same principles to hold the Japanese authorities in China accountable. On August 21, 1942, the U. S. President Franklin Roosevelt issued a more explicit warning. He stated that the United States government was well aware of the Axis Powers' war crimes and that the collected information and evidence related to barbaric crimes committed in Europe and Asia will be used for future prosecution. Although the meeting had been co-hosted by governments in exile from nine countries including Belgium and France, several other countries sent delegates to attend the meeting including the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.

In October 1943, the Allied Forces' preparations to punish war criminals began with the establishment of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) in London. The commission dispatched dozens of investigation teams to Europe and Asia. Investigators sent to areas liberated by the Allied Forces collected evidence, tracked witnesses, interviewed local residents, and took testimonies from released prisoners. The Moscow Declarations made on October 30, 1943 stipulated that war criminals would be judged in courts at countries where they committed crimes according to the law of those countries. The declarations further noted that major war criminals whose crimes have no particular geographical association would be brought to justice by the Allied Government's decision, which resulted in the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials. On November 1, 1943, the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed a “Statement on Atrocities” after holding a tripartite conference in Moscow. The statement declared that the condition to any armistice would be to send Germans suspected of involvement in wartime atrocities back to the countries where they committed them for trial and punishment. The statement also affirmed that “German criminals who offenses have no particular geographical localization” will be “punished through joint decision of the governments of the Allies.”

As the war neared its end in Europe, the aforementioned determination to punish war criminals came to be pronounced more firmly and repeatedly. When details of the Bataan Death March became released to the public in January 1944, the U. S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden simultaneously issued warnings that those responsible would be punished. And in May 1945, Charles de Gaulle, the French general and leader of the French Committee of National Liberation, officially warned that any Japanese who harmed the people of France and Indochina would be punished as war criminals. In June 1945, the United States notified Japan via the Swiss government that it possessed a Japanese document approving the killing of Allied prisoners. Of course, the most critical discussion took place at the Potsdam Conference, which led to the Potsdam Declaration made on July 26, 1945 by the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union. Article 10 of the declaration states that “We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners.”

The IMTFE’s Establishment and Individual Tribunals

On May 3, 1946, the IMTFE convened in Tokyo. Although commonly referred to as the “Tokyo trials,” not all trials took place in Tokyo. A total of 50 tribunals were set up including 12 in Dutch-occupied areas, 11 in British-occupied areas, 10 in China, 9 in Australia, 5 in American-occupied areas, and one each in a French-occupied area and the Philippines. And while Japanese imperialist war criminals were being prosecuted at 50 different tribunals throughout Asia, no such tribunal was established in Joseon (Korea). Furthermore, the U. S. military government did not allow “pro-Japanese or treasonous acts” to be indicted in Korea at the time.

The IMTFE was modeled after the framework of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg that convened on November 20, 1945, but it wasn’t completely identical. Crimes against humanity were prosecuted for the first time at the Nuremberg trials, whereas charges on crimes against peace were a prerequisite for prosecution at the Tokyo trials. The make-up of the two tribunals were different as well. The tribunal at Nuremberg had a genuinely international nature, whereas the United States played a dominant role in prosecuting at the IMTFE, which made possible the exoneration of the Japanese emperor and the exclusion of Unit 731 from prosecution.

Class B and Class C war criminals were indicted through the IMTFE based on laws established at the country where trials were held. A total of 937 criminals were sentenced to death, while 4,479 were sentenced to imprisonment for a limited term or for life. The most to be sentenced to imprisonment were officers serving as middle management on site such as company or battalion commanders. Low-ranking soldiers were also indicted for following their commanders' orders, of which 23 among a total of 148 Koreans found guilty were sentenced to death. The rest of those Koreans found guilty were deprived of Japanese citizenship after serving their sentences and thereby became ineligible to receive compensation and protection from the Japanese government. The number of executed war criminals by country are 140 in the United States, 119 in Australia, 241 in the United Kingdom, 220 in the Netherlands, 149 in China (apart from the 3,500 executed through the people's court), 26 in France, 17 in the Philippines, and around 3,000 in the Soviet Union (through secret trials).

Crimes Against Humanity in the IMTFE Charter

The IMTFE charter was issued on January 19, 1946 to fairly yet swiftly try and punish major war criminals. It defines the tribunal's constitution through Section 1, the tribunal's jurisdiction and general provisions through Section 2, provisions to insure fair trial for the accused through Section 3, the tribunal's powers and conduct of trial through Section 4, and provisions concerning judgement and sentence through Section 5. The major legal and procedural rules for the tribunal were separately stipulated in a document attached to the charter containing provisions on offenses eligible for indictment. The most crucial definition in the charter was on the tribunal's jurisdiction. According to Article 5 of the charter, offenses that fell under the tribunal's jurisdiction were crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The following is the charter's definition of crimes against humanity. "Namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political or racial grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such plan."

International standards and practices on punishment had already been established for usual war crimes just as they were for the Nuremberg Trials that were concluded on October 1, 1946, but crimes against peace and humanity were types of war crimes that became far more prevalent since the outbreak of the Second World War. Crime against peace is an offense that leads to punishment for causing wars of aggression, so it sometimes gets accused for serving as a means for political retaliation because identifying the offense itself may involve political judgement. However, crime against humanity can be considered as a conceptualization and aggregation of acts that would still be defined as criminal according to existing penal code. Japan caused wars of aggression over an extended period of time, violated the law of war by abusing captives, and committed atrocities against civilians. Regardless, the Japanese defendants made absurd arguments during the trials that the Pacific War had been caused for the sake of "self-defense," to prevent Japan's national economy from collapsing due to the American Export Control Act of 1940.

Punishments from the Nanjing and Khabarovsk War Trials  

War crime trials were held in Nanjing, China between June 9 and July 20, 1956 where 36 Type B war criminals were tried including Takebe Rokuzo (武部六藏), Head of the General Affairs Board under Manchukuo's Council of State, and Fujita Shigeru (藤田茂), a Japanese army lieutenant general. China had been investigating and reforming Japanese war criminals from the Kwantung Army at a correctional facility in Liaoning since they were transferred there from the Soviet Union in July 1950. Through a special military court set up in Shenyang and Taiyuan of China's Shanxi province, 45 war criminals were indicted and each sentenced to imprisonment between 8 to 20 years. Based on witness testimonies and burial records presented through the 1946 tribunal, nearly 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers are estimated to have been murdered from the Nanking Massacre alone.

The Khabarovsk trial was a six-day trial to prosecute Japanese military war criminals held at the House of Officers in Khabarovsk, Russia from December 25 to 30, 1949 after the end of the Second World War. The Japanese defendants were high-ranking Kwantung Army officers and experts who had been involved in human experimentation and developing bacteriological weapons before they became captives of the Soviet Union. The main charges laid forth involved the 1939 Nomonhan Incident, the special maneuvers the Kwantung Army carried out in 1940 to attack the Soviet Union, and the human experimentations conducted by Unit 731 and 100. Through this trial, Kwantung Army Commander-in-Chief Yamada Otozo (山田乙三) along with Chief of Medical Administration Kajitsuka Ryuji (梶塚隆二), Chief of Veterinary Service Takahashi Takaatsu (高橋隆篤), Chief of Unit 731 Kawashima Kiyoshi (川島清) were each sentenced to 25 years of forced labor for conducting human experiments and manufacturing bacteriological weapons, while the rest of the defendants were also each sentenced to forced labor for 2 to 20 years. Defendants who received lighter sentences returned to Japan after serving their time, and except for those who died from illness or killed themselves in prison, the rest received commutation and returned to Japan when the country restored its diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1956. Many scientists related to Unit 731 became highly successful in politics, academia, business, and medicine after the war. Others were tried at war crime trials held in Shenyang, Fushun, and Taiyuan and became sentenced to forced labor in exile for 6 years in Siberia or 10 years in Manchuria. Those who surrendered to the United States were granted amnesty for turning over the information they possessed. Most of the more than 10,000 civilians estimated to have been sacrificed by the so-called Unit 731 were Korean, Chinese, Mongolian, or Russian with the exception of a few American or British captives. The number of sacrificed lives would amount to more than 500,000 to 600,00 by taking those affected by biological weapons into account. Commander of Unit 731 Ishii Shiro (石井四郎) testified during the Tokyo trials that "out of a total of 3,850 maruta (subjects of human experimentation), 254 were Korean, 562 were Russian, and the rest were Chinese."

Limitations and Challenges

At the height of the Second World War, it was difficult to find an area in the Asia-Pacific that had managed to remain beyond the reach of Japan's militarism. The extent of territories Japan occupied was greater than Nazi Germany. Going to war with nearly every country in the world resulted in 1.17 million killed in action, 4.61 million injured, and 6.78 million civilian casualties across a vast territory that extended 7,000 kilometers from north to south and 10,000 kilometers from east to west. The vicious atrocities Japan committed in the process or at occupied territories foretold the punishment that was to follow. However, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito was absolved of responsibility for being involved as the head of state in lengthy wars of invasion and massacre. And the atrocious crimes committed by Unit 731 that were as notorious as the human experimentations conducted at Auschwitz were overlooked and granted immunity by the American government.

Regarding Article 11 about IMTFE judgements in the Treaty of Peace with Japan, Japan still tends to make the unreasonable claim that it accepts the trials, but not the judgements. The IMTFE was indeed sorely insufficient for properly holding Japan accountable for the wars it caused and for penalizing all sorts of atrocious crimes Japan committed, at least during the 15 years after signing the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact. Even today, a majority of scholars, politicians, and the general public in Japan still believe the IMTFE allowed victor nations of the Allied Forces to carry out political retaliation. This belief even leads to the far-fetched belief that the Tokyo trials were not only substantively, procedurally illegal, but that the aggressive, inhumane acts Japan was accused of during the trials were exaggerated or fabricated by the Allied Forces. These beliefs have in some cases been distorted into claims that the wars Japan caused were "just wars."

Today, leading Japanese politicians continue to repeat thoughtless remarks that the wars Japan caused in the past were for the purpose of liberating Asians. Although Japan committed unprecedented killings and horrendous anguish against Asian countries and peoples through wars of aggression, the occasional apologies it makes toward Asian victims of war have never been accompanied by earnest actions. And the judgements made by the IMTFE remain no more than minimal justice for countries in East Asia.

1) The commonly used term "trials on Class A·B·C war crimes" is in fact inaccurate. The labels A, B, C were adopted for the sake of convenience to distinguish crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Article 5 of the IMTFE charter covering jurisdiction over persons and offenses. The division of A, B, C in English was not according to the seriousness of crimes, which means it is technically more accurate to recognize them as "type" A, B, C rather than "class" A, B, C. Crimes against peace for causing wars of aggression mostly applied to high-ranking commanders, which could be understood as more serious than conventional war crimes or crimes against humanity that low-ranking soldiers or officials were charged of committing, but it is in fact impossible to distinguish the seriousness of each type of crime under international law.