On November 12, 1948, an international war crimes
tribunal in Tokyo passes death sentences on seven Japanese military and
government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, who served as premier of
Japan from 1941 to 1944. The trials lasted 30 months with all 25 Japanese
defendants being found guilty of various war crimes. In addition to the death
sentences imposed on Tojo and others principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who
organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied
prisoners of war, 16 others were sentenced to life imprisonment and various
other lesser sentences. Unlike the Nuremberg trials in Germany, where there
were four chief prosecutors representing Great Britain, France, the United
States, and the USSR, the Tokyo trial featured only one chief prosecutor, American
Joseph B. Keenan, a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general. However,
other nations, especially China, contributed to the proceedings, and Australian
judge William Flood Webb also presided. In addition to the central Tokyo trial,
various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged 5,000 other Japanese guilty of
war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed.
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com
and is the author of Murder and Mayhem 52
Crimes that Shocked Early California, 1849-1949. The book can be purchased
from Amazon through the following links:
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