WAR ATLAS MILITARY HISTORY MAGAZINE · WWI — WWII
Tokyo Trials
1. Lead
The Tokyo Trials, formally the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), were the Allied war crimes trials held in Tokyo from May 1946 to November 1948, in which 28 Japanese military and political leaders were tried as Class A war criminals — those accused of crimes against peace, of planning and waging aggressive war.
The trials were the Pacific counterpart of the Nuremberg Trials in Germany, and they were, like Nuremberg, an attempt to establish the principle that leaders could be held personally responsible for starting a war and for the crimes committed in it.
Seven of the defendants, including the wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo, were sentenced to death and hanged; 16 were sentenced to life imprisonment; two received shorter prison terms; two died during the trial; and one was declared unfit to stand trial. Emperor Hirohito, in whose name the war had been fought, was not tried, a decision that remains the most controversial aspect of the trials.
The Tokyo Trials are remembered very differently in different countries, and the argument about them has never been settled. In the United States and in Britain, they are remembered as an attempt, however imperfect, to bring Japan’s leaders to justice.
In China and in Korea, they are remembered as incomplete, because the Emperor was not tried, because the crimes in China — above all the Nanjing Massacre — were not given the prominence they deserved, and because many of those responsible for atrocities were never tried at all. In Japan, they are remembered by some as “victors’ justice”, and by others as a necessary reckoning with the past.
This article presents the trials as the records show them, including the verdicts, the dissenting judgements, and the controversies that have followed them ever since.
2. Key Facts
| What | International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), the Allied trial of Japanese leaders as Class A war criminals |
| Where | Tokyo, Japan, in the former War Ministry building at Ichigaya |
| When | 3 May 1946 – 12 November 1948 (the trial lasted two and a half years) |
| Defendants | 28 Class A defendants; 25 were convicted, 2 died during the trial, 1 was declared insane |
| Verdicts | 7 sentenced to death and hanged; 16 sentenced to life imprisonment; 2 sentenced to shorter terms |
| Judges | 11 judges, from the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Philippines |
| Emperor | Emperor Hirohito was not tried, by decision of General Douglas MacArthur |
| Today | The trial records are preserved in archives; the Ichigaya building is now the headquarters of the Japanese Ministry of Defence |
3. Background
The road to Tokyo
The Tokyo Trials were the product of the Allied decision, made at the Cairo Conference in 1943 and at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, that the leaders of the Axis powers should be tried for their crimes. In Europe, that decision produced the Nuremberg Trials, which began in November 1945. In the Pacific, it produced the Tokyo Trials, which began six months later.
The legal basis for the trials was the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, issued by General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, in January 1946. The Charter defined three classes of war criminal: Class A, those accused of crimes against peace — the planning and waging of aggressive war; Class B, those accused of conventional war crimes; and Class C, those accused of crimes against humanity.
The Tokyo Trials dealt with Class A defendants; Classes B and C were tried in separate trials, held in many countries across Asia, in which more than 5,000 Japanese were tried and more than 900 were executed.
Japan’s war
The charges against the defendants covered the whole of Japan’s war, from the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to the surrender in 1945. The prosecution argued that Japan’s leaders had, over fourteen years, pursued a deliberate policy of aggressive expansion: the seizure of Manchuria, the invasion of China in 1937, the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and the conquest of South-East Asia.
The defence argued that Japan’s actions had been defensive, that Japan had been encircled by the Western powers, and that the war had been forced on Japan by the American oil embargo. The Tribunal rejected the defence, and it found that Japan’s leaders had planned and waged aggressive war.
The trial also heard evidence about the atrocities committed by Japanese forces: the Nanjing Massacre of 1937–1938, in which, according to the Tribunal’s judgement, more than 200,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were murdered; the Bataan Death March of 1942; the treatment of Allied prisoners of war; and the use of forced labour.
The figures for Nanjing remain a subject of historical debate, and this article gives the range that historians use: from around 100,000 to around 300,000, with the Tribunal’s figure of more than 200,000 in the middle of that range.
4. What Happened
The trial / Phiên tòa
The trial opened on 3 May 1946, in the former War Ministry building at Ichigaya in Tokyo, before 11 judges from 11 Allied nations. The president of the Tribunal was Sir William Webb, an Australian judge. The chief prosecutor was Joseph Keenan, an American lawyer.
The 28 defendants included the wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo, the former prime minister Koki Hirota, the foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka, and the generals who had commanded Japan’s armies in China and in the Pacific. The prosecution presented its case over many months, calling 419 witnesses and presenting more than 4,300 documents. The defence presented its case in turn, calling 294 witnesses.
The trial lasted two and a half years, and it produced a record of more than 48,000 pages. It was, by the standards of the time, the longest and most complex trial in history.
The verdicts
The Tribunal delivered its judgement on 4–12 November 1948. Of the 28 defendants, 25 were convicted and 2 had died during the trial — Yosuke Matsuoka and Osami Nagano, both of natural causes — and one, Shumei Okawa, was declared insane and was not tried.
Seven defendants were sentenced to death: Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister; Koki Hirota, the former prime minister and foreign minister; Seishiro Itagaki, Kenji Doihara, Iwane Matsui, Akira Muto and Heitaro Kimura, all generals. They were hanged on 23 December 1948 at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo.
Sixteen defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, and two — Shigenori Togo (20 years) and Mamoru Shigemitsu (7 years) — were sentenced to shorter terms. The life sentences were, in the event, not served in full: all of the surviving defendants had been released on parole by 1958, and the last, Mamoru Shigemitsu, had become foreign minister of Japan in the 1950s.
5. The Site Today
Ichigaya and Sugamo
The trial was held in the former War Ministry building at Ichigaya, in central Tokyo, a building that had been the headquarters of the Japanese Army. The building survives today as part of the headquarters of the Japanese Ministry of Defence, and it is not open to the public as a museum. There is no memorial at Ichigaya to the trials, and the site is not marked for visitors.
The contrast with Nuremberg, where the courtroom is preserved as a museum, is striking, and it reflects the different ways in which Germany and Japan have remembered the trials. The place where the seven condemned men were hanged, Sugamo Prison, was demolished after the war, and the site is now occupied by a shopping centre and a park.
A small memorial stone marks the site, but it is not widely known, and it is rarely visited.
The records
The records of the Tokyo Trials are preserved in archives in Japan, the United States and Australia, and they have been published in part. The full record — more than 48,000 pages of transcript, together with the documents presented in evidence — is available to researchers, and it is the main source for the history of the trials. The records include the dissenting judgements, which are discussed below, and they include the testimony of the witnesses, including Chinese survivors of the Nanjing Massacre and Allied prisoners of war. The records are, in the judgement of historians, an invaluable source for the history of Japan’s war, even though the trials themselves were, in many respects, incomplete.
6. Survivors and Testimony
The witnesses
The Tokyo Trials heard testimony from 419 prosecution witnesses and 294 defence witnesses, and their testimony is one of the most valuable parts of the record. The prosecution witnesses included Chinese survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, who described the murder, rape and looting that followed the fall of Nanjing in December 1937; Allied prisoners of war, who described the Bataan Death March, the building of the Burma–Thailand railway, and the treatment of prisoners in Japanese camps; and Japanese officials who had opposed the war.
The defence witnesses included Japanese officers who argued that the war had been defensive, and American officers who testified that the United States had provoked Japan by the oil embargo. The testimony was, in the judgement of historians, uneven: some of it was powerful and well documented, and some of it was vague and uncorroborated.
But the testimony of the Chinese survivors, in particular, is remembered as one of the first times that the victims of Japan’s war were heard in an international court.
The Nanjing testimony
The testimony about Nanjing was the most harrowing part of the trial, and it is the part that is most often quoted. Chinese witnesses described the murder of civilians and prisoners of war, the rape of women, and the looting of the city, over a period of six weeks after the fall of Nanjing.
The Tribunal’s judgement accepted the prosecution’s figure of more than 200,000 murdered, and it found that General Iwane Matsui, the commander of the Japanese forces that took Nanjing, was responsible for the massacre, even though he had not ordered it directly. Matsui was sentenced to death and hanged.
The figure of more than 200,000 remains a subject of debate in Japan, where some historians argue that the figure is exaggerated, and in China, where the official figure is 300,000. This article gives the range used by historians outside the political debate: from around 100,000 to around 300,000, with the Tribunal’s figure in the middle.
7. Trials and Justice
The dissenting judgements
The Tokyo Trials produced dissenting judgements that have become as famous as the majority judgement. The most famous was that of the Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal, who argued that all of the defendants should be acquitted, on the grounds that the charges of crimes against peace were ex post facto — that is, that they criminalised actions that had not been crimes when they were committed — and that the trials were “victors’ justice”.
Pal’s dissent, which ran to more than 1,200 pages, was not accepted by the Tribunal, but it has been widely read in Japan, where it is cited by those who argue that the trials were unfair. The Dutch judge, B. V. A. Röling, dissented in part, arguing that some of the defendants should have been acquitted and that the death sentences were excessive.
The French judge, Henri Bernard, dissented on the grounds that the Emperor should have been tried. The dissents show that the Tribunal was not unanimous, and that the legal basis of the trials was contested even among the judges who conducted them.
The Emperor’s immunity
The decision not to try Emperor Hirohito was made by General MacArthur, who believed that the Emperor was necessary to the occupation of Japan and to the rebuilding of the country. MacArthur argued that the Emperor had been a figurehead, and that the real decisions had been made by his ministers and generals.
The decision was controversial at the time, and it remains controversial: critics argue that the Emperor was, in fact, involved in the decisions to go to war, and that his immunity undermined the trials; defenders argue that the decision was a practical one, and that it allowed Japan to rebuild as a democracy. The Emperor remained on the throne until his death in 1989, and he was never tried.
The question of his responsibility is still debated by historians, and it is unlikely to be settled.
8. Visiting Information
What to see today
There is no museum of the Tokyo Trials in Tokyo, and the site of the trials, the Ichigaya building, is not open to the public. Visitors to Tokyo who wish to learn about the trials can visit the National Archives of Japan, where some of the trial records are held, and the Yasukuni Shrine, where the seven executed men are enshrined as gods — a fact that is itself controversial, and that is discussed below.
The site of Sugamo Prison, where the seven men were hanged, is now a shopping centre and a park in the Toshima ward of Tokyo, and a small memorial stone marks the site. The lack of a museum or a memorial to the trials in Tokyo is, in the judgement of historians, a reflection of the ambivalence with which Japan remembers the trials: they are neither celebrated nor commemorated, and they are, for many Japanese, a subject that is best left alone.
The archives and further reading
Visitors who wish to study the trials in depth can consult the published records, which include the full transcript of the proceedings, the documents presented in evidence, and the dissenting judgements. The records are held by the National Archives of Japan in Tokyo, by the National Archives of the United States in Washington, and by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and parts of them have been published in English.
The most accessible introduction to the trials, for a general reader, is the work of the historians who have studied them: Richard Minear’s Victors’ Justice (1971), which is critical of the trials, and Yuma Totani’s The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (2008), which is more sympathetic.
The two books, read together, give a balanced picture of what the trials achieved and of where they fell short, and they are the best starting point for anyone who wishes to understand the trials beyond the verdicts themselves.
9. Commemoration and Education
Yasukuni and the memory of the trials
The seven men executed after the Tokyo Trials are enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, together with the other Japanese war dead, and their enshrinement has been a source of controversy ever since. The Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine that honours those who died for Japan, and the enshrinement of the seven executed men, in 1978, was a secret act that was not revealed until the following year.
The visits of Japanese prime ministers to the shrine have provoked protests from China and Korea, which regard the shrine as a symbol of Japan’s failure to atone for its war. The controversy over Yasukuni is, in part, a controversy over the Tokyo Trials: whether the men executed were war criminals, as the Tribunal found, or whether they were patriots who died for their country, as the shrine’s supporters argue.
Teaching the trials
The Tokyo Trials are taught in schools in Japan, China and Korea, but they are taught very differently. In Japan, the trials are taught as a part of the history of the occupation, and the emphasis is on the rebuilding of Japan as a democracy. In China, the trials are taught as an incomplete reckoning, and the emphasis is on the Nanjing Massacre and on the Emperor’s immunity.
In Korea, the trials are taught as a failure, because the crimes committed in Korea — above all the forced labour and the “comfort women” — were not given the prominence they deserved. The different ways in which the trials are taught reflect the different ways in which the war is remembered, and they are a reminder that the trials did not settle the history of the war: they began a debate that continues today.
10. Legacy
The legacy of Tokyo
The legacy of the Tokyo Trials is a mixed one. On the one hand, they established the principle that leaders could be tried for aggressive war, and they created a record of Japan’s war that historians still use. On the other hand, they were incomplete: the Emperor was not tried, many of those responsible for atrocities were never tried, and the verdicts were, in the event, not carried out in full.
The trials also left a legacy of resentment in Japan, where they are remembered by some as victors’ justice, and a legacy of disappointment in China and Korea, where they are remembered as incomplete. The contrast with Nuremberg is instructive: the Nuremberg Trials are remembered in Germany as a necessary reckoning, while the Tokyo Trials are remembered in Japan with ambivalence.
The difference reflects the different ways in which the two countries have dealt with their pasts.
The trials also left a legacy in Japan itself, where they are remembered very differently by different generations. The generation that lived through the war remembered the trials as a humiliation imposed by the victors, while the generation that grew up after the war has, in general, accepted the verdicts and has sought to understand the war in a wider context.
The debate about the trials in Japan is, in that sense, a debate about the country’s identity, and it is a debate that continues in the schools, in the press, and in the Diet. The trials did not settle the history of Japan’s war, but they began a conversation about it that has lasted for eighty years, and that conversation is itself a part of their legacy.
The Tokyo Trials, together with the Nuremberg Trials, laid the foundations of modern international criminal law. The principles established at Nuremberg and Tokyo — that individuals can be held responsible for crimes against peace, for war crimes and for crimes against humanity, and that the defence of superior orders is not a complete defence — were incorporated into the Geneva Conventions and into the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Tokyo Trials are cited in the literature of international law, and their record is studied by lawyers and historians. Their legacy, in this respect, is a lasting one, even though the trials themselves were imperfect.
Frequently Asked Questions
What were the Tokyo Trials?
The Tokyo Trials, formally the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, were the Allied trials of 28 Japanese leaders as Class A war criminals, held in Tokyo from May 1946 to November 1948. Seven defendants were sentenced to death and hanged, and 16 were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Why was Emperor Hirohito not tried?
General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, decided not to try the Emperor, on the grounds that he was necessary to the occupation and the rebuilding of Japan. The decision remains controversial: critics argue that the Emperor was involved in the decisions to go to war, while defenders argue that the decision was practical and allowed Japan to rebuild as a democracy.
How many people were killed in the Nanjing Massacre?
Estimates range from around 100,000 to around 300,000. The Tokyo Tribunal’s judgement accepted a figure of more than 200,000. The official Chinese figure is 300,000. This article gives the range used by historians: around 100,000 to around 300,000.
What was Judge Pal’s dissent?
The Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal, dissented from the majority judgement, arguing that all of the defendants should be acquitted, on the grounds that the charges of crimes against peace were ex post facto and that the trials were “victors’ justice”. His dissent, which ran to more than 1,200 pages, has been widely read in Japan.
Were the Tokyo Trials the same as the Nuremberg Trials?
They were similar in principle — both were Allied trials of the leaders of the Axis powers for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity — but they differed in important respects. The Tokyo Trials lasted longer, the Emperor was not tried, and the verdicts were, in the event, not carried out in full. The Nuremberg Trials are remembered in Germany as a necessary reckoning; the Tokyo Trials are remembered in Japan with ambivalence.
Can I visit the site of the Tokyo Trials?
There is no museum of the trials in Tokyo, and the Ichigaya building, where the trials were held, is not open to the public. The site of Sugamo Prison, where the seven condemned men were hanged, is now a shopping centre and a park, with a small memorial stone marking the site.
Related articles
Sources
- Wikipedia, “International Military Tribunal for the Far East” — the Charter, the 28 defendants, the verdicts, the dissenting judgements, the Emperor’s immunity.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Tokyo Trial” (britannica.com) — the trials, 1946–1948, Tojo, the verdicts.
- Richard Minear, Victors’ Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton University Press, 1971) — the classic critical study; Judge Pal’s dissent, the legal basis of the trials.
- Yuma Totani, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II (Harvard University Press, 2008) — the trials, the Nanjing evidence, the verdicts.
- Arnold C. Brackman, The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials (William Morrow, 1987) — the trials, the defendants, the Emperor’s immunity.
- Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994) — the memory of the trials in Germany and Japan, Yasukuni.