Was it hubris that allowed the victors to put the Japanese leaders on trial (except for Emperor Hirohito of course) in 1946-8 for waging aggressive war, when this was by no means an established fact of international law, thus allowing the full extent of military war crimes to be sidelined; or was it just stupidity? The jury is out on this, but I’d wager that it was a bit of both. General Douglas MacArthur, who laid down the terms of reference for the trail at the outset, determined that its role was to condemn those who had waged the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But this was a profoundly foolish approach, as it limited the trials to something that was, in legal terms anyway, unresolved as a fact in international law. Militarily, the attack on Pearl Harbor was superbly planned and executed, even though it was profoundly stupid strategically, but it was only one of many attacks on that day ‘of infamy’, ranging from the unprovoked attack on Malaya, Shanghai and Hong Kong, not to mention years of fighting in China since 1931 which saw untold horrors at the hands of a Japanese army wallowing in its bushido-driven bloodlust. This mixture of hubris and stupidity resulted in a half-cocked war crimes trial, in which the defence were able to prevaricate and obfuscate around the legality of aggression, rather than focusing - as did Nuremburg - on the reality of state oppression against the peoples it forcibly subjugated. Like his wish to bomb China into extinction during the Korean War, the blame for the failure of the Tokyo War Crimes trials to properly hold the country and its leaders for wanton abuses needs to be placed at his door.
This quite personal view has been arrived at by reading Gary Bass’s excellent 2023 account of the trials, which I can heartily recommend for its comprehensiveness, the portraits of those involved, from prosecution to defence to accused, to the wider context of the war in Asia and the nature of its prosecution. This is a first class account and is strongly recommended.
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