东京审判:被忘却的纽伦堡 (Etienne Jaudel/杨亚平/程兆奇)

This book on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East is translated from French, originally titled Le procès de Tokyo: Un Nuremberg oublié by Etienne Jaudel. It is a small volume and reads more like a dissertation than a book. Short as it is, this book has its value; for those who have not read much about the Tribunal, this book gives a very good overview of the various aspects of the tribunal, such as the prosecutors, the accused, the judicial proceedings and the criticism of the various aspects of the Tribunal since. More than that, the author actually has a thesis – the Tribunal, as flawed as it was, was important in giving closure to the victims and the families who suffered terribly in the hands of the Japanese in the Second World War.

Many political scientists and legal experts who study the Tribunal questioned the legality of the proceedings. This became especially so after Richard H. Minear published Victors' Justice: Tokyo War Crimes Trial which got many to start looking at the convicted as victims of miscarried justice. Jaudel gave a good account of the difficulties and disagreements in the literature. These include the sparing of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito (pg. 5, 32); the concept of Crime Against Peace having no precedence (pg. 67); the procedural issues (pg. 12, 52) and the suitability of the general prosecutor, Joseph Keenan (pg. 13).

His perspective is different however. To him, a crime so great deserves punishment for those accountable and while the proceedings were not without flaws, the defendants were given due representation including the provision of fifteen defence lawyers (pg. 35). And although the type of evidence admitted was not like those in a usual criminal trial, the circumstances and the deliberate destruction of documents by the Japanese at the end of the war made it necessary for personal diaries and evidence not produced under oath (pg. 52) to be admitted. Furthermore, the author asked, could one expect that the accused be only convicted after there was no longer any doubt in any part of the proceedings? He reminded readers that the accused had all the legal rights accorded by the prosecution and more importantly, the prosecution had the moral grounds to prosecute because they represent countries that did not commit the same crimes (pg. 148).

Admittedly this Tribunal was different from the Nuremburg Trials because the political structure in Japan and Germany were different. In the case of Germany, it was much easier to identify the culprits because they reigned supreme during the war. Japan on the other hand, had ten prime ministers in that time. With power seemingly diffused among the Emperor, the cabinet and the military, it is hard to establish who should take overall responsibilities for the war and the atrocities resulting from it. From the start, the Tribunal was besieged with the problem of whether it was individual crimes or collective crimes the accused were prosecuted for (pg. 39) and with such a confusing administrative structure, the author felt that it was just to convict the accused so long as the prosecution could prove that the accused have direct or indirect involvement in the policy-making process involving the war.

Two judges in the panel of 12 needs special mention here. The first is Judge Radhabinod Pal who was dissenting and would later write a book to explain his position (Pal, 1953). He was accused by a Japanese author, Saburo Ienaga, of being partial to the accused because Pal was anti-communist and China was slowly drifting towards Communism during the trial (Saburo Ienaga, pg. 201). This is hard to prove especially when Ienaga himself was accused of being a communist. However, the credibility of the Judge took a bit of a hit when it was revealed here that he missed 109 days out of 423 during the trials, making him the biggest absentee (pg. 47).

The second judge is Judge Bert Röling who was also dissenting. He was among the people who believed that it was right not to put Emperor Hirohito on trial because he was just a figure-head and did not really have a say (pg. 143). This is ironic because it was precisely because of this that many felt that the Tribunal was a farce (pg. 145). This case is instructive for it highlights the fact that while people many agree that the Tribunal was less than impeccable, they were of the opinion for different reasons. This lack of agreement among the critics of the Tribunal may actually strengthen its legitimacy.

This book is marred by lapses, some of which are minor like the exact dates when Yamashita left for the Philippines which had no material impact on this book (pg. 33, 78, 80, 137, 151) but others  are major  (pg. 37, 49, 60, 62) such as the date that Japan withdrew its membership of the League of Nations (pg. 78). Fortunately, the translator, 程兆奇 did a good job checking the facts and correcting them in the footnotes. What I personally like about the author was his willingness to consider non-scholastic work which he qualified (pg. 20). I think pure scholarly work done in the scholastic tradition is important because it is on this that future knowledge is built. Unfortunately this always leaves the output dry and the physical scenes incomplete. I found myself constantly forming images informed by pictures from books or even scenes from the television programmes especially when reading works on China in that era. I hope more scholars would consider non-scholastic works but of course with qualifications and proper citations.

Finally, two points made by the author is worth repeating here. First of all, he, in response to Minear’s term ‘Victors’ Justice’, proposed that the Tribunal could also be called ‘Losers’ Justice’ because the judges in the Tribunal were all from countries that have suffered under the Japanese, they therefore represent their civilians who have suffered when they were losers (pg. 65). Secondly, a position not widely considered, is the fact that the outcome of the Tribunal ironically relieved the Japanese of their war guilt, for now they can say that it was the responsibility of those convicted (pg. 150) that perpetuated the atrocities and cruelty throughout Asia and brought Japan to the brink of destruction.

Reference
Ienaga, S. (1979). The Pacific War, 1931-1945 : A Critical Perspective on Japan's Role in World War II. NY:The Pantheon Asia Library.

Pal, R. (1953). International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Dissentient Judgement. Kolkata:Sanyal & Co.

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太平洋戰爭 (家永三郎/何欣泰 ) The Pacific War 1931-1945 (Saburo Ienaga)

To many, the Pacific War is geographically limited to the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean, extending furthest south to the Coral Sea and west to the Philippines. It is also chronologically limited to the period between 8th December 1941 and 2nd September 1945. To the Japanese and Chinese however, the Pacific War extends to China and Southeast Asia and started on 18th September 1931, when the Kwantung Army invaded Manchuria. This distinction is important: to many Americans, Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack, requiring a full retaliatory response. To the Japanese, it was the outcome of the sanctions that the USA placed upon them, and having no  way out, they had to attack the USA in the hope they would sue for peace. These sanctions were put in place in step with the escalation of Japan's conquest in China, leading to the most drastic embargo of oil as Japan invaded Indochina, which could be traced back to Japan's actions in China. To the Japanese, the Pacific War is a 15-year war and their ultimate near-devastation is to be traced to 1931, which is why the characters that appear in Japanese and Chinese literature on the war is a lot more colourful and well-developed than the fleeting mention that they get in Western literature.

This book by Saburo Ienaga is a survey of the events leading to Japan's ultimate defeat and the conditions in Japan throughout that period. The author's motivation is to educate the post-war generation about Japan's recent past, and more importantly, to counter the resurgent right-wing narrative in Japan. In doing so, not only did he discuss the military and cabinet decisions, he also provided a view into the controls the military put place to ensure that the populace remained docile and abiding and would not raise any objections to the military's adventures.

In the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, militarism was pervasive and this started to make inroads into schools through systematic perversion of the school curriculum as well as the increase in imperialistic-mindedness of the teachers. There were those who tried to resists, but by 1940, there was largely no more open dissent (pg. 117) and even the "intellectual community not only caved in under pressure but accommodated with alacrity to the new order" (pg. 121). This being the case, and with the constant bombardment of news of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy scoring victories after victories over any adversaries, it became impossible for the Japanese civilian to know the truth.

The author's main concern was that there never seemed to be a time when the post-war Japanese society evaluated Japan's history in the early part of the 20th century. War memories started to fade and there are even signs that the war apologists were beginning to make a come back. Indeed, there were even people who advocated the reassessment the war because excessive emphasis on war responsibility "would produce a guilt-ridden nation," (pg. 253). And as if to prove his point, Inenaga published a draft of a Japanese history textbook for high school based on his New Japanese History. The draft was rejected by the Ministry of Education in 1952 because they did not like the way he depicted certain events, this resulted in him bringing a lawsuit to the ministry.

I cannot claim to be a scholar in Japanese literature on the War, but I observed a few interesting perspectives of Emperor Hirohito from the few works I have read. The right-wing perspective is that the Emperor might have a role in starting the war, but it was a just war and he did the right thing. Among those who disagree with the war and admitted to the atrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army are two different views. One is that the Emperor had no choice and was not really in control of events. Respected academic and author, Kazutoshi Handō is of this opinion. The other perspective, to which this author subscribed, is that the Emperor should bear the responsibilities and at the end of the war, with everyone suffering the most difficult conditions, and the myth of the Emperor shattered, people were ready to indict him had the Allies so decided. Finally, there are those who chose to side-step the role of the Emperor. This is an interesting issue for further exploration and I hope that the book I'm currently reading would help to shed some light.

As a small volume, it is impossible for the author to go into enough details of any events or any aspect of the lives of the Japanese. I started reading the Chinese translation of the book and found it hard, mainly because of the style that I'm not used to. The English translation is much easier to read but seem to lack a certain depth. However, those who are interested in getting one Japanese perspective (a left-leaning one) of the Pacific War will find this book useful.

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