MAY 3, 1946 to NOVEMBER 12, 1948 All Japanese Class A war criminals were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in Tokyo. The prosecution team was made up of justices from eleven Allied nations: Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The Tokyo trial lasted two and a half years, from May 1946 to November 1948. Other war criminals were tried in the respective victim countries. War crime trials were held at ten different locations in China. Of the eighty (80) Class A war criminal suspects detained in the Sugamo prison after 1945, twenty-eight (28) men were brought to trial before the IMTFE. The accused included nine civilians and nineteen professional military men: Four former premiers: Hiranuma, Hirota, Koiso, Tojo; Three former foreign ministers: Matsuoka, Shigemitsu, Togo Four former war ministers: Araki, Hata, Itagaki, Minami Two former navy ministers: Nagano, Shimada Six former generals: Doihara, Kimura, Matsui, Muto, Sato, Umezu Two former ambassadors: Oshima, Shiratori Three former economic and financial leaders: Hoshino, Kaya, Suzuki One imperial adviser: Kido One radical theorist: Okawa One admiral: Oka One colonel: Hashimoto Two (Yosuke Matsuoka and Osami Nagano) of the twenty-eight defendants died of natural causes during the trial. One defendant (Shumei Okawa) had a mental breakdown on the first day of trial, was sent to a psychiatric ward and was released in 1948 a free man. The remaining twenty-five (25) were all found guilty, many of multiple counts. Seven (7) were sentenced to death by hanging, sixteen (16) to life imprisonment, and two (2) to lesser terms. All seven sentenced to death were found to be guilty of inciting or otherwise implicated in mass-scale atrocities, among other counts. Three of the sixteen sentenced to life imprisonment died between 1949 and 1950 in prison. The remaining thirteen (13) were paroled between 1954 and 1956, less than eight years in prison for their crimes against millions of people. Two former ambassadors were sentenced to seven and twenty years in prison. One died two years later in prison. The other one, Shigemitsu, was paroled in 1950, and was appointed foreign minister in 1954. http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/NanjingMassacre/NMTT.html http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/arc/libraries/eastasian/japan/twct.htm Tojo in trial
Kai, thanks for the post. Have you got any information regarding the hangings of some other generals accused of war crimes (i.e. Yamashita, Homa...)
Nothing much to say about the Tokyo trials except that they should be renamed: "Macs Follies" named of course after General Douglas MacArthur.
I haven´t checked into the hangings much but here´s a few net sites I found: ( I´ll have to dig deeper myself later on as well ) http://www.pbs.org/wnet/justice/world_issues_yam.html http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/yamashita3.htm http://lawofwar.org/yamashita.htm
Hello, Each defendant would have had his own attorney or team of attorneys. These were not Japanese lawyers (usually) AFAIK. You might be surprised how vigorous American lawyers were in defense of Japanese accused of warcrimes. But, by late 1947 & certainly by 1948 MacArthur was actively pushing to get the trials finished, regardless of whether or not "Justice" was served...
