The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946, to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for their crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity, leading up to and during World War II. The IMTFE was modeled after the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, which prosecuted the leaders of Nazi Germany for their war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.
Following Japan's defeat and occupation by the Allies, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, United States General Douglas MacArthur, issued a special proclamation establishing the IMTFE. A charter was drafted to establish the court's composition, jurisdiction, and procedures; the crimes were defined based on the Nuremberg Charter. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was composed of judges, prosecutors, and staff from eleven countries that had fought against Japan: Australia, Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States; the defense consisted of Japanese and American lawyers. The Tokyo Trial exercised broader temporal jurisdiction than its counterpart in Nuremberg, beginning from the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Twenty-eight high-ranking Japanese military and political leaders were tried by the court, including prime ministers, cabinet members, and military commanders. They were charged with 55 separate counts, including the waging wars of aggression, murder, and various war crimes and crimes against humanity (such as torture and forced labor) against prisoners-of-war, civilian internees, and the inhabitants of occupied territories of the Japanese colonial empire; ultimately, 45 of the counts, including all the murder charges, were ruled either redundant or not authorized under the IMTFE Charter. The Tokyo Trial lasted more than twice as long as the better-known Nuremberg trials, and its impact was similarly influential in the development of international law; international war crimes tribunals would not again be established until the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994.
By the time it adjourned on November 12, 1948, two defendants had died of natural causes and one, Shūmei Ōkawa, was ruled unfit to stand trial. All remaining defendants were found guilty of at least one count. Seven were sentenced to death: Kenji Doihara, Kōki Hirota, Seishirō Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Akira Mutō, Hideki Tojo, and Iwane Matsui. Another sixteen were sentenced to life imprisonment, during which three died and the remaining thirteen were paroled between 1952 and 1958. Another 42 suspects, including Nobusuke Kishi and Yoshisuke Aikawa, were imprisoned awaiting an unrealized second trial, and released in 1947 and 1948.
Across Asia and the Pacific, domestic tribunals were held in Allied nations, with most concluding by 1949. These indicted a further 5,700 Japanese personnel, of whom 984 were sentenced to death.
The trials were criticized on a range of issues. The U.S. occupation decided that Emperor Hirohito, and other members of the Imperial House, would not be prosecuted, called to testify, or incriminated by other evidence. Defendants were allowed to coordinate their stories to this end. Strategic bombing by Japan and crimes against its own citizens, including Koreans and Taiwanese, were not prosecuted. Some of the trial's judges and defense lawyers argued this was connected to the lack of prosecution of Allied strategic bombing in Asia, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of Western imperialism in Asia. Due to a U.S. cover-up, Japanese leaders and scientists involved in its biological warfare against China and forced human experimentation, including Unit 731, were given immunity in exchange for assisting the United States biological weapons program. Some of these leaders were convicted by the 1949 Soviet Khabarovsk war crimes trials.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946, to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for their crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity, leading up to and during World War II. The IMTFE was modeled after the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, which prosecuted the leaders of Nazi Germany for their war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.
Following Japan's defeat and occupation by the Allies, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, United States General Douglas MacArthur, issued a special proclamation establishing the IMTFE. A charter was drafted to establish the court's composition, jurisdiction, and procedures; the crimes were defined based on the Nuremberg Charter. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was composed of judges, prosecutors, and staff from eleven countries that had fought against Japan: Australia, Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States; the defense consisted of Japanese and American lawyers. The Tokyo Trial exercised broader temporal jurisdiction than its counterpart in Nuremberg, beginning from the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
Twenty-eight high-ranking Japanese military and political leaders were tried by the court, including prime ministers, cabinet members, and military commanders. They were charged with 55 separate counts, including the waging wars of aggression, murder, and various war crimes and crimes against humanity (such as torture and forced labor) against prisoners-of-war, civilian internees, and the inhabitants of occupied territories of the Japanese colonial empire; ultimately, 45 of the counts, including all the murder charges, were ruled either redundant or not authorized under the IMTFE Charter. The Tokyo Trial lasted more than twice as long as the better-known Nuremberg trials, and its impact was similarly influential in the development of international law; international war crimes tribunals would not again be established until the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1994.
By the time it adjourned on November 12, 1948, two defendants had died of natural causes and one, Shūmei Ōkawa, was ruled unfit to stand trial. All remaining defendants were found guilty of at least one count. Seven were sentenced to death: Kenji Doihara, Kōki Hirota, Seishirō Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Akira Mutō, Hideki Tojo, and Iwane Matsui. Another sixteen were sentenced to life imprisonment, during which three died and the remaining thirteen were paroled between 1952 and 1958. Another 42 suspects, including Nobusuke Kishi and Yoshisuke Aikawa, were imprisoned awaiting an unrealized second trial, and released in 1947 and 1948.
Across Asia and the Pacific, domestic tribunals were held in Allied nations, with most concluding by 1949. These indicted a further 5,700 Japanese personnel, of whom 984 were sentenced to death.
The trials were criticized on a range of issues. The U.S. occupation decided that Emperor Hirohito, and other members of the Imperial House, would not be prosecuted, called to testify, or incriminated by other evidence. Defendants were allowed to coordinate their stories to this end. Strategic bombing by Japan and crimes against its own citizens, including Koreans and Taiwanese, were not prosecuted. Some of the trial's judges and defense lawyers argued this was connected to the lack of prosecution of Allied strategic bombing in Asia, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of Western imperialism in Asia. Due to a U.S. cover-up, Japanese leaders and scientists involved in its biological warfare against China and forced human experimentation, including Unit 731, were given immunity in exchange for assisting the United States biological weapons program. Some of these leaders were convicted by the 1949 Soviet Khabarovsk war crimes trials.
Background
The Tribunal was established to implement the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration, the Instrument of Surrender, and the Moscow Conference. The Potsdam Declaration (July 1945) had stated, "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners," though it did not specifically foreshadow trials. The terms of reference for the Tribunal were set out in the IMTFE Charter, issued on January 19, 1946. There was major disagreement, both among the Allies and within their administrations, about whom to try and how to try them. Despite the lack of consensus, General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, decided to initiate arrests. On September 11, a week after the surrender, he ordered the arrest of 39 suspects—most of them members of Hideki Tojo's war cabinet, but only 28 were tried either due to lack of evidence, illness, or death. Tojo tried to commit suicide but was resuscitated with the help of U.S. physicians.
Creation of the court
On January 19, 1946, MacArthur issued a special proclamation ordering the establishment of an International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE). On the same day, he also approved the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (CIMTFE), which prescribed how it was to be formed, the crimes that it was to consider, and how the tribunal was to function. The charter generally followed the model set by the Nuremberg trials. On April 25, in accordance with the provisions of Article 7 of the CIMTFE, the original Rules of Procedure of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East with amendments were promulgated.
Tokyo War Crimes Trial
Following months of preparation, the IMTFE convened on April 29, 1946. The trials were held in the War Ministry office in Tokyo.
On May 3 the prosecution opened its case, charging the defendants with crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The trial continued for more than two and a half years, hearing testimony from 419 witnesses and admitting 4,336 exhibits of evidence, including depositions and affidavits from 779 other individuals.
Charges
Following the model used at the Nuremberg trials in Germany, the Allies established three broad categories:
"Class A" charges covered crimes against peace, that is, waging a war of aggression against other nations, and only applied to Japan's top leaders who had planned and directed the war. The tribunal only had jurisdiction over those charged with Class A crimes.
"Class C" charges covered crimes against humanity, that is, systematic violence, deportation, or enslavement of any civilian population in time of peace or war, or persecutions on political or racial grounds in the execution of or in connection with any foregoing crimes. This category was created mainly to address atrocities committed by a state against its own nationals or allied citizens. This class of charges might have been applied to Japan's use of Korean and Taiwanese subjects as forced laborers and comfort women. In the end, however, crimes against colonial subjects went unaddressed at the trials.
The indictment accused the defendants of promoting a scheme of conquest that:
The chief prosecutor, Joseph B. Keenan, issued a press statement along with the indictment: "War and treaty-breakers should be stripped of the glamour of national heroes and exposed as what they really are—plain, ordinary murderers."
Evidence and testimony
The prosecution began opening statements on May 3, 1946, and took 192 days to present its case, finishing on January 24, 1947. It submitted its evidence in fifteen phases.
The prosecution team relied on the doctrine of command responsibility, which obviated the need to prove the various alleged atrocities were the result of the defendants' illegal orders. The prosecution instead had to prove three things: that war crimes were systematic or widespread; the accused knew that troops were committing atrocities; and the accused had power or authority to stop the crimes.
Evidentiary standards were low, and, according to Article 13 of the Charter, it was not to be "bound by technical rules of evidence ... and shall admit any evidence which it deems to have probative value", including documents such as diaries or letters which lacked "proof of its issuance or signature". One example of evidence used by prosecution to argue that a conspiracy had existed was the Tanaka Memorial, a document purportedly from 1927 that laid out the Japanese government's plans to conquer the world. The memorial was later revealed to be a hoax of Chinese origin, but its validity was not widely doubted at the time. Conversely, the defense was expected to adhere to the best evidence rule. Any possible evidence that would incriminate Emperor Hirohito and his family was excluded from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, as the United States believed it needed him to maintain order in Japan and achieve their postwar objectives.
Defense
The defendants were represented by over a hundred attorneys, three-quarters of them Japanese and one-quarter American, plus a support staff. The defense opened its case on January 27, 1947, and finished its presentation 225 days later on September 9, 1947.
The defense argued that the trial could never be free from substantial doubt as to its "legality, fairness and impartiality" and also that the laws they were accused of violating had not yet been established at the time of the actual acts. Similarly, they argued that, as individuals, they could not be held accountable for acts committed by the state, and that they could not be tried for not preventing others from committing war crimes.
The defense argued that Allied Powers' violations of international law should be examined.
During the trial, Shigenori Tōgō continued to say that Japan had acted in self-defense and been forced into the war by the Hull note, saying that "we felt at the time that Japan was being driven either to war or suicide".
Judgment
After the defense had finished its presentation on September 9, 1947, the IMTFE spent fifteen months reaching judgement and drafting its 1,781-page opinion. The reading of the judgement and the sentences lasted from November 4 to 12, 1948. Five of the eleven justices released separate opinions outside the court.
In his concurring opinion Australian justice William Webb took issue with Emperor Hirohito's legal status, writing, "The suggestion that the Emperor was bound to act on advice is contrary to the evidence." While refraining from personal indictment of Hirohito, Webb indicated that Hirohito bore responsibility as a constitutional monarch who accepted "ministerial and other advice for war" and that "no ruler can commit the crime of launching aggressive war and then validly claim to be excused for doing so because his life would otherwise have been in danger ... It will remain that the men who advised the commission of a crime, if it be one, are in no worse position than the man who directs the crime be committed."
Justice Delfín Jaranilla of the Philippines 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."
Justice Henri Bernard of France argued that the tribunal's course of action was flawed due to Hirohito's absence and the lack of sufficient deliberation by the judges. He concluded that Japan's declaration of war "had a principal author who escaped all prosecution and of whom in any case the present Defendants could only be considered as accomplices" and that a "verdict reached by a Tribunal after a defective procedure cannot be a valid one."
"It is well-nigh impossible to define the concept of initiating or waging a war of aggression both accurately and comprehensively," wrote Justice Bert Röling of the Netherlands in his dissent. He 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." Pointing out the difficulties and limitations in holding individuals responsible for an act of state and making omission of responsibility a crime, Röling called for the acquittal of several defendants, including Hirota.
Justice Radhabinod Pal of India produced a judgment in which he dismissed the legitimacy of the IMTFE as victor's justice: "I would hold that 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." While taking into account the influence of wartime propaganda, exaggerations, and distortions of facts in the evidence, and "over-zealous" and "hostile" witnesses, Pal concluded, "The evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war."
Sentencing
One defendant, Shūmei Ōkawa, was found mentally unfit for trial and the charges were dropped.
The seven defendants who were sentenced to death were executed at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on December 23, 1948. MacArthur, afraid of embarrassing and antagonizing the Japanese people, defied the wishes of President Truman and barred photography of any kind, instead bringing in four members of the Allied Council to act as official witnesses.
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: