In a contrast to the trials at Nuremberg, in which photographs and videos of Nazi atrocities were put on public display, the Tokyo Trial was characterized by limited discussions of details. Also unlike Nuremberg, the Tokyo Trial did not receive near as much attention from the American press or citizenry.
Reduced and restricted media coverage inadvertently led to questions surrounding the extent of Japanese war crimes during World War II that affected the overall understanding of events that occurred in the Pacific theater of the war. The Tokyo Trial began on May 3, , and ended in December Dissension between the presiding judges prompted extended disagreement.
Radhabinod Pal, a justice from India, advocated that all the defendants be found not guilty, citing a long history of Western imperialism in Asia as nullifying the right of justices from Great Britain or the United States to impose justice over Asian peoples. While 18 were sentenced to imprisonment, seven were found guilty of inciting atrocities on a massive scale and were executed by hanging. Among those executed was the General of the Imperial Japanese Army Hideki Tojo, who bore the brunt of responsibility to protect Hirohito and who ultimately accepted responsibility for the war during the trial.
Prosecutions of additional Japanese officials continued during and after the Tokyo Trial, with more than 2, trials held in 51 different locations against roughly 5, suspected war criminals. The creation of new international military tribunals and the enforcement of new laws on both military and political officials created an unprecedented standard of justice, one that attracted criticism at the time of the trials and in the decades that followed.
However, in the Nuremberg Trials, fewer restrictions to information and a more open discourse of Nazi atrocities forced critics to acknowledge that leading Nazis needed to face some form of justice. In contrast, the censorship that affected the Tokyo Trial caused many, including some of the presiding judges, to question the proceedings. However, in Japan, censorship, coupled with tensions left from a past of Western imperialism, clouded the Tokyo Trial and affected awareness of Japanese actions in China, the Philippines, and throughout the Pacific theater of war.
Still, the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo created a new standard of international justice. From the end of World War II to this day, heads of state and military leaders know they will face accountability for their actions if they ever violate the new charter of human rights. The postwar world proved that no individual, in spite of the power they may hold, would ever fully avoid accountability under the rule of law. Following World War II, the victorious Allied governments established the first international criminal tribunals to prosecute high-level political officials and military authorities for war crimes and other wartime atrocities.
The origins, composition, and jurisdiction of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals differed in several important respects beyond their geographical differences and personalities. Plans to prosecute German political and military leaders were announced in the St. James Declaration. The Nuremberg tribunal consisted of one judge from each of the Allied powers, which each also supplied a prosecution team.
Seven Nazi organizations also were indicted. Supreme Court. Each of the four Allied powers supplied two judges—a main judge and an alternate. One of the indicted men was deemed medically unfit to stand trial, while a second man killed himself before the trial began. Hitler and two of his top associates, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels , had each committed suicide in the spring of before they could be brought to trial. The defendants were allowed to choose their own lawyers, and the most common defense strategy was that the crimes defined in the London Charter were examples of ex post facto law; that is, they were laws that criminalized actions committed before the laws were drafted.
As the accused men and judges spoke four different languages, the trial saw the introduction of a technological innovation taken for granted today: instantaneous translation. IBM provided the technology and recruited men and women from international telephone exchanges to provide on-the-spot translations through headphones in English, French, German and Russian. In the end, the international tribunal found all but three of the defendants guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and the rest were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life behind bars.
Ten of the condemned were executed by hanging on October 16, These proceedings, lasting from December to April , are grouped together as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. They differed from the first trial in that they were conducted before U. The reason for the change was that growing differences among the four Allied powers had made other joint trials impossible.
The subsequent trials were held in the same location at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. These proceedings included the Doctors Trial December 9, August 20, , in which 23 defendants were accused of crimes against humanity, including medical experiments on prisoners of war. In the Judges Trial March 5-December 4, , 16 lawyers and judges were charged with furthering the Nazi plan for racial purity by implementing the eugenics laws of the Third Reich.
Other subsequent trials dealt with German industrialists accused of using slave labor and plundering occupied countries; high-ranking army officers accused of atrocities against prisoners of war; and SS officers accused of violence against concentration-camp inmates.
Seven were sentenced to death, sixteen to life terms, two to lesser terms, two had died during the trials and one had been found insane. After reviewing their decisions, MacArthur expressed his regrets but praised the work of the tribunal and upheld the verdicts. Although calling the duty "utterly repugnant to me," MacArthur went on to say, "No human decision is infallible but I can conceive of no judicial process where greater safeguard was made to evolve justice.
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