Chapter 27
Judgment at Tokyo
“It was a tragically beautiful autumn day with a clear blue sky, but the fateful day had come,” wrote an Asahi Shimbun columnist on November 12, 1948, the final day of the Tokyo trial. Hours earlier, crowds of Japanese citizens had assembled outside the barbed wire enclosure surrounding the old Army Ministry.[1] “The day for reaping the results of the eighteen-year history of aggression had come…. It is a people’s sadness beyond mourning that swells in the heart.”[2]
Before getting on the bus from Sugamo Prison to the Army Ministry courtroom, all the defendants had been carefully inspected for poison capsules or other ways of committing suicide.[3]
“I am prepared to meet my Maker,” Tojo Hideki greeted his American defense lawyer. “If the verdict is against me, I shall not ask for my life, and I do not want you to ask MacArthur for my life.” Expecting to die, he had sent his wife a lock of his hair and a long fingernail clipping, and composed a traditional poem for the Buddhist priest at Sugamo Prison: “Looking up, I hear reverently the voice of Buddha calling me from the limitless clean sky.”[4]
After the lunch break, Sir William Webb, sitting in front of the banked flags of the Allied powers, at last delivered his findings of guilt or innocence for each of the accused. The spectators’ gallery was packed with the wives and daughters of Allied personnel, as well as high-ranking Allied military officers sporting colorful ribbons and medals. The klieg lights were dazzling.[5] General Matsui Iwane seemed to be under great strain, twisting his hands.[6] One American reporter spitefully wrote that Marquis Kido Koichi, slumped in his chair, wore “the expression of a dyspeptic Mickey Mouse,” while a Japanese general’s “long, Mongol face” was “an inscrutable mask.” In a faded army jacket, Tojo sat still, often with his eyes closed.[7]
The judges had streamlined the indictment, cutting out several of the prosecution’s original fifty-five counts. They held that only conspiracy to commit aggression was in itself a crime, but not conspiracy to carry out crimes against humanity or war crimes. At the urging of the British bloc of judges, the judgment agreed that conspiring to plan for or prepare for aggression was criminal, but then said that it was not necessary to convict any of the defendants for such planning alone. They rebuffed the prosecution’s argument that killing at the start of an unlawful war in December 1941—at Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong, and Davao in the Philippines, in the sinking of a British gunboat in Shanghai, and in the first big battle in Malaya—was nothing more than murder. That contention, which had originated with General Douglas MacArthur, could potentially be extended to say that there were murders not just at the beginning of the war but throughout it, condemning every soldier who killed in a war of aggression as a murderer. So the judges warily stepped back, declaring that there was “no good purpose” in murder counts which would fall away if the war itself was shown to be a lawful one.[8] The judges insisted that a count of aggression against the Philippines should be treated as aggression against the United States, a point which was both pedantic and colonialist.
Foreshadowing the outcome, Webb began with findings that went almost entirely against the defendants. After all the backroom wrangling about conspiracy charges, the judgment ruled that there had indeed been a conspiracy to dominate Asia, although not the entire world alongside Nazi Germany and Italy. Furthermore, the court found that the prosecution had proved the existence of a criminal conspiracy to wage wars of aggression: “no more grave crimes can be conceived of than a conspiracy to wage a war of aggression or the waging of a war of aggression, for the conspiracy threatens the security of the peoples of the world, and the waging disrupts it.” Next, the judgment ruled that it had been proved that wars of aggression had been waged against China, the United States, the British Commonwealth, Holland, France, Thailand, and the Soviet Union in those two border clashes.
The grim-faced accused men sat silently.[9] Webb summoned forward each of the accused in alphabetical order, from Araki Sadao to Umezu Yoshijiro, to pronounce them guilty or not. They would be called back later to hear their sentences.
If the accused had any remaining hopes, they were extinguished with the first verdicts. A score of army and navy men were swiftly convicted. While the majority judges did find several defendants not guilty on some of the counts, all twenty-five of the accused would be convicted on at least some charges. Unlike at Nuremberg, where three senior German defendants were cleared, there were no outright acquittals.
Webb declared that General Doihara Kenji, whom Mei Ruao had glared down at the opening of the trial, was deeply involved in starting and waging a war of aggression against China. “We find him to be guilty,” Webb intoned, of preparing and executing wars against China, the United States, the British Commonwealth, Holland, and the Soviet Union. As commander of the Seventh Area Army in Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Malaya, he was convicted of war crimes for not providing adequate food and medicine to Allied prisoners of war.
Field Marshal Hata Shunroku was pronounced guilty as a former army minister and a commander of Japanese forces in China. While the tribunal could not convict him for direct orders to commit war crimes in China, it did so for command responsibility: either he knew about the atrocities his troops were committing and did nothing to prevent them, or he was so indifferent that he did not find out whether his underlings were obeying orders for the humane treatment of prisoners of war and civilians. He was convicted of waging aggressive war against China, the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Holland, although not the Soviet Union.
That acquittal on Soviet charges would be repeated over and over. Major General Ivan Zaryanov and the Soviet prosecutors proved disastrously incapable of winning over non-Soviet judges. With two separate charges of aggression for the border clashes, the Soviets managed to secure just five convictions, while nineteen counts were ruled not guilty. No other country had such a lopsided ratio. The Soviet prosecution even managed to get Tojo acquitted on one count, the only time he was ruled not guilty.
Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro was the first civilian up. As president of the privy council, prime minister, and home minister, he was held to be a member of the conspiracy, actively supporting the aggressive plans of the militarists. At a meeting of senior statesmen advising the emperor soon before Pearl Harbor, the reactionary aristocrat had argued that war was inevitable, which was enough to get him convicted for waging aggressive war against the United States. He was further found guilty of waging war against China, the British Commonwealth, Holland, and the Soviet Union, although not France. For lack of evidence, he was not guilty on two counts of war crimes.
Next came another former powerful civilian, Hirota Koki. As prime minister in 1936, the judges rebuked him for adopting a dangerous policy of domination. As foreign minister during the invasion of China in 1937, he was held responsible for pressing to subjugate the country and topple the Nationalist government. While Hirota’s defense counsel had portrayed him as a diplomat seeking peace, the judges concluded that he was never willing to give up the gains Japan had made, and consistently agreed to use force if diplomacy did not realize Japan’s demands. Still, the tribunal held that he had advised against the Pacific War in 1941, and thus he had not been proved guilty of aggression against the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Holland. Nor was there proof of aggression against the Soviet Union or France.
The judges found no evidence that Hirota had ordered or permitted the abuse of Allied prisoners of war, but convicted him of war crimes for the Nanjing massacre. As foreign minister at the time, he was condemned for not insisting to the cabinet that the atrocities be stopped, relying on empty assurances from the army. “His inaction amounted to criminal negligence,” Webb said.
The judges hammered General Itagaki Seishiro, another of Mei’s prime suspects, who was found guilty of planning and waging wars of aggression against China, the United States, the British Commonwealth, Holland, and the Soviet Union. He was held to have engineered the Mukden clash in September 1931, and then led the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo. As army minister during the China war, he participated in meetings that decided to destroy the Nationalist government in China and create a puppet regime there. He had backed an unrestricted military alliance with Nazi Germany and Italy.
For a few of the war’s final months, Itagaki held a command headquartered in Singapore with responsibility for Java, Sumatra, Malaya, and Borneo. Only the prison camps in Singapore were under his direct control, but he was in charge of supplying food and medical needs for the rest. “During this period the conditions in these camps were unspeakably bad,” Webb declared, with grossly inadequate food, medicine, and hospitals. The judges rejected Itagaki’s claim that Allied attacks on Japanese shipping made it hard to supply these far-flung areas, holding him “responsible for the deaths or sufferings of thousands of people whose adequate maintenance was his duty.” The judges convicted him of ordering or permitting war crimes against Allied prisoners of war and civilian detainees.
Marquis Kido Koichi looked fretful as his verdict was read.[10] Despite the efforts of General Headquarters and the prosecution to suggest he had tricked his monarch, holding him guilty would be as close as the Tokyo trial would come to convicting the emperor of Japan.
The judges firmly rejected Kido’s presentation of himself as a staunch foe of the militarists. To make it easier to convict him but not the emperor, the judges threw the book at him for his actions before becoming lord keeper of the privy seal in June 1940. As education minister and home minister in 1937–39, Webb pronounced, he “adopted the views of the conspirators and devoted himself wholeheartedly to their policy.” Although Kido was found not guilty for the conquest of Indochina and the border clashes with the Soviet Union, he was convicted for aggression against China. He had zealously supported the China war, seeking military and political domination there, resisting efforts to make peace. Yet although he had been in the cabinet during the Nanjing massacre, the judges modestly held there was not enough evidence to convict him for failing to prevent them.
The judges treaded gingerly around Kido’s role at the Imperial Palace, but found that he had used his sway to promote the domination of China and all of Asia: “As Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Kido was in a specially advantageous position to advance the conspiracy.” Although he had some hesitations before Pearl Harbor, the court held him “largely instrumental” in installing Tojo as prime minister, while the judges studiously ignored the possibility that the emperor could have overruled his lord keeper and picked a less belligerent prime minister. Implicitly admitting that the emperor could have done more to stop the war, the judges blamed Kido for the monarch’s quiescence: “He refrained from advising the Emperor to take any stand against war either at the last or earlier when it might have been more effective.”
The best news for the Imperial Palace was that the judges held that the lord keeper could not be held responsible for war crimes against Allied prisoners and civilians after Pearl Harbor. This implied that there was nothing that Kido, and perhaps by extension the emperor, could have done to rein in the military from these crimes. Yet for empowering Tojo and not resisting the rush to war in 1941, Kido was found guilty of aggression against the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Holland—which made it conceivable that the emperor himself might have been judged guilty too.
General Matsui Iwane was the most prominent defendant on trial for atrocities at Nanjing. Yet the judges dismissively depicted him as a second-tier warlord, sufficiently out of the loop to be acquitted of being part of the conspiracy and found not guilty of aggression against the United States, the British Commonwealth, Holland, and the Soviet Union. To Mei’s chagrin, he was even acquitted of aggression against China. His tours of duty there in 1937–38 were not held in themselves as the waging of aggressive war. Nor had the prosecution given sufficient evidence that he had known of the criminal character of the war in China—although it was a little hard to see how he could really have believed Japan was merely engaged in self-defense there.
In December 1937, he had been commander in chief of the Central China Area Army as it seized Nanjing. The court concluded that over six or seven weeks, more than a hundred thousand people were killed there, and thousands of women were raped. Despite Japanese denials, the court ruled that “the contrary evidence of neutral witnesses of different nationalities and undoubted responsibility is overwhelming.” Matsui made a triumphal entry into Nanjing a few days after it fell, and admitted hearing of wrongdoing of his army from the Kempeitai and consular officials; daily reports of the atrocities had been made by foreigners in the city to Japanese diplomats, who had passed them to the Japanese government in Tokyo. “The Tribunal is satisfied that Matsui knew what was happening,” Webb said.
“He was in command of the Army responsible for these happenings,” Webb announced. “He knew of them. He had the power, as he had the duty, to control his troops and to protect the unfortunate citizens of Nanking. He must be held criminally responsible for his failure to discharge this duty.” Yet the court did not have sufficient evidence to convict Matsui of ordering or permitting the atrocities. He was only found guilty on a single count, for failing to prevent war crimes at Nanjing.
The other senior army officer accused for Nanjing was Muto Akira, then a colonel serving as vice chief of staff under Matsui. Like his superior officer, he was portrayed as peripheral to the major decisions, and cleanly acquitted for aggression against France and the Soviet Union. Only when he became chief of the military affairs bureau in 1939 was he deemed a leading part of the conspiracy, making him guilty for aggression against the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Holland. The judges convicted him of aggression against China, apparently for contributing to the war effort in his powerful post.
As for Nanjing, the judges concluded, “We have no doubt that Muto knew, as Matsui knew, that atrocities were being committed over a period of many weeks.” Yet they ruled that Muto in his subordinate position could do nothing to stop the slaughter—a baffling conclusion, predicated on the notion that a vice chief of staff was powerless. Mei was distraught. If this logic was to be taken seriously, it would gut the doctrine of command responsibility, placing guilt only at the very most senior ranks.
Acquitted for the Nanjing massacre, Muto was undone by his subsequent promotions. Commanding troops in northern Sumatra, he was held responsible for the starvation, torture, and murder of Allied prisoners of war, and for the massacre of civilians. Late in the war, as chief of staff to General Yamashita Tomoyuki in the Philippines, the judges held that Muto was in a position “very different from that which he held during the so-called ‘Rape of Nanking.’ He was now in a position to influence policy.” As such, the judges held him responsible for a campaign of massacre and torture against Filipino civilians. He was found guilty of ordering and permitting war crimes, and of failing to take adequate steps to prevent war crimes in the Philippines.
The knottiest cases were three civilian ministers who had claims to be innocent.
Kaya Okinori, as finance minister, was the first defendant who—as proved by secret army records that the judges had not seen—had actively opposed the attack on the United States in 1941. While he was acquitted on war crimes for lack of evidence, he was condemned for formulating aggressive policies and for making economic and financial preparations for war. Although Kaya had not been as resolutely against war with the United States as Togo Shigenori, the judges might have ruled differently had they had the full records of the liaison conference where he had begged for more negotiations, warning that victory was impossible and that Japan’s centuries of national existence were at risk. With no apparent sense that they were judging on an incomplete record, the majority found him guilty of waging aggressive war first against China, and then the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Holland in 1941.
Shigemitsu Mamoru, a former foreign minister with influential friends in Western countries, was one of the least blameworthy men on trial. Since he had not testified on his own behalf, his record was left unclear. Still, the judges easily acquitted him of being part of the conspiracy; they knew that he had repeatedly opposed the militarists’ policies. He had never gone beyond the proper functions as ambassador to the Soviet Union, Britain, and China. Yet as foreign minister in 1943–45, the judges concluded that he was fully aware that Japan was waging a war of aggression. Paradoxically, his own antiwar efforts were held against him. He knew full well, the judges held, that the conspirators had caused the war, having argued against their bellicose policies; yet he had nevertheless “played a principal part in waging that war.” For that he was found guilty of aggression against China, the United States, the British Commonwealth, Holland, and France, although not the Soviet Union.
As foreign minister he had received a steady stream of protests from the Allies about crimes against their prisoners of war, which the Foreign Ministry merely processed for the domineering military. Shigemitsu must have been suspicious that prisoners were being abused, the judges held. Despite his responsibility as a cabinet member, he “took no adequate steps to have the matter investigated…. He should have pressed the matter, if necessary to the point of resigning.” This argument was perplexing: was is not possible that a minister could be working against war crimes even short of resigning in protest? What allowances did the judges make for the difficulty of effective civilian protest against the army in a highly militarized wartime climate? Moreover, the majority judges’ argument would have sounded rather more convincing if they had not just acquitted Muto Akira for war crimes at Nanjing without making any such demands that he too should have resigned in protest.
While the tribunal acquitted Shigemitsu of ordering or permitting war crimes, he was found guilty of failing to prevent war crimes. But then the majority judges, in a fit of bad conscience, added a fretful note in mitigation of his sentence—the only time they did so. Webb announced, “we take into account that Shigemitsu was in no way involved in the formulation of the conspiracy; that he waged no war of aggression until he became Foreign Minister in April 1943, by which time his country was deeply involved in a war…; and in the matter of war crimes that the military completely controlled Japan while he was Foreign Minister so that it would have required great resolution for any Japanese to condemn them.”
As Togo Shigenori awaited his fate, his mind was on educating his young grandsons: “I think the basic thing is that in childhood they have an ambition to be a great man, but also that we educate them to be always honest and take a way of fairness.”[11] The verdict upon him was the most glaring injustice of the Tokyo trial. Following MacArthur’s original vision of a speedy trial for the Pearl Harbor cabinet, the judgment said that his “principal association” with war crimes was his few months serving as foreign minister in Tojo Hideki’s cabinet.
The judges did not have the records of internal debates in the liaison conferences and imperial conferences in the autumn of 1941 that showed Togo’s anguished opposition to the war. Yet they did have considerable evidence of his antiwar labors from his own detailed and persuasive testimony—an extraordinary performance which the majority judges ignored. Even Tojo Hideki had corroborated Togo’s sworn statement that the foreign minister had only joined the cabinet to try to prevent the war. “From the date of his first appointment until the outbreak of the Pacific War he participated in the planning and preparing for the war,” Webb pronounced, with no modesty about how wrong he was. “He attended Cabinet meetings and conferences and concurred in all decisions adopted.” This was simply false: only at the end had Togo, despairing, gone along with the choice for war. He was, for all intents and purposes, being condemned for being in the room.
As with Shigemitsu, Togo was condemned for failing to quit the cabinet. Webb declared, “when the negotiations failed and war became inevitable, rather than resign in protest he continued in office and supported the war. To do anything else he said would have been cowardly.” For the court, the only one of his deeds that counted was his concurrence with war at the last moment—something for which he could reasonably be faulted, but only as part of a complete record. In fact, he had testified about threatening to resign on at least two occasions in 1941, trying to get the army to show some flexibility over withdrawing troops from China and Indochina. He had nearly quit after the fiery liaison conference of November 1, according to his testimony, agreeing to stay on as foreign minister for fear that he would be replaced with someone more bellicose. Making him out as a petty hypocrite, the judges complained that he had resigned in September 1942 over a cabinet squabble. Despite such a conspicuously short stint as foreign minister, the judges were unswayed by his own explanation that he had quit over the domination of the new Greater East Asia Ministry—an expression of dismay at the violent path Japan was following during the war.
Togo did get acquitted on several charges. The judges cleared him of aggression against the Soviet Union, saying he had done nothing worse than sign an agreement setting a borderline to help resolve the 1939 battle. Like Shigemitsu, Togo was accused of war crimes for his role as foreign minister in processing Allied protests. Here the judges went easier on him than Shigemitsu. They accepted that in the months after Pearl Harbor he had tried to uphold the observance of the laws of war. He had passed on the Allied complaints and in several cases there had been some action to improve conditions. By the time he resigned in 1942, the tribunal ruled, the war crimes committed by Japanese troops were not so notorious that he must have known about them. When he returned as foreign minister in the spring of 1945, Allied protests had accumulated, which he passed on to the proper military authorities. The judges concluded that there was not sufficient proof of Togo’s neglect of his duty to prevent war crimes.
The balance was harsh. While Togo was acquitted of conventional war crimes, he was found guilty of being part of the conspiracy, and of aggression against China, the United States, the British Commonwealth, and Holland. Unlike Shigemitsu, the judges said nothing in mitigation. Standing almost alone before Pearl Harbor, Togo had in fact heatedly told the military to “give up the idea of going to war.” Now in blind judgment, he was convicted along with those same militarists as part of a common conspiracy for aggression.
Tojo Hideki, the most famous name, was second to last. At sixty-three, he was as defiant as ever. Soon before, he had told his American defense lawyer, “At the beginning of the trial I was worried that the responsibility of the Emperor might be questioned. I feel at rest now that the doubt has been cleared. From the beginning I was ready to take the entire responsibility for the war, but regrettably others were brought into the trial.” Thanking his lawyer for a vigorous defense, he said, “I can only say it is a victor’s trial.”[12]
Tojo stared over Webb’s head.[13] The verdict on him was as stern as it was unsurprising. “He bears major responsibility for Japan’s criminal attacks on her neighbors,” the Australian judge declared.
He was ruled a principal in the conspiracy since 1937, when he had become chief of staff of the Kwantung Army. He planned and prepared to attack the Soviet Union, setting up Manchuria as a base for that. He urged further assaults on China. As vice minister of the army, he mobilized Japanese society for war and opposed a compromise peace with China. Next he became army minister in 1940: “thereafter his history is largely the history of the successive steps by which the conspirators planned and waged wars of aggression against Japan’s neighbors…. He advocated and furthered the aims of the conspiracy with ability, resolution and persistency.”
Becoming prime minister from October 1941, as well as army minister, he consistently supported keeping troops in China, plundering the country for Japan’s benefit, and crushing the Nationalist government. In the negotiations with the Americans before Pearl Harbor, he resolutely insisted on terms that would preserve “the fruits of her aggression against China” and bring about Japan’s domination of Asia. The judges roundly rejected his claims to have acted in legitimate self-defense. “The importance of the leading part he played in securing the decision to go to war in support of that policy cannot be over-estimated,” Webb intoned. While he was not guilty for the 1939 clash with the Soviet Union, when he was out of office, the tribunal found him guilty as part of the conspiracy and guilty of aggression after aggression: against China, the United States, the British Commonwealth, Holland, and France.
While most defendants were found guilty of failing to take adequate steps to prevent war crimes, the judges did not bother to rule on that count. Instead they convicted Tojo for the uglier charge of ordering, authorizing, or permitting war crimes. He was held responsible for ordering that prisoners who did not work should not eat, which led to suffering and death among the sick and the wounded who were forced to work. He had been head of the Army Ministry, responsible for caring for Allied prisoners of war and civilian captives with food, shelter, medicine, and hospitals. He had also been head of the Home Ministry, with similar duties toward Allied civilians detained in Japan. Above all, he had been head of the government, with all the responsibility that implied.
“The barbarous treatment of prisoners and internees was well known to Tojo,” Webb declared. “He took no adequate steps to punish offenders and to prevent the commission of similar offences in the future.” He was in meetings where the high death rates in prison camps were discussed, and he was responsible for covering up information about the real conditions in those camps from the outside world. Tojo knew about and did not disapprove of the “shocking attitude” that the China conflict was not recognized as a war, a policy that systematically deprived Chinese captives of the rights due to prisoners of war.
The judges found that he had recommended using prisoners of war to construct the Burma–Thailand railway but made no adequate arrangements to house and feed them, nor to care for those who got sick in the tropical climate. He sent an officer to investigate the camps along the line, but did nothing more than prosecute one company commander. Webb declared, “The shocking condition of the prisoners in 1944, when Tojo’s Cabinet fell, and the enormous number of prisoners who had died from lack of food and medicines is conclusive proof that Tojo took no proper steps to care for them.”
Tojo had known that many prisoners had died on the Bataan death march but did not call for a report, nor punish any Japanese officers. On a visit to the Philippines afterward, he made perfunctory inquiries but took no action. His explanation, the judges noted with scorn, was that Japanese commanders in the field were not subject to specific orders from Tokyo. As the head of government, Tojo had knowingly and willfully refused to carry out Japan’s duty to enforce the conduct of the laws of war. “The Tribunal finds Tojo guilty,” Webb said, for ordering or allowing war crimes.
After he finished reading the verdicts, Webb for the first time officially revealed the disarray among the judges. “The Member for India dissents from the majority Judgment and has filed a statement of his reasons for such dissent,” he said. The French and Dutch judges too, he said, had written dissents.
This was a bombshell. Having just convicted all the defendants, the court now revealed that three of its members doubted the judgment.
With Radhabinod Pal’s dissent an open secret around the court, all of the Japanese defendants petitioned that each of the dissenting opinions be read aloud. The judges swiftly dismissed the plea. All the dissents and opinions would be filed into the record, Webb said, but not aired in open court.[14] The dissents were available to the supreme commander, the defense lawyers, and others who wanted them, and they would eventually be published. While the press quickly reported the gist of the dissenting opinions, they had less impact than the judgment itself.[15]
Adding to the confusion, Webb announced that the majority could not even agree with itself. The Philippine judge had filed a separate opinion concurring with his fellow majority judges. And disconcertingly, Webb gave a final kick of frustration at the majority judges who had privately defied him. He said that he generally agreed with the majority about the facts and was not dissenting, but wanted to add his own “brief statement of my reasons for upholding the Charter and the jurisdiction of the Tribunal and of some general considerations that influenced me in deciding on the sentences.”
At 3:30 p.m., Webb, his hands clasped together, adjourned for a break before reading the sentences.[16]
Who by Rope
There was an excruciating pause. The convicted men endured fifteen minutes of profound dread.
The judges filed back in for the last time. One by one, each accused was marched into the stilled auditorium alone to hear his fate, led by a U.S. lieutenant colonel who had overseen them at Sugamo Prison. A half dozen U.S. military policemen stood behind the newly convicted war criminals.[17] “Each one stood pinned to the courtroom by thousands of eyes—some friendly and sympathetic, the majority stern and uncompromising,” wrote MacArthur’s political adviser.[18] After being sentenced by Webb, who spoke softly but firmly, each man would be marched out alone. None of them protested or tried to blurt out a last speech. “The images of the defendants, earphones on and standing like clay figures, overflowed with intensity,” reported the Asahi Shimbun. “Particularly notable was the fact that the defendants who received severe sentences simply nodded to the court and exited the courtroom without saying a word.”[19]
The first of them, General Araki Sadao, got life imprisonment. Then a ghastly hush fell as the court meted out death for the first time. Webb intoned, “Accused Doihara Kenji, on the Counts of the Indictment on which you have been convicted, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences you to death by hanging.” The condemned general calmly removed his headphones, bowed to the court, and walked out.
A host of army and navy men got imprisonment for life. They stood at attention and bowed. One of them, the elderly General Minami Jiro, a former army minister, fumbled with his headphones, seemingly bewildered and uncomprehending.[20]
Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro, the first civilian politician to be sentenced, also got life imprisonment. So did another former prime minister, a minister, and the ambassador to Italy. Kaya Okinori, the finance minister who had argued against attacking the United States, got life in prison.
“What struck me most was the dignified bearing of the accused,” reported the Indian political representative in Tokyo. “It was somewhat pathetic to see some of the older men tottering and hobbling to the dock to receive their sentences. None of them appeared to be moved by the sentence, presumably because they were all prepared for it.”[21]
Hirota Koki was not. He had reason to hope to survive. Some notorious military men had avoided the rope. Gray and quiet, the former prime minister closed his eyes when Webb announced his fate: “Accused Hirota Koki, on the Counts of the Indictment on which you have been convicted, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences you to death by hanging.” The doomed man, visibly stunned, turned to lock eyes with his weeping family in the gallery. He would be the only civilian to go to the gallows. Surprised Japanese reporters murmured, “Harsh! Harsh!”[22]
General Itagaki Seishiro would hang. He removed his headphones and paused gravely for a moment. The same fate was given to General Kimura Heitaro, a vice minister of the army and commander of Japanese forces in Burma.
Marquis Kido Koichi, the top adviser to the emperor of Japan, bowed to the court. He was sentenced to prison for life.
General Matsui Iwane, convicted for failing to prevent war crimes at Nanjing, was sentenced to death by hanging.
So was General Muto Akira, who had been the main target of the Philippine prosecutors.
Shigemitsu Mamoru, pressing his hands on the bench, found out what the judges meant by mitigation. He got the lightest sentence of anyone, seven years imprisonment starting from when he had been arraigned.
Togo Shigenori was sentenced to twenty years in prison. This was the second-lightest punishment. Yet at sixty-six years old with heart disease, he was unlikely to see the end of those two decades. His wife, Edith Togo, fainted when told his sentence, then lamented loudly that the trial had been unfair.[23]
The hush deepened as Tojo Hideki filed in and bowed to the judges. He put on his headphones. Japanese spectators leaned forward. The American military police stiffened. Tojo and everyone else knew what was coming. Two of his sons watched from the gallery. In a clear, firm voice, Webb declared, “Accused Tojo Hideki, on the Counts of the Indictment on which you have been convicted, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences you to death by hanging.” Tojo, resigned, gave a bow to the court. He was the seventh war criminal sentenced to die. “He was merely a brown, bald, shabby little man,” crowed the Associated Press. Outside the Ichigaya courtroom, when told the sentence, his wife and daughter wept beneath a tree.[24]
Tojo Hideki listens to Sir William Webb sentence him to death, November 12, 1948.
The last defendant, General Umezu Yoshijiro—who had signed the surrender aboard the USS Missouri—got life in jail. He was already slowly dying of advanced colorectal cancer.[25] That made a total of sixteen sentences of life imprisonment.
As Webb at last fell silent, there was chaos in the courtroom. Reporters raced to the telephones. Families of the convicted men sat in shock.
At 4:12 p.m., the Tokyo trial adjourned.[26]
The World Reacts
Nine of the convicted men, including four sentenced to die, handed poems in classical form to their defense lawyers after the sentencing. These were published in the Japanese press. “My conscience is as clear as the sun and moon,” declared Kaya Okinori. Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro had law on his mind: “The rule of law, the rule of form are at an end/ And yet, remains a rule of truth and the nation is at peace.”
Some condemned men were wistful. Matsui invoked the familiar symbol of eternal Japan: “Whether a cloud, whether a peak, I cannot tell./ The clear sky from a distance is a mist/ And yet, behind that pallid mist/ There soars unchanging an eternal peak/ And with the dawning of the light,/ I know it is Mount Fuji.” Hirota, surprised to be dying, chose an image often used to symbolize the loss of young soldiers: “In spring, men like cherry blossoms fall,/ In fall, men like sparkling dews, purge themselves.”
Tojo, too, went with that metaphor in his haiku: “Oh, look, see how the cherry blossoms fall mutely.”[27] In a letter that he wanted made public, he said that he deserved his death sentence and was sorry that the judges had not allowed him to shoulder sole responsibility. It was a great comfort to him that the emperor was not involved. His death sentence, he felt, did not absolve him of responsibility for the wartime hardships of his countrymen. Although determinedly unremorseful about Pearl Harbor, Tojo admitted that atrocities against Allied prisoners of war were “utterly deplorable,” accepting responsibility for failing to drive home to Japanese troops the kindness of the emperor. Still, he claimed that only a small part of the army had committed war crimes, and neither the Japanese nation nor the army as a whole was responsible for them.
Matsui, sentenced to hang for his command role during the Nanjing massacre, privately blamed his divisional commanders. In so doing, he suggested how the slaughter had resulted from the shared cruelty of senior army officers. The Nanjing incident, he told a Buddhist priest at Sugamo, was “a terrible disgrace.” After his triumphal march into Nanjing, he claimed, he had asked for memorial services for the Chinese dead as well, only to be scorned by his senior officers as he wept tears of rage. He had told his top officers, including Prince Asaka, that “after all our efforts to enhance the Imperial prestige, everything had been lost in one moment through the brutalities of the soldiers.” His officers, he said, laughed at him. One of his division commanders asked, “What’s wrong about it?”[28]
Emperor Hirohito and the empress listened to the sentencing on the radio. The Imperial Palace only let it be known that he sighed and looked mournful.[29]
Tojo’s defense lawyer, Kiyose Ichiro, told the Asahi Shimbun, “Tojo’s mind is eased very much by the verdict, knowing he has given no additional trouble to the Emperor.”[30] In fact, with Hirohito’s wartime counselors found guilty as war criminals, including his own lord keeper and his handpicked prime ministers, his throne hung in the balance. The rumors of abdication became a frenzy. It was fortunate for the imperial family that nobody outside of Sugamo Prison knew that the condemned Matsui was blaming the unindicted Prince Asaka for the Nanjing massacre.[31] Despite all this pressure to step down, in private, an Imperial Palace adviser reached out to a senior U.S. diplomat in Tokyo to say that on the day of the sentencing, the emperor had written to MacArthur to say that he had definitely decided not to abdicate.[32]
Harry Truman congratulated the prosecution for having “contributed immeasurably to the cause of humanity and the further development of international law,” while MacArthur praised “a high standard of justice which has exemplified to the Japanese people the moral concepts which underlie our own traditional judicial processes.”[33] Joseph Keenan publicly pronounced the trial “another milestone in the quest of mankind for peace,” although he found the judgment too lenient.[34] Yet many citizens in the Allied countries were frustrated by the verdicts.
Mei Ruao publicly hailed the judgment as a “great historical document,” declaring that “as a member of the majority judges from the very beginning to the end, I shall defend the majority judgment also from beginning to end.” Yet he publicly broke with the majority on one crucial point, telling the Chinese press that the emperor should be tried as a major war criminal. Despite “plenty of evidence” to implicate Hirohito, he had been spared as a “matter of political consideration.”[35]
At the invitation of the Asahi Shimbun, Mei wrote a generous open letter to the Japanese people, saying that they had not known about the atrocities in China, and hoping that the verdict would help to build peaceful cooperation between China and Japan.[36] In private, though, he was mortified by the acquittal of Matsui for aggression against China and Muto for atrocities in Nanjing, as well as the jail sentences given to some men whom China’s government had hoped to hang. “The only soothing fact is that the most hated and heinous war criminals who have hurt us the most are on the list for heavy penalties,” he wrote to the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Shijie. “You understand why, and there is no need to say much about that.”[37]
Some Chinese newspapers demanded that Hirohito be punished too.[38] Having been hounded by his government about the Chinese people’s rage, Mei humbly wrote that he did not “know if domestic public opinion is satisfied or dissatisfied.” Questioning himself, he thought that having done his best, he “may not feel guilty in front of the people.”[39]
Seizing a chance to embarrass the Nationalists, the Chinese Communist Party immediately declared itself “absolutely unsatisfied with the results of the trials.” The People’s Daily wrote that “because of America’s protection, indulgence, and encouragement, the solemn International Military Tribunal for the Far East turned into a podium for war culprits such as Tojo to promote militarism.”[40] In another article, the People’s Daily scorned the jail sentences, while complaining that the judgment whitewashed Hirohito’s responsibility for the war: “The Chinese people are satisfied with the sentences of the seven war criminals including Tojo, but cannot be satisfied with the other results of the trial.”[41]
In the Philippines, despite satisfaction that Muto was sentenced to hang, anti-Japanese fury ran high. The Bagong Buhay, a Manila newspaper, warned that the Japanese were fundamentally a militaristic nation and would once again try to conquer their weaker neighbors. The Manila Chronicle challenged Tojo’s complaint about a “trial by conquerors” by editorializing that the “conquerors were not America, Russia or China” but “freedom, justice and humanity.”[42]
The British largely applauded the verdict, seen as a necessary continuation of Nuremberg.[43] The Tokyo trial, editorialized the left-wing Manchester Guardian, “has lacked Nuremberg’s brutal decisiveness.” It “has made legal history, but in quavering hesitant fashion.” While pointing out that the victors were “forgetting such minor matters as the atom bombs’ victims,” it warned that sparing Hirohito “had a lamentable effect upon the legal fabric of the case. It is no good laying down a principle that crimes against peace mean—for the conquered—death, if one starts to discriminate.”[44]
In Australia, the newspapers cried that the verdicts did not go far enough. “The Jap has not a soul to think in terms of decency,” editorialized one newspaper with undisguised bigotry. “He is still as much a part of the jungle as the dank rot which infests a jungle.”[45] Another wrote that the Japanese were pagans who believed that their own divine race was naturally superior, and could only be judged by “their own lower code.”[46] The Sydney Morning Herald declared that the evidence was even more shocking and conclusive than expected.[47] Yet like Webb, many Australians fumed that the emperor—“this little man who declared war,” as a Sydney tabloid columnist called him—had been spared. “Hard-boiled Americans admit that to hang Tojo and let Hirohito go free is screwy, but they argue that Hirohito is doing a vital job for America.”[48]
The American press was dissatisfied. The New York Times, among the most upbeat, praised the documentation of Japanese aggression as a warning for the future. While bluffly assuring its readers that the legal problems in the case had been solved, it cautioned that the moral impact of the trial was lessened by the omission of the emperor from prosecution and the inclusion of a Soviet judge, whose country was pursuing the same policies the court was condemning. It praised “a law which strips away the protection of sovereignty in the case of aggressive war and makes such a war both an international and personal crime.”[49] More dourly, Time magazine wrote, “After three years of war trials,…the world is no farther along than it was in 1945 to an understanding of whether these proceedings represent justice or victor’s vengeance.”[50]
Embracing Defeat
Large crowds gathered in central Tokyo around the special four-page extra editions rushed out by the big newspapers, with many Japanese copying down the sentences in their notebooks. Some said the penalties were entirely proper; others anxiously said that they could not express what they really thought. At the Diet, legislators gathered around the radio to hear the punishments, before silently filing into the assembly room. The speaker let out a loud sigh but refused to comment.[51]
The Tokyo trial’s verdicts received considerable support and muted opposition from the Japanese public, according to the careful soundings taken confidentially by General Headquarters. Given that this was a foreign court hanging and jailing famous Japanese, the Allies were pleasantly surprised by the Japanese national response.
To gauge Japanese public opinion under censorship, General Headquarters routinely opened and read the private letters that Japanese wrote to each other. This snooping found a split Japanese verdict on the verdicts: 39 percent of the mail opposed them, with 34 percent approving, and 27 percent not giving a clear opinion either way—unsurprised by the verdict but confused about the moral and legal foundations for the court’s conclusions. For the Allied occupiers, this came as a relief.
There were few bitter denunciations. The bulk of the Japanese critics felt sorry for the convicted war criminals and their families, or recoiled to see old men going to the gallows. Only a few ardent nationalists still called them heroes. The judgment had improved the reputation of the Tokyo trial even to the skeptics; although previously there had often been letters saying that the court was driven by revenge, now only a handful wrote that “might is right.”
Many Japanese praised the trial’s fairness, impressed by its openness and the performance of the defense. “Every effort has been made to ensure justice,” wrote one. Younger Japanese saw the trial as marking “the end of the era of militarism in Japan.” The lower-income Japanese praising the judgment took it personally, with one writing that “the wicked men who caused us all this suffering deserve to be punished.” The parents and widows of killed soldiers were especially emotional; one wrote that “now, at last, they can rest in peace.” Most of the supporters saw the verdict as justice, saying that the war criminals set to hang “are only reaping the just consequences of their evil deeds.” Strikingly, more than one-third of those Japanese who supported the verdicts expressed a sense of national guilt, rather than leaving all the blame on their wartime leaders. One letter writer insisted that “the responsibility for the war rests not only with Tojo, but with all the nation. We blindly obeyed.”[52]
In addition to rifling through other people’s mail, the American occupiers tracked Japanese public sentiment through Counter Intelligence Corps field detachments in all prefectures.[53] Out of fifty-three localities (which mostly corresponded to Japan’s prefectures), the Counter Intelligence Corps found a total of twenty-six in approval of the Tokyo trial’s judgment—almost half—while there was opposition in thirteen. In twelve localities, people were indifferent. Among those approving of the verdicts were demobilized soldiers, leftists, Communists, and Koreans. In five localities, the general public felt that “the entire nation is guilty”; in four localities, people believed that the emperor was guilty, although in one of those they were nevertheless relieved that he had been spared.
The opposition to the court was mostly right-wing, including former army officers and some educated people. Some of them blamed the Chinese for the death sentences. In six localities, the sentences were seen as too severe, with more death sentences than expected. There was overt anti-American sentiment only in Ishikawa Prefecture, mostly from veterans. In four localities, there were signature campaigns asking to reduce the sentences, although people were afraid of reprisals for doing so. According to the Counter Intelligence Corps, some Japanese complained that the Tokyo trial was dictatorial.[54]
Similar patterns came up in street interviews by reporters and in General Headquarters’ unscientific soundings of elite Japanese opinion, with considerable support for the judgment among liberals and leftists.[55] “The verdicts were fair,” said Ozaki Yukio, a famously independent-minded constitutionalist who had been in the Diet for many decades.[56] Against the death penalty on principle, he made an exception for the seven war criminals bound for the gallows. Tokuda Kyuichi, the secretary general of the Japanese Communist Party, who had spent eighteen years in jail before being freed by the Allies, reckoned the trial a success, although wishing that the sentences had been tougher. Kato Shizue, a Diet member and a leading feminist, said, “Intelligent Japanese long ago decided that the punishment of the war criminals was inevitable, and they think the verdicts were just.”[57]
More warily, the British political representative warned that there was active Japanese sympathy with the war criminals. He noted some support for Shigemitsu Mamoru and Hirota Koki, although not for Kido, who was seen as having deceived the emperor. Most Japanese, he reported, thought that the emperor was guilty but still did not want him to abdicate. Even among the younger generation, he saw little real resentment of the war criminals except for their failure. He warned that when Japanese liberals framed the judgment as a condemnation of the whole Japanese people, that would in time generate sympathy for the war criminals. Some Japanese admitted that “the tacit condemnation of the whole people embraces the Emperor himself. Tojo’s view that the decisions of the court represent ‘victor’s justice’ is probably echoed in many minds but finds little open expression.”[58]
The Japanese press covered the judgment with fascination. While India’s political representative in Japan noted that the media was uniformly in favor of the convictions and sentences, he astutely warned that no newspaper could dare to defy General Headquarters by publishing criticism. He reported that in private Japanese officials believed that there was no conspiracy to wage war and the convicted men were not directly responsible for crimes against humanity. While they accepted that the China war could be seen as Japanese aggression, they saw the war against the United States and the British Empire as self-defense.[59]
Japanese editorials, operating under Allied censorship, urged a national reckoning with war guilt. “We must not allow ourselves to think that the sentences meted out to a few individuals absolve the Japanese people but must realize that we were all on trial and have all been found guilty,” exhorted the liberal Mainichi Shimbun. The conservative Yomiuri Shimbun praised the establishment of aggression as an international crime and denounced any sympathy for the war criminals as the promotion of fascism. “We fear that with the passage of time much of our united hate for our militarists has faded and some misguided people even regard them as heroes being punished for the misdeeds of the nation,” cautioned a Yomiuri editorial. “This is, of course, absurd and what we must reflect upon is why, as a people, we were so easily misled and controlled by these criminals.” The Jiji Shimpo editorialized that it was hard to imagine a more fair judgment, only regretting that the Japanese people had not had the chance to try the war criminals themselves. While one Jiji Shimpo article doubted that it was “right for judges from victor nations to convict the defeated on the basis of ex-post facto law,” it also praised the “rectitude and thoroughness” of the trial.[60]
The liberal Asahi Shimbun, with a circulation of three and a half million, led the embrace of the verdicts. As its managing editor privately wrote to Webb, “We Japanese do not take the trials as judgements only on Hideki Tojo and twenty-four defendants, but as the bitterest criticism to Japan and all Japanese. Consequently we cannot help being deeply impressed by the final decision.” Praising the tribunal’s intensive study of Japan’s real history, he declared, “Through the lessons from the trial we are just now standing at the start-line for a new life.”[61]
A prominent Asahi columnist, embracing a popular “hatred for war,” pointed out the broader responsibility of citizens who had supported the convicted war criminals, as well as proposing Japanese national trials for fanatical young officers who had driven the country “to fascism and war.”[62] Another Asahi writer, scorning Tojo for arguing fine points of international law, wrote that the Japanese “have learned much through the entire process of the trial…. We, in our present restricted daily lives, have realized a great windfall simply by being able to see through this window the actions of people representing eleven countries, and hear the footsteps of the world.”[63] Another columnist called for more Japanese attention to “crimes of cruelty,” urging its readers to remember the Nanjing horrors: “If the same events had taken place in Tokyo or Osaka, and our beloved relatives and friends had met with the same fate, our blood would surely have boiled.”[64]