National Security, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Selective Pursuit of Justice at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, 1946–1948

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511657511.014

12 - National Security, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Selective Pursuit of Justice at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, 1946–1948

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2010

Jeanne Guillemin

Edited by

Kamari Maxine Clarke and

Mark Goodale

Show author details

Kamari Maxine Clarke: Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Mark Goodale: Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The Allied victory in 1945 produced two innovative but not necessarily compatible constructions of justice. The first was the agreement among the Allies (United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France) to jointly prosecute the individual leaders of the defeated Axis powers for waging aggressive war and committing crimes against humanity, particularly the mass murder and torture of civilians. This consensus generated the initial Nuremberg trial (1945–1946) and then the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo war crimes trial.

The second Allied consensus was that Germany and Japan had to be militarily occupied, purged of fascism (which was already defeated in Italy), and made incapable of threatening world peace. As early as 1946, as part of its grand strategy, the United States envisioned the reinvention of both these defeated enemies as bulwarks of free-market democracy against the geopolitical threat of the Soviet Union, west and east. For Japan, the postwar nation-building project entailed radical constitutional reform and cultural change. Less attention has been paid to how the U.S. Cold War national security objectives – founded on the legitimacy of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – ultimately corrupted the IMTFE by excluding evidence of mass murder with germ weapons and by failing to indict the responsible Japanese leaders for these crimes.

In contemporary times, American political indifference to genocide and torture in the Balkans and Africa has been analyzed as part of its historical reluctance to intervene in international conflict.

Type: Chapter
Information: Mirrors of Justice
Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era
, pp. 248 - 269

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511657511.014 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Dower, John, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999)Google Scholar

Buruma, Ian, Inventing Japan, 1853–1964 (New York: Random House, 2003)Google Scholar

Powers, Samantha, “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002)Google Scholar

Danner, Mark, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: NY Review of Books, 2004)Google Scholar

Hicks, M.H., Dardajan, H., Serdán, G.G. et al., “The Weapons That Kill Civilians—Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq, 2003–2008,” New England Journal of Medicine, 2009 360 (16): 1585–1588CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

Blewett, George F., “Victor's Injustice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial.” American Perspective 1950, Vol. 4, No.3: 282–292Google Scholar

Taylor, Telford, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (New York: Knopf, 1992), 611Google Scholar

Minear, Richard H., Victors' Justice; The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar

Maogoto, Jackson Nyamuya, War Crimes and Realpolitik (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), 100–105Google Scholar

Totani, Yuma, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: Historiography, Misunderstandings, and Revisions (Japan) (Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2005), 421–434Google Scholar

Bass, Gary Jonathan, Stay the Hand of Vengeance. The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3–36Google Scholar

Guillemin, Jeanne, Biological Weapons: From State-sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005)Google Scholar

Ginsburg, George, “Moscow and International Legal Cooperation in the Pursuit of War Criminals,” Review of Central and East European Law 1995 21, No.1: 1–40CrossRef Google Scholar

Pritchard, R. John, “The International Military Tribunal for the Far East and its Contemporary Resonances: A General Preface to the Collection” in Pritchard, R. John (ed.), The Tokyo Major War Crimes Trial: The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), vol. 1, xvii–lxviiiGoogle Scholar

Buscher, Frank M., The U.S. War Crimes Trial Program in Germany, 1946–1955 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 19Google Scholar

Hunt, Linda, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1944–1990 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991)Google Scholar

Williams, Peter and Wallace, David, in Unit 731. The Japanese Army's Secret of Secrets (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989)Google Scholar

Piccigallo, Philip R., The Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crime Operations in the East (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 71Google Scholar

Fogel, Joshua A., The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000)CrossRef Google Scholar

Rabe, John, The Good Man of Nanking. The Diaries of John Rabe. Woods, John E., trans. (New York: Knopf, 1998)Google Scholar

Harris, Sheldon H., Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–45 and the American Cover-up (New York: Routledge, 1994; revised edition, 2002), 27–38Google Scholar

Gold, Hal, Unit 731 Testimony (Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1996), 159–166Google Scholar

Rosebury, Theodor, Peace or Pestilence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1949), 109–110Google Scholar

Balmer, Brian, Britain and Biological Warfare: Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930–65 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 41CrossRef Google Scholar

Brophy, Leo P., Miles, Wyndham B., and Cochrane, Rexmond C., The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to Field (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army, 1959), 103Google Scholar

Brown, Frederic J., Chemical Warfare (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2001), 246–266Google Scholar

Glines, Carroll V., The Doolittle Raid: America's Daring First Strike Against Japan (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military/Aviation History, 1991), 150–153Google Scholar

Xiofang, Li, Blood-weeping Accusations: Records of Anthrax Victims (Beijing: CCP Press, 2005)Google Scholar

Brackman, Arnold C., The Other Nuremberg: The Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials (New York: William Morrow, 1987), 383Google Scholar

Pal, Radhabinod, International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Dissentient Judgment of Justice (Calcutta: Sanyal, 1953), 2 volsGoogle Scholar

Woodward, Angela, Time to Lay Down the Law: National Legislation to Enforce the BWC (London: VERTIC, 2003), 13Google Scholar

Meselson, Matthew and Robinson, Julian Perry, “Draft Convention to Prohibit Biological and Chemical Weapons Under International Criminal Law,” in Yepes-Enríquez, R. and Tabassi, L. (eds.). Treaty Enforcement and International Cooperation in Criminal Matters (The Hague: OPCW, 2002), 457–469CrossRef Google Scholar