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Gary J. Bass - Judgment at Tokyo

By Hawkeye7

Delfin Jaranilla

(Philippines)

While the

Truman administration. The American chief prosecutor President Harry S. Truman appointed, Joseph B. Keenan, was usually ill-prepared, invariably inept, and often intoxicated. While Nuremberg had four judges from the United States, France, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, the Tokyo trials had eleven, with judges from Australia, Canada, China, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the Philippines as well. Australia's Sir William Webb

presided as chief judge, and the justices from Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom formed an important voting bloc.

As at Nuremberg,The defendants were arraigned on four charges:

war crimes, crimes against humanity and criminal conspiracy

. The crime of conspiracy (to commit one or more of the other three) was an American legal concept, and not part of that of Japan or most of the other nations. In the 1940s, crimes against peace were considered the worst type, and those arraigned on it were considered Category A; those accused merely of war crimes were Category B and faced military courts. At Tokyo, Unlike Nuremberg, only Category A were tried, so all the defendants were therefore high-ranking government or military officials.

The prosecution, defence and the accused were all eager to let the

Doolittle raid

airmen, why not the other three? Webb was completely convinced that the emperor was guilty and said so (but in Australia the prosecution can decline to prosecute for any reason or no reason at all).

The court was divided over the thorny issue of the legitimacy of the trial. Were crimes against peace really established crimes under international law? The 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact outlawed war as an instrument of policy, but said nothing about personal responsibility. The court could have fallen back on its own mandate, but this would have affirmed that it was victors' justice and would not have set any precedent. Webb attempted to justify this on the grounds of natural law, but this did not satisfy the other British Commonwealth justices. Nor were they impressed with Soviet judge Ivan Zaryanov's submission, which argued that it was permissible for democracies to invade autocratic fascist states. Webb and Zaryanov became close friends and allies, and formed another bloc.

Part of the problem was that the Allies did not have clean hands: the Soviet Union had invaded Finland in 1939 (which got it kicked out of the League of Nations); Britain had invaded Iran; the United States had occupied Greenland; and Australia and the Netherlands had occupied East Timor. (The defence also raised the matter of the unprovoked Soviet attack on Japan in August 1945, at the instigation of the United States and United Kingdom.) India's Radhabinod Pal and the Netherlands' Bert Röling were not convinced, and formed a third bloc. A unanimous verdict became impossible, and the court was riven by internal conflicts.

Publishing details:

OCLC 1360277874

.