International Military Tribunal for the Far East IMTFE
1945 - 1948
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946–1948) - “the IMTFE” - is frequently overlooked for its contributions to modern international criminal justice. Convened to hold Japanese leaders accountable for conspiring to commit aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during the Second World War, the IMTFE was both a ground-breaking judicial undertaking and a pioneering multilateral institution.
Background:
The Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945 set out the Terms for Japanese Surrender in World War 2. Paragraph 10 stated - “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 …”1
The Instrument of Surrender was signed on 2 September 1945 aboard the battleship USS Missouri at anchor in Tokyo Bay.2
In January 1946, a Charter for an International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) was issued by General Douglas MacArthur (1880 - 1964)3
MacArthur was in charge of the Japanese surrender ceremony. As Allied commander of the Japanese occupation in 1945–51, he effectively (if autocratically) directed the demobilisation of Japanese military forces, the expurgation of militarists, the restoration of the economy, and the drafting of a liberal Japanese constitution.
The Trial:
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) sat at Ichigaya, Tokyo from 29 April 1946 to 12 December 1948. Twenty-eight Japanese military and political leaders were tried for joint conspiracy to start and wage war (categorised as "Class A" crimes), conventional war crimes ("Class B") and crimes against humanity ("Class C").
"Class A" charges, alleging crimes against peace, were brought against those senior Japanese leaders who had planned and directed the war. Class B and C charges, could be levelled at Japanese of any rank and covered conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Eleven countries - Australia, Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States - provided judges and prosecutors for the court. There was testimony from 419 witnesses and 4,336 exhibits of evidence.
Japan's Emperor Hirohito (1901 - 1989) was not prosecuted. MacArthur thought that an ostensibly cooperative emperor would help establish a peaceful Allied occupation and would assist the USA to achieve its post-war objectives. On 1 January 1946, under pressure from the Allies, the Emperor formally renounced his divinity. The Constitution of Japan of 1947 declared the Emperor to be a mere "symbol of the State ... deriving his position from the will of the people in whom resides sovereign power."4
The Tribunal Judges:
Image: IMTFE Judges in 1946
The Tribunal Charter of January 1946 provided for 5 to 9 judges but this was amended in April 1946 to 6 to 11 judges. Thus, an additional 2 judges were appointed: Judge Radhabinod Pal 1886 - 1967) from India and Judge Delfin Jaranilla 1883 - 1980) from the Philippines.
Australian High Court judge Sir William Flood Webb (1887 - 1972) presided. Unlike the IMT at Nuremberg, there were no alternate judges. In July 1946, the American judge John Patrick Higgins (1893 - 1955) resigned from IMTFE and was replaced by Myron Cady Cramer (1881 - 1966).
The UK appointed Scottish judge William Donald Patrick (Lord Patrick) (1889 - 1967).
The full list of judges is at IMTFE (Tokyo) – The History Room (history-room.co.uk).
Image: Courtroom at Tokyo
Legal personnel:
Joseph Keenan (1888 - 1954) of the USA was Chief Prosecutor and he was assisted by a large team including barrister Arthur Comyns-Carr (1882 - 1965) (UK) - The People of the IMTFE - Prosecutors
Defence lawyers were appointed to represent the defendants - The People of the IMTFE - Defence.
The Defendants and sentences:
One defendant, Shūmei Ōkawa was found mentally unfit for trial. Two defendants, Yōsuke Matsuoka and Osami Nagano, died of natural causes during the trial.
Death penalty -
General Kenji Doihara, chief of the intelligence services in Manchukuo
Kōki Hirota, prime minister (later foreign minister)
General Seishirō Itagaki, war minister
General Heitarō Kimura, commander, Burma Area Army
Lieutenant General Akira Mutō, chief of staff, 14th Area Army
General Hideki Tōjō, commander, Kwantung Army (later prime minister)
General Iwane Matsui, commander, Shanghai Expeditionary Force and Central China Area Army
The executions took place at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on 23 December 1948.
Imprisonment -
Sixteen defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment. Three (Koiso, Shiratori, and Umezu) died in prison, while the other thirteen were paroled between 1952 and 1958:
General Sadao Araki, war minister
Colonel Kingorō Hashimoto, major instigator of the second Sino-Japanese War
Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, war minister
Baron Kiichirō Hiranuma, prime minister
Naoki Hoshino, Chief Cabinet Secretary
Okinori Kaya, Minister of Finance
Marquis Kōichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal
General Kuniaki Koiso, governor-general of Korea, later prime minister
General Jirō Minami, commander, Kwantung Army, former governor-general of Korea
Vice Admiral Takazumi Oka, naval minister
Lieutenant General Hiroshi Ōshima, Ambassador to Germany
Lieutenant General Kenryō Satō, chief of the Military Affairs Bureau
Admiral Shigetarō Shimada, naval minister
Toshio Shiratori, Ambassador to Italy
Lieutenant General Teiichi Suzuki, president of the Cabinet Planning Board
General Yoshijirō Umezu, war minister and Chief of the Army General Staff
Foreign minister Shigenori Tōgō was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. Togo died in prison in 1950.
Foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu was sentenced to 7 years and paroled in 1950. He later served as Foreign Minister and as Deputy Prime Minister of post-war Japan.
The Tribunal’s judgment and other opinions:
The IMT spent fifteen months reaching judgment and drafting a principal opinion of 1,781-pages. The reading of the judgment and the sentences lasted from 4 to 12 December 1948.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East (ibiblio.org)
Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
A striking feature of IMTFE is that five separate judicial opinions were published alongside the principal judgment. With the possible exception of Judge Pal’s 1,000 page dissenting opinion, these have not received particularly extensive analysis.
The Tribunal’s President (Sir William Webb) prepared an opinion which he drafted as an alternative to the IMTFE principal judgment but he eventually decided to support the majority view and withdrew his separate opinion.
The separate opinion of Judge Delfin Jaranella is available online - Transcript-of-the-IMTFE-Separate-Opinion-of-the-President-Concerning-Opinion-of-Justice-Jaranilla-of-the-Philippines.pdf (unwcc.org). Jaranella disagreed with the penalties imposed by the tribunal as being "too lenient, not exemplary and deterrent, and not commensurate with the gravity of the offence or offences committed."
The article Dissent at Tokyo (author Professor David Cohen) discusses the opinion of Judge Henri Bernard of France who argued that the tribunal's course of action was flawed due to Hirohito's absence and the lack of sufficient deliberation by the judges.
Judge Bert Röling of the Netherlands stated, "I think that not only should there have been neutrals in the court, but there should have been Japanese also." He argued that they would always have been a minority and therefore would not have been able to sway the balance of the trial. However, "they could have convincingly argued issues of government policy which were unfamiliar to the Allied justices." He further argued that five of the accused, and most notably former foreign ministers Hirota Kōki and Shigemitsu Mamoru, should have been acquitted.
Judge Radhabinod Pal of India produced a dissenting opinion in which he dismissed the legitimacy of the IMTFE as victor's justice. An article by Lewis Barclay and published by Strathclyde University notes that - ‘While much of the Bench had varying degrees of reservations over the charter, it was Pal who sensationally broke away from the other Justices.’
The article further notes that Pal compiled his opinion in his hotel room and that he missed 109 of the 460 court days. Pal argued declared: “I would hold each and every one of the accused must be found not guilty of each and every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges.”
The Politics of Dissent: Radha Binod Pal and the Tokyo War Crimes Trial (youtube.com)
Judge Pal thus attacked the legal basis of the entire trial process which, in his view, was a form of Victor’s Justice. That argument had some force but the fact was that thousands who had suffered terribly wanted some form of justice for the barbarities inflicted by Japan during those dreadful years.
The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials undoubtedly pushed the boundaries of international law as it stood at the time but without such a push we might not have seen the development of International Criminal Law culminating in the establishment of the International Criminal Court and also other tribunals created in recent times by the United Nations.
Image: Kohima Memorial - “When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today.”
Earlier Viewpoint:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945 - by Peter Hargreaves (substack.com)
Materials:
Documenting Japanese War Crimes at Tokyo
The Tokyo Trials' eternal burden – DW – 01/18/2016
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East | Digital Collection (virginia.edu)
Records of the International Military Tribunal, Far East (Tokyo) | Imperial War Museums (iwm.org.uk)
Stolen Years: Australian prisoners of war - The war crimes trials | Australian War Memorial (awm.gov.au)
Australian International Law Journal (austlii.edu.au)
Memorializing Dissent: Justice Pal in Tokyo | American Journal of International Law | Cambridge Core
TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE » The Tokyo Tribunal: Precedent for Victor’s Justice II
The Tokyo Trials: An Analysis from a Modern Perspective - International Journal of Law Management & Humanities (ijlmh.com)
Potsdam Declaration | Birth of the Constitution of Japan (ndl.go.jp). The words “visited cruelties upon our prisoners” were, if anything, an understatement. The treatment of PoWs has been the subject of numerous books - (see HERE). According to research - (see The Asahi Shimbun) -140,000 officers and soldiers were taken prisoner in the Asia-Pacific region by the imperial Japanese military during the Pacific War. The POWs came from Britain, the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India and various other nations.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East - Charter of January 1946 - pdf and International Military Tribunal for the Far East Charter (IMTFE Charter) - The Faculty of Law (uio.no)
A previous Viewpoint was about the Order of the Garter where it was noted that, in May 1971, HM Queen Elizabeth II restored Hirohito to the Order - The Order of the Garter - by Peter Hargreaves (substack.com). I will probably always be of the view that, whatever the politics of the day, this diminished the standing of the UK’s highest Order of Chivalry.