Chinese prisoners being buried alive
[1]
Japanese war crimes occurred during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Some of the incidents have also been described as an Asian Holocaust[2] and Japanese war atrocities.[3][4] Some war crimes were committed by military personnel from the Empire of Japan in the late 19th century, although most took place during the first part of the Shōwa Era, the name given to the reign of Emperor Hirohito, until the military defeat of the Empire of Japan, in 1945.
Historians and governments of some countries officially hold Japanese military forces, namely the Imperial Japanese Army, the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Japanese family, especially Emperor Hirohito, responsible for killings and other crimes committed against millions of civilians and prisoners of war.[5][6][7][8][9] Some Japanese soldiers have admitted to committing these crimes.[10]
Senior Japanese Government officials have issued numerous apologies for the country's war crimes since the 1950s. Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that the country acknowledges its role in causing "tremendous damage and suffering" during World War II, especially in regard to the IJA entrance into Nanjing during which Japanese soldiers killed a large number of noncombatants and engaged in looting.[11] Some members of the Liberal Democratic Party in the Japanese government such as former prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe have prayed at the Yasukuni Shrine, which includes convicted Class A war criminals in its honored war dead. Some Japanese history textbooks only offer brief references to the various war crimes,[12] and members of the Liberal Democratic Party such as Shinzo Abe have denied some of the atrocities such as the use of comfort women.[10][13]
War crimes have been defined by the Nuremberg Charter as "violations of the laws or customs of war," which includes crimes against enemy civilians and enemy combatants.[15] Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been accused or convicted of committing many such acts during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. They have been accused of conducting a series of human rights abuses against civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) throughout East Asia and the western Pacific region. These events reached their height during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 and the Asian and Pacific campaigns of World War II (1941–45).
Japan did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1929, though in 1942, it did promise to abide by its terms.[16] The crimes committed also fall under other aspects of international and Japanese law. For example, many of the crimes committed by Japanese personnel during World War II broke Japanese military law, and were subject to court martial, as required by that law.[17] The Empire also violated international agreements signed by Japan, including provisions of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) such as a ban on the use of chemical weapons and protections for prisoners of war.[18] The Japanese government also signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1929), thereby rendering its actions in 1937-45 liable to charges of crimes against peace,[19] a charge that was introduced at the Tokyo Trials to prosecute "Class A" war criminals. "Class B" war criminals were those found guilty of war crimes per se, and "Class C" war criminals were those guilty of crimes against humanity. The Japanese government also accepted the terms set by the Potsdam Declaration (1945) after the end of the war, including the provision in Article 10 of punishment for "all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners."
In Japan, the term "Japanese war crimes" generally only refers to cases tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Trials, following the end of the Pacific War.[citation needed] However, the tribunal did not prosecute war crimes allegations involving mid-ranking officers or more junior personnel. Those were dealt with separately in other cities throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Japanese law does not define those convicted in the post-1945 trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan's governments have accepted the judgments made in the trials, and in the Treaty of San Francisco (1952). This is because the treaty does not mention the legal validity of the tribunal. Had Japan certified the legal validity of the war crimes tribunals in the San Francisco Treaty, the war crimes would have become open to appeal and overturning in Japanese courts. This would have been unacceptable in international diplomatic circles.[citation needed] Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has advocated the position that Japan accepted the Tokyo tribunal and its judgements as a condition for ending the war, but that its verdicts have no relation to domestic law. According to this view, those convicted of war crimes are not criminals under Japanese law.[20] This view may have been accepted by Japanese courts.[citation needed]
Outside Japan, different societies use widely different timeframes in defining Japanese war crimes.[citation needed] For example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 was enforced by the Japanese military, and was followed by the deprivation of civil liberties and exploitation of the Korean people.[citation needed] Thus, North and South Korea refer to "Japanese war crimes" as events occurring during the period of Korea under Japanese rule.[21]
By comparison, the Western Allies did not come into military conflict with Japan until 1941, and North Americans, Australasians, South East Asians and Europeans may consider "Japanese war crimes" to be events that occurred in 1941-45.[22]
Japanese war crimes were not always carried out by ethnic Japanese personnel. A small minority of people in every Asian and Pacific country invaded or occupied by Japan collaborated with the Japanese military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other imperialist powers.[23]
Japan's sovereignty over Korea and Formosa (Taiwan), in the first half of the 20th century, was recognized by international agreements—the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895) and the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty (1910)—and they were considered at the time to be integral parts of the Japanese Empire. However, the legality of these treaties is in question,[21] as the native populations were not consulted, there was armed resistance to Japan's annexations, and war crimes may also be committed during civil wars.[citation needed]
- Main articles: Militarism-Socialism in Showa Japan, Japanese militarism, Eugenics in Showa Japan, Xenophobia in Showa Japan
Military culture, especially during Japan's imperialist phase had great bearing on the conduct of the Japanese military before and during World War II.
Centuries previously, the samurai of Japan had been taught unquestioning obedience to their lords, as well as to be fearless in battle. After the Meiji Restoration and the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Emperor became the focus of military loyalty. During the so-called "Age of Empire" in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers in developing an empire, pursuing that objective aggressively.
As with other imperial powers, Japanese popular culture became increasingly jingoistic through the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. The rise of Japanese nationalism was seen partly in the adoption of Shinto as a state religion from 1890, including its entrenchment in the education system. Shinto held the Emperor to be divine because he was deemed to be a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. This provided justification for the requirement that the emperor and his representatives be obeyed without question.[citation needed]
Victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) signified Japan's rise to the status of a major military power.
Unlike many other major powers, Japan had not signed the Geneva Convention (1929)—also known as The Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva July 27, 1929—which was the version of the Geneva Convention that covered the treatment of prisoners of war during World War II.[24] Nevertheless, an Imperial Proclamation (1894) stated that Japanese soldiers should make every effort to win the war without violating international law. According to historian Yuki Tanaka, Japanese forces during the First Sino-Japanese War, released 1,790 Chinese prisoners without harm, once they signed an agreement not to take up arms against Japan again.[25] After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), all 79,367 Russian Empire prisoners were released, and were paid for labour performed, in accordance with the Hague Convention.[25] Similarly the behaviour of the Japanese military in World War I (1914–18) was at least as humane as that of other militaries,[citation needed] with some German POWs of the Japanese finding life in Japan so agreeable that they stayed and settled in Japan after the war.[26][27]
Two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda competing to see who could kill (with a sword) one hundred people first. The bold headline reads, "'Incredible Record' (in the
Contest To Cut Down 100 People—Mukai 106 – 105 Noda—Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra Innings".
By the late 1930s, the rise of militarism in Japan created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of Nazi Germany's elite military personnel, such as those in the Waffen-SS. Japan also had a military secret police force, known as the Kempeitai, which resembled the Nazi Gestapo in its role in annexed and occupied countries.[28] Perceived failure, or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind.[29] In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating on to lower ranks, all the way down. In POW camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all,[30] partly in the belief that such punishments were merely the proper technique to deal with disobedience.[29]
The Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s is often compared to the military of Nazi Germany during 1933–45 because of the sheer scale of suffering. Much of the controversy regarding Japan's role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that:
- It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%.[31]
According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among POWs from Asian countries, held by Japan was 27.1%.[32] The death rate of Chinese POWs was much higher because—under a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Emperor Hirohito—the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed.[33] Only 56 Chinese POWs were released after the surrender of Japan.[34] After March 20, 1943, the Japanese Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea.[35]
Japanese soldiers shooting blindfolded Sikh prisoners. The photograph was found among Japanese records when British troops
entered Singapore.
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[36] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937–45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 million in the course of the war.[37] The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937–38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[38] In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre resulted in the death of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines. It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hand of the Japanese during the occupation.[39][40] In the Sook Ching massacre, Lee Kuan Yew, the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore, said during an interview with National Geographic that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties[41] while according to Major General Kawamura Saburo, there were 5,000 casualties in total.[42] There were other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.
Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."
Additionally, captured allied service personnel were massacred in various incidents, including:
Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China and Korea. One of the most infamous was Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii. Victims were subjected to experiments including but not limited to vivisection and amputations without anesthesia and testing of biological weapons. Anesthesia was not used because it was believed to affect results.[45]
To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.
[46]
According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths.[47] Furthermore, according to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000.[48] According to other sources, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many as 400,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases...", resulting from the use of biological warfare.[49] Top officers of Unit 731 were not prosecuted for war crimes after the war, in exchange for turning over the results of their research to the Allies. They were also reportedly given responsible positions in Japan's pharmaceutical industry, medical schools and health ministry.[50][51]
One case of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine out of 11 crew members survived the crash of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on May 5, 1945. (This plane was Lt. Marvin Watkins' crew of the 29th Bomb Group of the 6th Bomb Squadron.[52]) The bomber's commander was separated from his crew and sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.[53][54][55]
On March 11, 1948, 30 people, including several doctors and one female nurse, were brought to trial by the Allied war crimes tribunal. Charges of cannibalism were dropped, but 23 people were found guilty of vivisection or wrongful removal of body parts. Five were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, and the rest to shorter terms. In 1950, the military governor of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, commuted all of the death sentences and significantly reduced most of the prison terms. All of those convicted in relation to the university vivisection were free after 1958.[56] In addition, many participants who were responsible for these vivisections were never charged by the Americans or their allies in exchange for the information on the experiments.[57]
In 2006, former IJN medical officer Akira Makino stated that he was ordered—as part of his training—to carry out vivisection on about 30 civilian prisoners in the Philippines between December 1944 and February 1945.[58] The surgery included amputations.[59] Ken Yuasa, a former military doctor in China, has also admitted to similar incidents in which he was compelled to participate.[60]
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were used only sporadically in 1937 but in the spring of 1938, however the Imperial Japanese Army began full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite and nausea gas (red), and from summer 1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communists Chinese troops.[61]
According to Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito signed orders specifying the use of chemical weapons in China.[62] For example, during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite Article 23 of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)[18] and article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare[63] A resolution adopted by the League of Nations on May 14 condemned the use of poison gas by Japan.
Another example is the Battle of Yichang in October 1941, during which the 19th Artillery Regiment helped the 13th Brigade of the IJA 11th Army by launching 1,000 yellow gas shells and 1,500 red gas shells at the Chinese forces. The area was crowded with Chinese civilians unable to evacuate. Some 3,000 Chinese soldiers were in the area and 1,600 were affected. The Japanese report stated that "the effect of gas seems considerable".[64]
In 2004, Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka discovered in the Australian National Archives documents showing that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 on Kai Islands (Indonesia).[65]
Japanese imperial forces employed widespread use of torture on prisoners, usually in an effort to gather military intelligence quickly.[66] Tortured prisoners were often later executed. A former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:
The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the
Yamato [i.e., Japanese] race was superior.
[67]
Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel in many parts of Asia and the Pacific committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. In many cases this was inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel as a result of hunger. However, according to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers".[68] This frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies. For example, an Indian POW, Havildar Changdi Ram, testified that: "[on November 12, 1944] the Kempeitai beheaded [an Allied] pilot. I saw this from behind a tree and watched some of the Japanese cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, buttocks and carry it off to their quarters... They cut it [into] small pieces and fried it."[69]
In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified that in New Guinea:
the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles [80 km] away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died.
[70]
Perhaps the most senior officer convicted of cannibalism was Lt Gen. Yoshio Tachibana (立花芳夫,Tachibana Yoshio), who with 11 other Japanese personnel was tried in August 1946 in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, during August 1944, on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands. The airmen were beheaded on Tachibana's orders. As military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". Tachibana was sentenced to death, and hanged.[71]
The Japanese military's use of forced labor, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Kōa-in (Japanese Asia Development Board) for forced labour.[72] More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway.[73]
The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between four and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.[74] About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.
According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor Hirohito personally ratified the decision to remove the constraints of international law (Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)) on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of August 5, 1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war".[75] The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. However, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention.
Main article:
Comfort womenThe terms "comfort women" (慰安婦, ianfu?) or "military comfort women" (従軍慰安婦, jûgun-ianfu?) are euphemisms for women in Japanese military brothels in occupied countries, who were recruited by deception, abducted, and forced into sexual slavery.
In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published material based on his research in archives at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial institutions such as the Kôa-in and "comfort stations". When Yoshimi's findings were published in the Japanese news media on January 12, 1993, they caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi, to acknowledge some of the facts that same day. On January 17, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in South Korea. On July 6 and August 4, the Japanese government issued two statements by which it recognized that "Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military of the day", "The Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women" and that the women were "recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion".[76]
The controversy was re-ignited on March 1, 2007, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mentioned suggestions that a U.S. House of Representatives committee would call on the Japanese Government to "apologize for and acknowledge" the role of the Japanese Imperial military in wartime sex slavery. However, Abe denied that it applied to comfort stations. "There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it."[77] Abe's comments provoked negative reactions overseas. For example, a New York Times editorial on March 6 said:[78]
These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army's involvement is documented in the government's own defense files. A senior Tokyo official more or less apologized for this horrific crime in 1993... Yesterday, he grudgingly acknowledged the 1993 quasi apology, but only as part of a pre-emptive declaration that his government would reject the call, now pending in the United States Congress, for an official apology. America isn't the only country interested in seeing Japan belatedly accept full responsibility. Korea, China, and the Philippines are also infuriated by years of Japanese equivocations over the issue.
The same day, veteran soldier Yasuji Kaneko admitted to The Washington Post that the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."[79]
On April 17, 2007, Yoshimi and another historian, Hirofumi Hayashi, announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.[80]
On May 12, 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Netherland government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.[81]
In other cases, some victims from East Timor testified they were forced when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers.[82]
A Dutch-Indonesian "comfort woman", Jan Ruff-O'Hearn (now resident in Australia), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims and that it wanted to rewrite history. Ruff-O'Hearn said that she had been raped "day and night" for three months by Japanese soldiers when she was 19.[83]
To this day, only one Japanese woman published her testimony. This was done in 1971, when a former "comfort woman" forced to work for showa soldiers in Taiwan, published her memoirs under the pseudonym of Suzuko Shirota.[84]
There are different theories on the breakdown of the comfort women's place of origin. While some Japanese sources claim that the majority of the women were from Japan, others, including Yoshimi, argue as many as 200,000 women,[85] mostly from Korea and China, and some other countries such as the Philippines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Netherlands,[86] and Australia[87] were forced to engage in sexual activity.[88]
On 26 June 2007, the U.S. House of representatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution asking that Japan "should acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its military's coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war".[89] On 30 July 2007, the House of Representatives passed the resolution, while Shinzo Abe said this decision was "regrettable".[90]
Many historians state that the Japanese government and individual military personnel engaged in widespread looting during the period of 1895 to 1945.[91][92][93][94] The stolen property included private land, as well as many different kinds of valuable goods looted from banks, depositories, temples, churches, other commercial premises, mosques, museums, and private homes.
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in their 2003 book Gold Warriors: America's secret recovery of Yamashita's gold—report that secret repositories of loot from across Southeast Asia, were created by the Japanese military in the Philippines during 1942–45. They allege that the theft was organized on a massive scale, either by yakuza gangsters such as Yoshio Kodama, or by officials at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, who wanted to ensure that as many of the proceeds as possible went to the government. The Seagraves also allege that Hirohito appointed his brother, Prince Chichibu, to head a secret organization called Kin no yuri (Golden Lily) for this purpose.
General
Tomoyuki Yamashita (second right) was tried in
Manila between October 29 and December 7, 1945, by a U.S. military commission, on charges relating to the
Manila Massacre and earlier occurrences in Singapore, and was sentenced to death. The case set a precedent regarding the responsibility of commanders for war crimes, and is known as the
Yamashita Standard.
Soon after the war, the Allied powers indicted 25 individuals as Class-A war criminals, and 5,700 individuals were indicted as Class-B or Class-C war criminals by Allied criminal trials. Of these, 984 were initially condemned to death, 920 were actually executed, 475 received life sentences, 2,944 received some prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were not sentenced or not brought to trial. These numbers included 178 ethnic Taiwanese and 148 ethnic Koreans.[95] The Class-A charges were all tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as "the Tokyo Trials". Other courts were formed in many different places in Asia and the Pacific.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was formed to try accused people in Japan itself.
High ranking officers who were tried included Koichi Kido and Sadao Araki. Three former (unelected) prime ministers: Koki Hirota, Hideki Tojo, and Kuniaki Koiso were convicted of Class-A war crimes. Many military leaders were also convicted. Two people convicted as Class-A war criminals later served as ministers in post-war Japanese governments.
- Mamoru Shigemitsu served as foreign minister both during the war and in the post-war Hatoyama government.
- Okinori Kaya was finance minister during the war and later served as justice minister in the government of Hayato Ikeda. However, these two had no direct connection to alleged war crimes committed by Japanese forces, and foreign governments never raised the issue when they were appointed.
Hirohito and all members of the imperial family implicated in the war such as Prince Chichibu, Prince Asaka, Prince Takeda and Prince Higashikuni were exonerated from criminal prosecutions by MacArthur, with the help of Bonner Fellers who allowed the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperor would be spared from indictment.[96] Many historians criticize this decision. According to John Dower, "with the full support of MacArthur's headquarters, the prosecution functioned, in effect, as a defense team for the emperor"[97] and even Japanese activists who endorse the ideals of the Nuremberg and Tokyo charters, and who have labored to document and publicize the atrocities of the Showa regime "cannot defend the American decision to exonerate the emperor of war responsibility and then, in the chill of the Cold war, release and soon afterwards openly embrace accused right-winged war criminals like the later prime minister Nobusuke Kishi."[98] For Herbert Bix, "MacArthur's truly extraordinary measures to save Hirohito from trial as a war criminal had a lasting and profoundly distorting impact on Japanese understanding of the lost war."[99]
October 26, 1945,
Sandakan,
North Borneo. During the investigation into
Sandakan Death Marches and other incidents, Sergeant Hosotani Naoji (left, seated), a member of the
Kempeitai unit at Sandakan, is interrogated by
Squadron Leader F. G. Birchall (second right) of the Royal Australian Air Force, and Sergeant Mamo (right), a
Nisei member of the U.S. Army/Allied Translator and Interpreter Service. Naoji confessed to shooting two Australian POWs and five ethnic Chinese civilians.
Between 1946–51, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, the USSR, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and the Philippines all held military tribunals to try Japanese indicted for Class B and Class C war crimes. Some 5,600 Japanese personnel were prosecuted in more than 2,200 trials outside Japan. Class B defendants were accused of having committed such crimes themselves; class C defendants, mostly senior officers, were accused of planning, ordering, or failing to prevent them.
The judges presiding came from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, France, the Soviet Union, New Zealand, India and the Philippines. Additionally, the Chinese Communists also held a number of trials for Japanese personnel. More than 4,400 Japanese personnel were convicted and about 1,000 were sentenced to death.
The largest single trial was that of 93 Japanese personnel charged with the summary execution of more than 300 Allied POWs, in the Laha massacre (1942). The most prominent ethnic Korean convicted was Lieutenant General Hong Sa Ik, who orchestrated the organization of prisoner of war camps in south east Asia. In 2006, the South Korean government "pardoned" 83 of the 148 convicted Korean war criminals.[100]
In 1950, after most Allied war crimes trials had ended, thousands of convicted war criminals sat in prisons across Asia and across Europe, detained in the countries where they were convicted. Some executions were still outstanding as many Allied courts agreed to reexamine their verdicts, reducing sentences in some cases and instituting a system of parole, but without relinquishing control over the fate of the imprisoned (even after Japan and Germany had regained their status as sovereign countries).
An intense and broadly supported campaign for amnesty for all imprisoned war criminals ensued (more aggressively in Germany than in Japan at first), as attention turned away from the top wartime leaders and towards the majority of "ordinary" war criminals (Class B/C in Japan), and the issue of criminal responsibility was reframed as a humanitarian problem.
On March 7, 1950, MacArthur issued a directive that reduced the sentences by one-third for good behavior and authorized the parole of those who had received life sentences after fifteen years. Several of those who were imprisoned were released earlier on parole due to ill-health.
The Japanese popular reaction to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal found expression in demands for the mitigation of the sentences of war criminals and agitation for parole. Shortly after the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in April 1952, a movement demanding the release of B- and C-class war criminals began, emphasizing the "unfairness of the war crimes tribunals" and the "misery and hardship of the families of war criminals." The movement quickly garnered the support of more than ten million Japanese. In the face of this surge of public opinion, the government commented that "public sentiment in our country is that the war criminals are not criminals. Rather, they gather great sympathy as victims of the war, and the number of people concerned about the war crimes tribunal system itself is steadily increasing."
The parole-for-war-criminals movement was driven by two groups: those from outside who had 'a sense of pity' for the prisoners; and the war criminals themselves who called for their own release as part of an anti-war peace movement. The movement that arose out of 'a sense of pity' demanded 'just set them free (tonikaku shakuho o) regardless of how it is done'.
On September 4, 1952, President Truman issued Executive Order 10393, establishing a Clemency and Parole Board for War Criminals to advise the President with respect to recommendations by the Government of Japan for clemency, reduction of sentence, or parole, with respect to sentences imposed on Japanese war criminals by military tribunals.[101]
On May 26, 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles rejected a proposed amnesty for the imprisoned war criminals but instead agreed to "change the ground rules" by reducing the period required for eligibility for parole from 15 years to 10.[102]
By the end of 1958, all Japanese war criminals, including A-, B- and C-class were released from prison and politically rehabilitated. Hashimoto Kingorô, Hata Shunroku, Minami Jirô, and Oka Takazumi were all released on parole in 1954. Araki Sadao, Hiranuma Kiichirô, Hoshino Naoki, Kaya Okinori, Kido Kôichi, Ôshima Hiroshi, Shimada Shigetarô, and Suzuki Teiichi were released on parole in 1955. Satô Kenryô, whom many, including Judge B. V. A. Röling regarded as one of the convicted war criminals least deserving of imprisonment, was not granted parole until March 1956, the last of the Class A Japanese war criminals to be released. On April 7, 1957, the Japanese government announced that, with the concurrence of a majority of the powers represented on the tribunal, the last ten major Japanese war criminals who had previously been paroled were granted clemency and were to be regarded henceforth as unconditionally free from the terms of their parole.
The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in regard to war crimes are separate. Therefore, while maintaining that Japan violated no international law or treaties, Japanese governments have officially recognised the suffering which the Japanese military caused, and numerous apologies have been issued by the Japanese government. For example, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, in August 1995, stated that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology". Also, on September 29, 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka stated: "[t]he Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself."[103]
However, the official apologies are widely viewed as inadequate or only a symbolic exchange by many of the survivors of such crimes or the families of dead victims. On October 2006, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed an apology for the damage caused by its colonial rule and aggression, more than 80 Japanese lawmakers from his ruling party LDP paid visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. Many people aggrieved by Japanese war crimes also maintain that no apology has been issued for particular acts or that the Japanese government has merely expressed "regret" or "remorse".[104] On 2 March 2007, the issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion." Before he spoke, a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers also sought to revise Yohei Kono's 1993 apology to former comfort women.[10][13] However, this provoked negative reaction from Asian and Western countries.
On 31 October 2008, the chief of staff of Japan's Air Self-Defense Force Toshio Tamogami was dismissed with a 60 million yen allowance[105] due to an essay he published, arguing that Japan was not an aggressor during World War II, that the war brought prosperity to China, Taiwan and Korea, that the Imperial Japanese Army's conduct was not violent and that the Greater East Asia War is viewed in a positive way by many Asian countries and criticizing the war crimes trials which followed the war.[106] On 11 November, Tamogami added before the Diet that the personal apology made in 1995 by former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama was "a tool to suppress free speech".[105]
Some in Japan have asserted that what is being demanded is that the Japanese Prime Minister or the Emperor perform dogeza, in which an individual kneels and bows his head to the ground—a high form of apology in East Asian societies that Japan appears unwilling to do.[107] Some point to an act by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who knelt at a monument to the Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1970, as an example of a powerful and effective act of apology and reconciliation similar to dogeza, although not everyone agrees.[108]
Citing Brandt's action as an example, John Borneman, associate professor of anthropology at Cornell, states that, "an apology represents a non-material or purely symbolic exchange whereby the wrongdoer voluntarily lowers his own status as a person." Borneman further states that once this type of apology is given, the injured party must forgive and seek reconciliation, or else the apology won't have any effect. The injured party may reject the apology for several reasons, one of which is to prevent reconciliation, because, "By keeping the memory of the wound alive, refusals prevent an affirmation of mutual humanity by instrumentalizing the power embedded in the status of a permanent victim."[109]
Therefore, some argue that a nation's reluctance to accept the conciliatory gestures that Japan has made may be because that nation doesn't think that Japan has "lowered" itself enough to provide a sincere apology. On the other hand, others state their belief that that particular nation is choosing to reject reconciliation in pursuit of permanent "victimhood" status as a way to try to assert power over Japan.[110]
On 13 September 2010, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada met in Tokyo with six former American POWs of the Japanese and apologized for their treatment during World War II. Said Okada, "You have all been through hardships during World War II, being taken prisoner by the Japanese military, and suffered extremely inhumane treatment. On behalf of the Japanese government and as the foreign minister, I would like to offer you my heartfelt apology."[111]
On 29 November 2011, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba apologized to former Australian POWs on behalf of the Japanese government for pain and suffering inflicted on them during the war.[112]
There is a widespread perception that the Japanese government has not accepted the legal responsibility for compensation and, as a direct consequence of this denial, it has failed to compensate the individual victims of Japanese atrocities. In particular, a number of prominent human rights and women's rights organizations insist that Japan still has a moral or legal responsibility to compensate individual victims, especially the sex slaves conscripted by the Japanese military in occupied countries and known as comfort women.
The Japanese government officially accepted the requirement for monetary compensation to victims of war crimes, as specified by the Potsdam Declaration. The details of this compensation have been left to bilateral treaties with individual countries, except North Korea, because Japan recognises South Korea as the sole legitimate government of the Korean peninsula. In the Asian countries involved, claims to compensation were either abandoned by their respective countries, or were paid out by Japan under the specific understanding that it was to be used for individual compensation. However, in some cases such as with South Korea, the compensation was not paid out to victims by their governments, instead being used for civic projects and other works. Due to this, large numbers of individual victims in Asia received no compensation.
Therefore, the Japanese government's position is that the proper avenues for further claims are the governments of the respective claimants. As a result, every individual compensation claim brought to Japanese court has failed. Such was the case in regard to a British POW who was unsuccessful in an attempt to sue the Japanese government for additional money for compensation. As a result, the UK Government later paid additional compensation to all British POWs. There were complaints in Japan that the international media simply stated that the former POW was demanding compensation and failed to clarify that he was seeking further compensation, in addition to that paid previously by the Japanese government.
A small number of claims have also been brought in US courts, though these have also been rejected.[113]
During the treaty negotiation with South Korea, the Japanese government proposed that it pay monetary compensation to individual Korean victims, in line with the payments to western POWs. The Korean government instead insisted that Japan pay money collectively to the Korean government, and that is what occurred. The South Korean government then used the funds for economic development. The content of the negotiations was not released by the Korean government until 2004, although it was public knowledge in Japan. Due to the release of the information by the Korean government, a number of claimants have stepped forward and are attempting to sue the government for individual compensation of victims.
There are those that insist that because the governments of China and Taiwan abandoned their claims for monetary compensation, then the moral or legal responsibility for compensation belongs with these governments. Such critics also point out that even though these governments abandoned their claims, they signed treaties that recognised the transfer of Japanese colonial assets to the respective governments. Therefore, to claim that these governments received no compensation from Japan is incorrect, and they could have compensated individual victims from the proceeds of such transfers. However, others dispute that Japanese colonial assets in large proportion were built or stolen with extortion or force in occupied countries, as was clearly the case with artworks collected (or stolen) by Nazis during World War II throughout Europe.
The Japanese government, while admitting no legal responsibility for the so-called "comfort women", set up the Asian Women's Fund in 1995, which gives money to people who claim to have been forced into prostitution during the war. Though the organization was established by the government, legally, it has been created such that it is an independent charity. The activities of the fund have been controversial in Japan, as well as with international organizations supporting the women concerned.[citation needed] Some argue that such a fund is part of an ongoing refusal by the Japanese government to face up to its responsibilities, while others say that the Japanese government has long since finalised its responsibility to individual victims and is merely correcting the failures of the victims' own governments. California Congressman Mike Honda, speaking before U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of the women, said that "without a sincere and unequivocal apology from the government of Japan, the majority of surviving Comfort Women refused to accept these funds. In fact, as you will hear today, many Comfort Women returned the Prime Minister's letter of apology accompanying the monetary compensation, saying they felt the apology was artificial and disingenuous."[114]
The term "intermediate compensation" (or intermediary compensation) was applied to the removal and reallocation of Japanese industrial (particularly military-industrial) assets to Allied countries. It was conducted under the supervision of Allied occupation forces. This reallocation was referred to as "intermediate" because it did not amount to a final settlement by means of bilateral treaties, which settled all existing issues of compensation. By 1950, the assets reallocated amounted to 43,918 items of machinery, valued at ¥165,158,839 (in 1950 prices). The proportions in which the assets were distributed were: China, 54.1%; the Netherlands, 11.5%; the Philippines 19%, and; the United Kingdom, 15.4%.
| Japanese overseas assets in 1945 |
| Country/region |
Value (1945, ¥15=US$1) |
2012 US dollars[115] |
| Korea |
70,256,000,000 |
$60.5 billion |
| Taiwan |
42,542,000,000 |
$36.6 billion |
| North East China |
146,532,000,000 |
$126 billion |
| North China |
55,437,000,000 |
$47.7 billion |
| Central South China |
36,718,000,000 |
$31.6 billion |
| Others |
28,014,000,000 |
$24.1 billion |
| Total |
¥379,499,000,000 |
$327 billion |
Japanese overseas assets refers to all assets owned by the Japanese government, firms, organization and private citizens, in colonised or occupied countries. In accordance with Clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty, Allied forces confiscated all Japanese overseas assets, except those in China, which were dealt with under Clause 21. It is considered that Korea was also entitled to the rights provided by Clause 21.
Clause 16 of the San Francisco Treaty stated that Japan would transfer its assets and those of its citizens in countries which were at war with any of the Allied Powers or which were neutral, or equivalents, to the Red Cross, which would sell them and distribute the funds to former prisoners of war and their families. Accordingly, the Japanese government and private citizens paid out £4,500,000 to the Red Cross.
According to historian Linda Goetz Holmes, many funds used by the government of Japan were not Japanese funds but relief funds contributed by the governments of USA, UK and Netherlands and sequestred in the Yokohama Specie Bank during the final year of the war.[116]
| Japanese compensation to countries occupied during 1941-45 |
| Country |
Amount in Yen |
Amount in US$ |
2012 US dollars[115] |
Date of treaty |
| Burma |
72,000,000,000 |
200,000,000 |
$1.74 billion |
November 5, 1955 |
| Philippines |
198,000,000,000 |
550,000,000 |
$4.7 billion |
May 9, 1956 |
| Indonesia |
80,388,000,000 |
223,080,000 |
$1.8 billion |
January 20, 1958 |
| Vietnam |
14,400,000,000 |
38,000,000 |
$303 million |
May 13, 1959 |
| Total |
¥364,348,800,000 |
US$1,012,080,000 |
|
|
Clause 14 of the treaty stated that Japan would enter into negotiations with Allied powers whose territories were occupied by Japan and suffered damage by Japanese forces, with a view to Japan compensating those countries for the damage.
Accordingly, the Philippines and South Vietnam received compensation in 1956 and 1959 respectively. Burma and Indonesia were not original signatories, but they later signed bilateral treaties in accordance with clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty.
The last payment was made to the Philippines on July 22, 1976.
Until the 1970s, Japanese war crimes were considered a fringe topic in the media. In the Japanese media, the opinions of the political centre and left tend to dominate the editorials of newspapers, while the right tend to dominate magazines. Debates regarding war crimes were confined largely to the editorials of tabloid magazines where calls for the overthrow of "Imperialist America" and revived veneration of the Emperor coexisted with pornography. In 1972, to commemorate the normalisation of relationship with China, Asahi Shimbun, a major liberal newspaper, ran a series on Japanese war crimes in China including the Nanking Massacre. This opened the floodgates to debates which have continued ever since. The 1990s are generally considered to be the period in which such issues become truly mainstream, and incidents such as the Nanking Massacre, Yasukuni Shrine, comfort women, the accuracy of school history textbooks, and the validity of the Tokyo Trials were debated, even on television.
As the consensus of Japanese jurists is that Japanese forces did not technically commit violations of international law, many right wing elements in Japan have taken this to mean that war crimes trials were examples of victor's justice. They see those convicted of war crimes as "Martyrs of Shōwa" (昭和殉難者, Shōwa Junnansha?), Shōwa being the name given to the rule of Hirohito. This interpretation is vigorously contested by Japanese peace groups and the political left. In the past, these groups have tended to argue that the trials hold some validity, either under the Geneva Convention (even though Japan hadn't signed it), or under an undefined concept of international law or consensus. Alternatively, they have argued that, although the trials may not have been technically valid, they were still just, somewhat in line with popular opinion in the West and in the rest of Asia.
By the early 21st century, the revived interest in Japan's imperial past had brought new interpretations from a group which has been labelled both "new right" and "new left". This group points out that many acts committed by Japanese forces, including the Nanjing Incident (they generally do not use the word "massacre"), were violations of the Japanese military code. It is suggested that had war crimes tribunals been conducted by the post-war Japanese government, in strict accordance with Japanese military law, many of those who were accused would still have been convicted and executed. Therefore, the moral and legal failures in question were the fault of the Japanese military and the government, for not executing their constitutionally-defined duty.
The new right/new left also takes the view that the Allies committed no war crimes against Japan, because Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and as a victors, the Allies had every right to demand some form of retribution, to which Japan consented in various treaties.
However, under the same logic, the new right/new left considers the killing of Chinese who were suspected of guerilla activity to be perfectly legal and valid, including some of those killed at Nanjing, for example. They also take the view that many Chinese civilian casualties resulted from the scorched earth tactics of the Chinese nationalists. Though such tactics are arguably legal, the new right/new left takes the position that some of the civilian deaths caused by these scorched earth tactics are wrongly attributed to the Japanese military.
Similarly, they take the position that those who have attempted to sue the Japanese government for compensation have no legal or moral case.
The new right/new left also takes a less sympathetic view of Korean claims of victimhood, because prior to annexation by Japan, Korea was a tributary of the Qing Dynasty and, according to them, the Japanese colonisation, though undoubtedly harsh, was "better" than the previous rule in terms of human rights and economic development.
They also argue that, the Kantōgun (also known as the Kwantung Army) was at least partly culpable. Although the Kantōgun was nominally subordinate to the Japanese high command at the time, its leadership demonstrated significant self-determination, as shown by its involvement in the plot to assassinate Zhang Zuolin in 1928, and the Manchurian Incident of 1931, which led to the foundation of Manchukuo in 1932. Moreover, at that time, it was the official policy of the Japanese high command to confine the conflict to Manchuria. But in defiance of the high command, the Kantōgun invaded China proper, under the pretext of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. However, the Japanese government not only failed to court martial the officers responsible for these incidents, but it also accepted the war against China, and many of those who were involved were even promoted. (Some of the officers involved in the Nanking Massacre were also promoted.)
Whether or not Hirohito himself bears any responsibility for such failures is a sticking point between the new right and new left. Officially, the imperial constitution, adopted under Emperor Meiji, gave full powers to the Emperor. Article 4 prescribed that "The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution" and article 11 prescribed that "The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and the Navy".
For historian Akira Fujiwara, the thesis that the emperor as an organ of responsibility could not reverse cabinet decisions is a myth (shinwa) fabricated after the war.[117] Others argue that Hirohito deliberately styled his rule in the manner of the British constitutional monarchy, and he always accepted the decisions and consenses reached by the high command. According to this position, the moral and political failure rests primarily with the Japanese High Command and the Cabinet, most of whom were later convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal as class-A war criminals, apart all members of the imperial family such as prince Chichibu, prince Yasuhiko Asaka, prince Higashikuni, prince Hiroyasu Fushimi and prince Takeda.
As with investigations of Nazi war criminals, official investigations and inquiries are still ongoing. During the 1990s, the South Korean government started investigating some individuals who had allegedly become wealthy while collaborating with the Japanese military.[118][119] In South Korea, it is also alleged that, during the political climate of the Cold War, many such individuals or their associates or relatives were able to acquire influence with the wealth they had acquired collaborating with the Japanese and assisted in the covering-up, or non-investigation, of war crimes in order not to incriminate themselves. With the wealth they had amassed during the years of collaboration, they were able to further benefit their families by obtaining higher education for their relatives.[119]
Non-government bodies and individuals have also undertaken their own investigations. For example, in 2005, a South Korean freelance journalist, Jung Soo-woong, located in Japan some descendants of people involved in the 1895 assassination of Empress Myeongseong (Queen Min), the last Empress of Korea. The assassination was conducted by the Dark Ocean Society, perhaps under the auspices of the Japanese government, because of the Empress's involvement in attempts to reduce Japanese influence in Korea. Jung recorded the apologies of the individuals.
As these investigations continue more evidence is discovered each day. It has been claimed that the Japanese government intentionally destroyed the reports on Korean comfort women.[120][121] Some have cited Japanese inventory logs and employee sheets on the battlefield as evidence for this claim. For example, one of the names on the list was of a comfort woman who stated she was forced to be a prostitute by the Japanese. She was classified as a nurse along with at least a dozen other verified comfort women who were not nurses or secretaries. Currently, the South Korean government is looking into the hundreds of other names on these lists.[122]
Sensitive information regarding the Japanese occupation of Korea is often difficult to obtain. Many argue that this is because the Government of Japan has gone out of its way to cover up many incidents that would otherwise lead to severe international criticism.[120][121][123] On their part, Koreans have often expressed their abhorrence of Human experimentations carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army where people often became fodder as human test subjects in such macabre experiments as liquid nitrogen tests or biological weapons development programs (See articles: Unit 731 and Shiro Ishii).
Today cover-ups by Japan and other countries such as Britain are slowly exposed as more thorough investigations are conducted. The reason for the cover-up was because the British ministers wanted to end the war crimes trial early in order to maintain good relations with Japan to prevent the spread of communism.[124]
Tamaki Matsuoka's documentary "Torn Memories of Nanjing" includes interviews with Japanese veterans who admit to raping and killing Chinese civilians.[125]
- Massacres
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- Units
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- War crimes
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- Japanese movements
- Anti-Japanese movements
- World War II and aftermath
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- Agreements
- War crimes
- Allied war crimes
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- ^ Chapel, Joseph (2004). "Denial of the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking". http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/133p/133p04papers/JChapelNanjing046.htm.
- ^ Blumenthal, Ralph (March 7, 1999). "The World: Revisiting World War II Atrocities; Comparing the Unspeakable to the Unthinkable". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DB153FF934A35750C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
- ^ "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/in_depth/39166.stm". BBC News Online. December 13, 1997. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/in_depth/39166.stm. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
- ^ Sanger, David (October 22, 1992). "Japanese Edgy Over Emperor's Visit to China". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE1D81439F931A15753C1A964958260. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
- ^ "Japanese War Criminals World War Two". The National Archives (U.K.). http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Japanese_War_Criminals_World_War_Two.
- ^ "Japanese War Crimes". The National Archives (U.S.). http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/.
- ^ "Pacific Theater Document Archive". War Crimes Studies Center, University of California, Berkeley. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~warcrime/PT.htm.
- ^ Kafala, Tarik (October 21, 2009). "What is a war crime?". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1420133.stm.
- ^ "Bibliography: War Crimes". Sigur Center for Asian Studies, George Washington University. http://www.gwu.edu/~memory/research/bibliography/warcrimes.html.
- ^ a b c Tabuchi, Hiroko. "Japan's Abe: No Proof of WWII Sex Slaves". Washington Post (The Associated Press). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030100578.html. Retrieved March 1, 2007
- ^ "Historical Issues Q&A". Foreign Policy. Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan). January 2006. http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/q_a/faq16.htm. Retrieved October 2, 2011.
- ^ Kasahara, Tokushi. "Reconciling Narratives of the Nanjing Massacre in Japanese and Chinese Textbooks". Tsuru Bunka University. http://www.usip.org/events/2007/kasahara.pdf.
- ^ a b "Japan's Abe Denies Proof of World War II Sex Slaves". New York Times (Associated Press). March 1, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Sex-Slaves.html?ref=world. Retrieved March 1, 2007
- ^ China Weekly Review October 22, 1938
- ^ Nuremberg Tribunal (October 1, 1946). "Judgment: The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity". Yale Law School. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judlawre.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
- ^ [1]
- ^ See, for example: Wai Keng Kwok, 2001, "Justice Done? Criminal and Moral Responsibility Issues In the Chinese Massacres Trial Singapore, 1947" (Genocide Studies Program Working Paper No. 18, Yale University), p. 27. Access date: April 23, 2007.
- ^ a b Chang, Maria Hsia; Barker, Robert P. (2003). "Victor's Justice and Japan's Amnesia". In Peter, Li. Japanese War Crimes: The Search for Justice. Transaction Publishers. pp. 44. ISBN 0-7658-0890-0.
- ^ Lippman, Matthew (January 1, 2004). "The history, development, and decline of crimes against peace". George Washington International Law Review 36 (5): 25. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5433/is_200401/ai_n21362456/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
- ^ "Under Japanese law, 14 at Yasukuni not criminals: Abe". The Japan Times. October 7, 2006. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20061007a4.html. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
- ^ a b See, for example, Yutaka Kawasaki, "Was the 1910 Annexation Treaty Between Korea and Japan Concluded Legally?" Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law, v.3, no. 2 (July 1996) Access date: February 15, 2007.
- ^ See, for example: Craig Symonds, "War, Politics, and Grand Strategy in the Pacific, 1941-1945", Air University Review, November-December 1979 (Access date: February 15, 2007): "most American historians, date the war from December 1941". See also Edward Drea, "Introduction", in Edward Drea, Greg Bradsher, Robert Hanyok, James Lide, Michael Petersen & Daqing Yang, 2006, Researching Japanese War Crimes Records (National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C.; p. 15): "The atrocities at Nanjing occurred four years before the United States entered the war. At that time, the U.S. government did not have a large military or diplomatic intelligence network in China. A handful of trained military or embassy personnel reported on events, sometimes second-hand; compared with the sensational press coverage, the official U.S. documentation was scant. As a result, with the exception of the records produced during the postwar Class A war crimes trial of the commanding general of Japanese forces deemed responsible for the Rape of Nanking, there are few materials on this subject at the National Archives." See also, Ben-Ami Shillony, "Book Review, Book Title: A History of Japan, 1582-1941 Internal and External Worlds, Author: L. M. Cullen Professor of History, Trinity College, Dublin", (Institute of Historical Research, February 2004) (Access date: February 15, 2007); Grant K. Goodman, "Review 'The Kempei Tai in the Philippines: 1941-1945' by Ma. Felisa A. Syjuco" Pacific Affairs, v. 64, no. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 282-283 (Access date: February 15, 2007); United Nations Human Rights Committee, "Fifty-Ninth Session, 24 March - 11 April 1997, Decisions, Communication No. 601/1994" (April 3, 1997) (Access date: February 15, 2007);Gary K. Reynolds, 2002, U.S. Prisoners of War and Civilian American Citizens Captured and Interned by Japan in World War II: The Issue of Compensation by Japan(Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, December 17, 2002) Access date: February 15, 2007.
- ^ de Jong, Louis (2002). The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206. translation J. Kilian, C. Kist and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press. pp. 40, 42, 45, 203–204, 305–307, 311–312, 328, 373–374, 386, 391, 393, 429, 488. ISBN 90-6718-203-6.
- ^ http://www.cicr.org/ihl.nsf/WebSign?ReadForm&id=305&ps=P
- ^ a b Tanaka Hidden Horrors pp72-73
- ^ "German-POW camp reveals little-known history of Japan". Kyodo News. January 31, 2000. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_/ai_59198009. Retrieved 2008-10-20.
- ^ "Japanese POW camp was a little slice of home". Agence France-Presse. March 23, 2004. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/03/23/2003107480. Retrieved 2008-10-20.
- ^ Lamong-Brown, Raymond. "Kempeitai: Japan's Dreaded Military Police". Sutton Publishing, 1998.
- ^ a b John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945 p 301 Random House New York 1970
- ^ de Jong, Louis (2002) [2002]. The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206. translation J. Kilian, C. Kist and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press. pp. 289 311 417. ISBN 90-6718-203-6.
- ^ Johnson, Looting of Asia
- ^ Tanaka Hidden Horrors pp2-3
- ^ Akira Fujiwara, Nitchû Sensô ni Okeru Horyo Gyakusatsu, Kikan Sensô Sekinin Kenkyû 9, 1995, p.22
- ^ Tanaka, ibid., Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 2001, p.360
- ^ Blundell, Nigel (November 3, 2007). "Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood". Mail Online (Associated Newspapers Ltd.). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491548/Alive-safe-brutal-Japanese-soldiers-butchered-20-000-Allied-seamen-cold-blood.html.
- ^ Rummell, Statistics
- ^ China's Bloody Century
- ^ Chang, p. 102
- ^ Schmidt 1982, p. 36.
- ^ Ramsey 1990, pp. 329–330.
- ^ Transcript of the interview with Lee Yuan Kew
- ^ Japanese Treatment of Chinese Prisoners, 1931–1945, Hayashi Hirofumi
- ^ a b L, Klemen (1999-2000). "The Carnage at Laha, February 1942". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942. http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/laha_massacre.html.
- ^ a b L, Klemen (1999-2000). "The Bangka Island Massacre, February 1942". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942. http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/bangka_massacre.html.
- ^ "Unmasking Horror" Nicholas D. Kristof (March 17, 1995) New York Times. A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity
- ^ Byrd, Gregory Dean, General Ishii Shiro: His Legacy is that of a Genius and Madman, p. ? (PDF document)
- ^ GlobalSecurity.org, 2005 "Biological Weapons Program". Downloaded November 26, 2006
- ^ Daniel Barenblatt, A Plague upon Humanity, 2004, p.xii, 173.
- ^ Christopher Hudson (2 March 2007). "Doctors of Depravity". Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=439776&in_page_id=1770.
- ^ "Japan digs site linked to WWII human experiments". Associated Press. February 21, 2011. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h3lTfl-FdP2-EL6-idmKw7lMj0DA?docId=7e79d2c878904307b24a15bfb3b8d8c5.
- ^ David McNeill (February 22, 2011). "Japan confronts truth about its germ warfare tests on prisoners of war". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-confronts-truth-about-its-germ-warfare-tests-on-prisoners-of-war-2221715.html.
- ^ "pacificwrecks.com". http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/visitors/moskow/face.html.
- ^ The Denver Post, June 1, 1995, cited by Gary K. Reynolds, 2002, "U.S. Prisoners of War and Civilian American Citizens Captured and Interned by Japan in World War II: The Issue of Compensation by Japan" (Library of Congress)
- ^ Landas, Marc The Fallen A True Story of American POWs and Japanese Wartime Atrocities Hoboken John Wiley 2004 ISBN 0-471-42119-7
- ^ http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/Page05.htm
- ^ Landas p.255
- ^ Unit 731 Testimony [Paperback] Hal Gold, April 2004 ISBN 0-8048-3565-9
- ^ BBC "Japanese doctor admits POW abuse" Downloaded November 26, 2006, 12:52 GMT
- ^ Kyodo News Agency, "Ex-navy officer admits to vivisection of war prisoners in Philippines," reported in Yahoo! Asia News: [2]
- ^ Vivisectionist recalls his day of reckoning". Japan Times. 2007-10-24. p. 3.
- ^ Yuki Tanaka, Poison Gas, the Story Japan Would Like to Forget, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1988, p. 16-17
- ^ Yoshimi and Matsuno, Dokugasusen kankei shiryô II, Kaisetsu 1997
- ^ "Washington Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare". http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Washington_Treaty_in_Relation_to_the_Use_of_Submarines_and_Noxious_Gases_in_Warfare.
- ^ Yuki Tanaka, Poison Gas, the Story Japan Would Like to Forget, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1988, p.17
- ^ Japan tested chemical weapons on Aussie POW: new evidence, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/nn20040727a9.html
- ^ de Jong, Louis (2002) [2002]. The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206. translation J. Kilian, C. Kist and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press. pp. 167 170–173 181–184 196 204–225 309–314 323–325 337–338 341 343 345–346 380 407. ISBN 90-6718-203-6.
- ^ Haruko Taya Cook & Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War 1993 ISBN 1-56584-039-9, p. 153
- ^ Tanaka Hidden Horrors p127
- ^ Lord Russell of Liverpool (Edward Russell), The Knights of Bushido, a short history of Japanese War Crimes, Greenhill books, 2002, p.236.
- ^ Lord Russell of Liverpool (Edward Russell), The Knights of Bushido, a short history of Japanese War Crimes, Greenhill books, 2002, p.121.
- ^ ''Case No. 21 Trial Of General Tomoyuki Yamashita[,] United States Military Commission, Manila, (8 October-7 December, 1945), and the Supreme Court Of The United States (Judgments Delivered On 4 February, 1946). Part VI (Retrieved on December 18, 2006); Jeanie M. Welch, "Without a Hangman, Without a Rope: Navy War Crimes Trials After World War II", International Journal of Naval History, v.1, No. 1, April 2002, p.5-6
- ^ Zhifen Ju, Japan's atrocities of conscripting and abusing north China draftees after the outbreak of the pacific war, 2002
- ^ links for research, Allied POWs under the Japanese
- ^ Library of Congress, 1992, "Indonesia: World War II and the Struggle For Independence, 1942-50; The Japanese Occupation, 1942-45" Access date: February 9, 2007.
- ^ Fujiwara, Nitchû sensô ni okeru horyo gyakusatsu, 1995
- ^ Yoshiaki Yoshimi, 2001-02, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II. Columbia University Press
- ^ Washington Post, "Japan's Abe: no proof of WWII sex slaves"
- ^ New York Times, "No comfort", March 6, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06tues3.html, accessed March 8, 2007
- ^ Washington Post, Ibid.
- ^ Evidence documenting sex-slave coercion revealed
- ^ Files: Females forced into sexual servitude in wartime Indonesia http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070512a6.html
- ^ East Timor former sex slaves speak out http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070428f1.html
- ^ Todd Cardy, 2007, "Japanese PM's denial upsets 'comfort woman'" (News.com.au; March 5, 2007). Access date: March 7, 2007)
- ^ China Daily. Memoir of comfort woman tells of 'hell for women'
- ^ http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/29/japan.comfort.women/index.htm & http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/10/15/congress_backs_off_of_wartime_japan_rebuke/
- ^ Comfort Women Were 'Raped': U.S. Ambassador to Japan
- ^ Abe ignores evidence, say Australia's 'comfort women'
- ^ Yoshimi, ibid., http://hnn.us/articles/printfriendly/9954.html, http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp77.html and http://hnn.us/articles/13533.html http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10155
- ^ U.S. Panel OKs sex slave resolution, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070628a1.html
- ^ U.S. House passes sex slave resolution | The Japan Times Online
- ^ Kenneth B. Lee, 1997, Korea and East Asia: The Story of a Phoenix, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group
- ^ Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, 2003, Gold warriors: America's secret recovery of Yamashita's gold, London: Verso Books (ISBN 1-85984-542-8)
- ^ Chalmers Johnson "The Looting of Asia" (London Review of Books, v. 25 no. 22, November 20, 2003)
- ^ Takashi Yoshida, 2006, The Making of the "Rape of Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United States, New York: Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-518096-8).
- ^ Dower, John (2000). Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, p. 447
- ^ Kumao Toyoda, Senso saiban yoroku, 1986, p.170–172, H. Bix, Hirohito and the making of modern Japan, 2000, p.583, 584
- ^ Dower,Embracing defeat, 1999, p.326
- ^ Dower, Hirohito, p.562.
- ^ Bix, Hirohito, p.585, 583
- ^ Breen, Michael. "Truth Commission Should Be Truthful". The Korea Times. http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200611/kt2006111619251454330.htm.
- ^ "Harry S. Truman - Executive Order 10393 - Establishment of the Clemency and Parole Board for War Criminals". http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=78495. Retrieved 2009-04-13.
- ^ Maguire, Peter H. (2000). Law and War. Columbia University Press. p. 255. ISBN 978-0-231-12051-7. http://books.google.com/?id=87H1R-OqlZ4C&pg=PA255&lpg=PA255&dq=parole+war+criminals.
- ^ Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (quoted on the Taiwan Documents Project), Joint Communiqué of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China, [3]
- ^ "PBS. Online NewsHour: I'm Sorry - December 1, 1998". http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/july-dec98/china_12-1.html.
- ^ a b "Tamogami ups Nationalist rhetoric". http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081112a1.html.
- ^ http://www.apa.co.jp/book_report/images/2008jyusyou_saiyuusyu_english.pdf Text of original essay
- ^ Freeman, Laurie A., "Japan's Press Clubs as Information Cartels," Japan Policy Research Institute, (April, 1996), [4]. Discusses impending visit in 1990 to Japan by Korean president Roh Tae Woo in which Japanese cabinet secretary Ozawa Ichiro reportedly said, "it is because we have reflected on the past that we cooperate with Korea economically. Is it really necessary to grovel on our hands and knees and prostrate ourselves any more than we already have?". This alleged remark is called the dogeza hatsugen (prostration comment).
- ^ Facing History and Ourselves, Willy Brandt's Silent Apology, [5].
- ^ Borneman, Can Public Apologies Contribute to Peace?
- ^ McCormack, Gavan, "Difficult Neighbors: Japan, North Korea and the Quest for a New East Asian Order," Modern Asia Series, Harvard University Asia Center, (May 3, 2004), Access date: December 8, 2007.
- ^ Ito, Masami, "Okada apologizes for U.S. POWs' treatment", Japan Times, 14 September 2010, p. 2.
- ^ Martin, Alex, "Aussies recall POW ordeals, forgive", Japan Times, 17 December 2011, p. 3.
- ^ Park, Byoungwook. "Comfort Women During WWII: Are U.S. Courts A Final Resort For Justice?". www.auilr.org. http://www.auilr.org/pdf/17/17-2-4.pdf.
- ^ Mike Honda (February 15, 2007). "Honda Testifies in Support of Comfort Women". U.S. House of Representative. http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ca15_honda/comfortwomentestimony.html.
- ^ a b Staff. Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–2012. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
- ^ Linda Goetz Holmes, Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POW's
- ^ Fujiwara, Shôwa tennô no jû-go nen sensô, Aoki Shoten, 1991, p.122
- ^ http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=23332&categoryCode=117
- ^ a b http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=2202&categoryCode=117
- ^ a b BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Korean WWII sex slaves fight on
- ^ a b The Seoul Times. Ex-sex slave narrates: "Japan Boiled Comfort Woman to Make Soup". Japanese Army Ran "Comfort Woman System"
- ^ Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea. Military Record of 'Comfort Woman' Unearthed
- ^ http://goldsea.com/Asiagate/609/17wartime.html
- ^ http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20081017a3.html
- ^ Lee, Min (March 31, 2010). "New film has Japan vets confessing to Nanjing rape". Associated Press. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h3A2OAmegLf8dJCUaVEprRH5PL_AD9EPJL2G0.
- Borneman, John. "Can Public Apologies Contribute to Peace? An Argument for Retribution" (PDF). Cornell University. http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/v17n1/Borneman.pdf. Retrieved 2006-07-29.
- Bix, Herbert. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
- Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking, Perseus books LLC, 1997. ISBN 0-465-06835-9
- Cook, Haruko Taya; Theodore F. Cook (1993). Japan at War: An Oral History. New Press. ISBN 1-56584-039-9. - Compilation of interviews with Japanese survivors of World War II, including several who describe war crimes that they were involved with.
- Chalmers, Johnson (2003-11-20). "The Looting of Asia". London Review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/john04_.html.
- de Jong, Louis (2002). The collapse of a colonial society. The Dutch in Indonesia during the Second World War. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 206. translation J. Kilian, C. Kist and J. Rudge, introduction J. Kemperman. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press. ISBN 90-6718-203-6.
- L, Klemen (1999-2000). "Massacres of POWs, Dutch East Indies, 1941-1942". Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942. http://www.dutcheastindies.webs.com/massacres.html.
- Landas, Wiley (2004). The Fallen A True Story of American POWs and Japanese Wartime Atrocities. Hoboken John Wiley. ISBN 0-471-42119-7.
- Ramsey, Edwin, and Stephen Rivele. (1990). Lieutenant Ramsey's War. Knightsbridge Publishing Co., New York. ASIN: B000IC3PDE
- Schmidt, Larry. (1982). American Involvement in the Filipino Resistance on Mindanao During the Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945. (PDF). M.S. Thesis. U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. 274 pp.
- Tanaka, Yuki (1996). Hidden Horrors. Westview press.
- Tanaka, Yuki (1996). Poison Gas, the Story Japan Would Like to Forget.
- Lord, of Liverpool Russell (2006). The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes. Greenhill Books. ISBN 1-85367-651-9.
- Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1-883319-85-4 ISBN 0-7567-5698-7 ISBN 0-8264-1258-0 ISBN 0-8264-1415-X
- Bass, Gary Jonathan. Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Trials. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
- Bayly, C.A. & Harper T. Forgotten Armies. The Fall of British Asia 1941-5 (London: Allen Lane) 2004
- Bergamini, David. Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, William Morrow, New York, 1971.
- Brackman, Arnold C.: The Other Nuremberg: the Untold Story of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987. ISBN 0-688-04783-1
- Dower, John W. (1987). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon. ISBN 0-394-75172-8.
- Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-253-33472-1
- Felton, Mark (2007). Slaughter at Sea: The Story of Japan's Naval War Crimes. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-263-8.
- Frank, Richard B. (1999). Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Penguin Books.
- Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 4-900737-39-9
- Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. ISBN 0-375-50231-9 ISBN 0-385-33496-6
- Harries, Meirion; Susie Harries (1994). Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-679-75303-6.
- Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. ISBN 0-8129-6653-8
- Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0-415-09105-5 ISBN 0-415-93214-9
- Holmes, Linda Goetz (2001). Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs. Mechanicsburg, PA, USA: Stackpole Books.
- Holmes, Linda Goetz (2010). Guests of the Emperor: The Secret History of Japan's Mukden POW Camp. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-377-2.
- Horowitz, Solis. "The Tokyo Trial" International Conciliation 465 (November 1950), 473-584.
- Kratoksa, Paul (2005). Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories. M.E. Sharpe and Singapore University Press. ISBN 0-7656-1263-1.
- Lael, Richard L. (1982). The Yamashita Precedent: War Crimes and Command Responsibility. Wilmington, Del, USA: Scholarly Resources.
- Latimer, Jon, Burma: The Forgotten War, London: John Murray, 2004. ISBN 0-7195-6576-6
- MacArthur, Brian (2005). Surviving the Sword : Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East, 1942-45. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6413-9.
- Minear, Richard H. (1971). Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
- Maga, Timothy P. (2001). Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trials. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2177-9.
- Neier, Aryeh. War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror and the Struggle for Justice," Times Books, Random House, New York, 1998.
- Piccigallo, Philip R. (1979). The Japanese on Trial: Allied War Crimes Operations in the East, 1945-1951. Austin, Texas, USA: University of Texas Press.
- Rees, Laurence. Horror in the East, published 2001 by the British Broadcasting Company
- Seagrave, Sterling & Peggy. Gold warriors: America's secret recovery of Yamashita's gold, Verso Books, 2003. ISBN 1-85984-542-8
- Sherman, Christine (2001). War Crimes: International Military Tribunal. Turner Publishing Company. ISBN 1-56311-728-2. -Detailed account of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East proceedings in Tokyo
- Tsurumi, Kazuko (1970). Social change and the individual;: Japan before and after defeat in World War II. Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09347-4.
- Williams, Peter. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. ISBN 0-02-935301-7
- Yamamoto, Masahiro (2000). Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-96904-5. - A rebuttal to Iris Chang's book on the Nanking massacre.
- Minoru Matsui (2001), Japanese Devils, documentary with interview of veteran soldiers from the Imperial Japanese Army (Japanese Devils shed light on a dark past) CNN
- The History Channel (2000). Japanese War Crimes: Murder Under The Sun (Video documentary (DVD & VHS)). A & E Home Video.
- Battling Bastards of Bataan
- "Biochemical Warfare - Unit 731". Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War. No date.
- "Cannibalism". Dan Ford, "Japan at War, 1931-1945" September 2007.
- "Confessions of Japanese war criminals". No date.
- "History of Japan's biological weapons program" Federation of American Scientists, 2000-04-16
- Ji Man-Won's website (in Korean) Various dates.
- Justin McCurry, "Japan's sins of the past" in The Guardian, 2004-10-28
- "Nanking 1937", Princeton University, 1997-11-09
- Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). No date.
- "No Riot Apology" Sky News (UK), 2005-04-17
- "The Other Holocaust" No date.
- "Rape of Queen MIN" 2002
- R.J. Rummel, "Statistics Of Japanese Democide: Estimates, Calculations, And Sources" University of Hawaii, 2002
- Shane Green. "The Asian Auschwitz of Unit 731" in The Age, 2002-08-29
- "Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama" 1995-08-15
- "Synopses of Yokohama Trials of War Crimes against Japanese Defendants (UC Berkeley WCSC)"
- Steven Butler, "A half century of denial: the hidden truth about Japan's unit 731" in US News & World Report 1995-07-31
- Fascist Japan labor camp of Nishimatsu安野発電所強制連行
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