On 8 September 1951 the war against Japan was finally brought to its conclusion with the Treaty of San Francisco. All the countries that had fought Japan signed the treaty except for the Soviet Union and China. The Chinese communists had defeated the Nationalist government and driven it to Taiwan and other outlying islands, establishing the People’s Republic of China (PRC). As the Allies could not decide which government to invite to the conference they invited neither. The Soviet Union attended the conference preceding the treaty, but protested against the actual terms on the basis that China was not invited and Japan was apparently being drawn into a specifically anti-Soviet military alliance with the United States. The Nationalist Chinese government subsequently entered into the Treaty of Taipei with Japan on 28 April 1952, and the People’s Republic of China came to an accord with Japan on 29 September 1972.

In December 1951 former US senator and prominent Republican John Foster Dulles gave a speech in Tokyo where he said that Japan had not only a right to rearm, but a duty to do so in order to meet the threat of communism. This got a cool reaction in the Australian parliament and press, where suspicion of Japan was still high.1 When the bill ratifying the Treaty of San Francisco came up for debate in the Australian House of Representatives, it was criticised not only by the opposition, but also MPs on the government benches.2 Liberal MP Alexander Downer Sr expressed the concerns that many felt:

It is common knowledge that the genesis of this treaty was in Washington, rather than in London or Canberra. No government of this country would ever originate such proposals . . . They were presented by the United States of America to the powers assembled in San Francisco last year, more as a fait accompli than as a tentative approach to an intricate problem. The United States of America declared beforehand that the provisions now embodied in this bill were to be its terms. By virtue of America’s position since the war as the principal world power – certainly in the Pacific – the opinions of smaller nations availed little.

Downer did not believe the treaty addressed the causes of Japanese belligerence, so he could not support it. Like many others, he predicted that Japan would once again become the dominant power in East Asia. ‘Despite their evil attributes, the Japanese possess higher qualities of character than do other Asian peoples,’ he concluded.

Fred Daly, Labor MP for the Sydney seat of Grayndler and known for his lively expression, quoted a British article with approval:

General Macarthur [sic], surely one of the greatest missionaries of all time has, almost single-handed, reformed the Japs. The brains that engineered Pearl Harbour [sic], the hands that turned, beat, flayed and stabbed the white man in the islands of the Pacific, in Malaya, in Siam and in Hong Kong are now clean, guiltless innocent hands. The deceitful grin of Tokyo has become an honest friendly smile and the Americans have agreed to defend the democratic Japanese while the Japanese have agreed to defend the generous Americans. It is a very, very beautiful friendship.

Daly went on to explain:

That article exemplifies the sceptical attitude towards the peace treaty of most people in Australia and elsewhere in the democratic world. It is too soon for us to forgive the Japanese and enter into an alliance with them. Their guilt is still fresh. They should not be accorded equal rights with other peoples until they have paid some penalty and have atoned in some measure for the unspeakable atrocities that they committed against humanity . . . The Labor party believes that Japan has not been able to expiate its crimes in six short years. This Government wishes to re-admit Japan to the society of nations too early, and it is being too generous.

He then talked at length about the perceived Japanese threat to Australian industry, a significant concern on the Labor side of politics. Daly’s fellow Labor MP Tom Andrews agreed. While he acknowledged that the Japanese had many good qualities, ‘nevertheless it is part of their nature to glorify power and to act ruthlessly in the pursuance of power’. He concluded that the threat of communism was not grave enough to justify the threat of a rearmed Japan.

These concerns were mirrored in the press. ‘Don’t trust the Japanese,’ former commander of Australia’s 8th Division, Lieutenant General Gordon Bennett, told The Argus. ‘They are cheeky now and I have no doubt they will soon be building up for the next war to regain the face they have lost.’3 The Australian public shared these anxieties. In an August–September 1951 poll, 63 per cent of respondents opposed a peace treaty with Japan, and 60 per cent believed that within twenty years Japan would once again be a threat to Australia.4

The Treaty of San Francisco also brought to an end the Allied occupation of Japan, and full sovereignty was returned to the Japanese government. The BCOF was disbanded on 28 April 1952.5 But Japan could not turn loose the convicted war criminals. Under Article 11 of the treaty, Japan had accepted the judgements of the IMTFE and other war crimes courts and agreed to carry out the sentences imposed. It also agreed that it would not grant clemency, nor reduce sentences or grant parole except on the decision of the government that had imposed the sentence. For those prisoners sentenced by the IMTFE, this would require the recommendation of a majority of countries on the tribunal.

All of the surviving class-A war criminals and a majority of the Class-B and -C were then in Sugamo, a fairly new prison in Tokyo that had been used to hold political prisoners during the war. It was handed over to the American Eighth Army in October 1945, and the first Japanese war criminals arrived on 16 November. A total of 4,726 people were believed to have been held at Sugamo postwar, with a peak population of 1,862 in January 1950.6 Despite occasional complaints from the inmates, it seems conditions were generally good. Once some renovations on the prison was finished, there was no hard labour. In the early years, those inside were often better fed than those outside, and there were games and movies, and so many prisoners enrolled in educational courses the prison became known jokingly as ‘Sugamo University’. The Americans introduced a parole system in 1950, and following the end of the occupation the prison received a steady stream of visitors, including entertainers, journalists and politicians.

At the time the treaty was negotiated, Article 11 was of relatively little concern, for either the Japanese government or public. But during the 1950s, a movement to bring the class-B and -C criminals back to Japan and release them grew in numbers and popularity. The campaigners argued that these men were as much the victims of their superiors as they were perpetrators of crimes. A national petition for their release was launched in June 1952, called the Campaign of Love (ai no undō), and a support association for the Sugamo prisoners was also formed.

A number of significant publications besides Seiki no isho were produced in Sugamo in support of the campaign. The Sugamo Legal Affairs Committee produced an 852-page volume called The Truth About War Crimes Trials (Senpan saiban no jisso), which focused on the unfairness of the trials and the mistreatment of the prisoners by their Allied captors. Shorter versions were also made available. The Japanese government also began collecting documentation relating to the class-B and -C trials, then all held overseas.

Lieutenant Katō Tetsutarō provides an interesting case of a politically active class-B and -C war criminal.7 Katō was an economics graduate from a prominent Christian family and was working for the North China Development Corporation when he was conscripted into the army as an officer in the Sino-Japanese War. He was subsequently returned to Japan and placed in command of a prisoner-of-war camp at Niigata in 1944, perhaps because of his knowledge of foreign languages. The prisoners in the camp, who were mostly Americans, reported that Katō had a fiery temper but made genuine efforts to improve conditions, including by securing food and medicine. But Katō was troubled by one man, named Frank Spears, who repeatedly escaped. After one escape, Katō went out with a party of soldiers and recaptured him. This time, Katō demanded that Spears promise to stop escaping. When Spears refused, Katō then either bayoneted him to death personally or ordered another man to do so: different accounts were given at Katō’s two trials, but in terms of his guilt or innocence this was irrelevant.

After the war, Katō was wanted by the Americans as a suspected war criminal but managed to evade capture until 1948. He travelled the country disguised as a monk, and at one point even worked as a translator for the US Army. Eventually captured, he was brought to trial, convicted and sentenced to death. In February 1949, his sentence went to MacArthur for review. Katō was fortunate to have high-profile friends and relatives lobbying on his behalf. They argued that mitigating evidence of Katō’s good treatment of the prisoners had not been presented, and so he had not had a fair trial.

As it turned out, Katō’s cunning in hiding himself for three years almost certainly saved his life. Had he been tried in 1946 or 1947, he would have surely been hanged. Now, however, his file hit MacArthur’s desk during the critical time when the American class-B and -C trials at Yokohama were winding down and American policy towards Japan had shifted towards rapprochement. MacArthur quashed Katō’s conviction and sent him for a new trial, where substantially more evidence of Katō’s good qualities as camp commander was presented to the court. In June 1949, in one of the last ever US trials in Japan, he was convicted again but given a life sentence. MacArthur immediately commuted it to thirty years.

So Katō found himself in Sugamo Prison just as the campaign for the release of prisoners was getting underway. He participated in the campaign by writing, publishing an article in the magazine Sekai under a pseudonym in October 1952. The prison authorities failed to identify him as the author, although they may have had their suspicions.

Then, in 1953, two significant anthologies of the writings of Sugamo inmates were published: Are kara shichinen: gakuto senpan no gokuchū kara no tegami (Seven Years After the End of the War: Prison Letters from Drafted Student War Criminals, commonly referred to as Seven Years Later) and Kabe atsuki heya: BC-kyū senpan no jinseiki (The Thick-Walled Room: Life Stories of BC-class War Criminals). While both collections encouraged sympathy with the class-B and -C war criminals, they were not works of nationalist propaganda. Some prisoners admitted their crimes, others criticised the government for its militaristic policies before and during the war. Both books showed the influence of the developing peace group within Sugamo. Seven Years Later was edited by Katō’s father, and Katō submitted two essays, once again under pseudonyms.8

In one of these essays in Seven Years Later, Katō reproduces a letter he claims was written by a ‘Sergeant Akagi’ shortly before his execution. Katō makes it clear at the start of the essay that he will blend fact and fiction to make his point, and it is implied Katō has invented Akagi to present views he either holds or is sympathetic with.

Akagi writes that he has been sentenced to death for withholding medicine from American prisoners of war, even though there was no medicine available. The shortage was the fault of war profiteers, but they had escaped prosecution, leaving him to take the blame. His senior officers paid bribes and escaped; there were no good men among them. He criticises the court in which he was convicted, saying he was a victim of poor translation and errors in procedure. He also claims he was not fed enough in prison and was mistreated by his American captors. Finally, he complains, he is going to be executed when war crimes committed by the Allies have gone unpunished.

For a long time, Akagi writes, he hoped the Emperor would save him. Now he has been forced to recognise that the Emperor will leave him to die to appease the Americans (the fact that the essay contains direct criticism of the Emperor may be why Katō decided to use the literary device of posing as a dead man). Akagi rages against the Emperor, pointing out that he served him faithfully and was ready to die for him. All he got in return were seven or eight cigarettes when he was fighting in China and some cakes when he was in a field hospital – the little luxuries that the Imperial Palace would occasionally send to troops overseas. The Emperor had approved the decision to invade China, which in Akagi’s view made war crimes inevitable. Or, to go even further, war itself is a crime.

If he is to be reincarnated, Akagi concludes, he would not want to be Japanese. He would not even want to be human. Nor would he want to be a cow or horse, as they are forced to work for humans. Instead, he would want to be a shellfish, clinging to a rock in the deep ocean. The shellfish has no worries because it knows nothing, it is not concerned about its family and children, and it is not forced to go to war for the Emperor. It is left alone. As Sandra Wilson summarised: ‘The general tenor of Katō’s writings was that war criminals were victims: of their own superior officers, of their own government, and of the Americans. Katō was alarmed at Japan’s rearmament in the early 1950s, critical of the conservative government of Yoshida Shigeru, and even critical of the public campaign for the release of war criminals, on the grounds that former senior military officers were using the campaign to further their own political careers.’9

The advocates for the imprisoned war criminals then took their campaign from the page to the screen. TV was rare in Japan in the 1950s, but film became very big, with the average Japanese person making ten trips to the cinema per year in that decade.10 Both foreign and Japanese films were popular and drew large audiences. American movies set in the Second World War gave the Japanese public their first view of the war from the other side. Indeed, for many, it was their first view of the war at all unless they had actually served in it. Films about Japanese history also filled theatres, and Kurosawa Akira’s big samurai-era pictures such as Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954) also gained attention in the West.

Films about the war and the war criminals were also made, often showing similar themes to The Thick-Walled Room and Seven Years Later. In the 1952 movie Sugamo no haha (‘Mother of Sugamo’) a widowed woman who has lost three of her four sons in the war waits at the dock for the return of the fourth, who was a prison-camp guard overseas. When he arrives he is arrested and placed on trial as a war criminal by the Americans. Convicted of slapping POWs, he is given a thirty-year sentence. The film promoted the idea that some of the offences for which the class-B and -C war criminals were convicted were trivial.

A film version of The Thick-Walled Room was made in 1953 by Kobayashi Masaki, but was not released until 1956. It has more depth than some others, and actually forces viewers to confront the reality of Japanese war crimes. Some Sugamo prisoners are portrayed as still believing in Japan’s imperial destiny, and reciting nationalist propaganda; others express pacifist views, and one has become a communist. The question posed for the audience is: who is responsible for the crimes committed by the prisoners? Them, their officers, the government, or Japan itself?

The biggest and longest lasting drama was probably Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai (I Want to Be a Shellfish), a 1958 TV series adapted into a 1959 film.11 The title came from the writings of Katō Tetsutarō, although the plot was drawn from different sources than the Sergeant Akagi letter. A barber from Shikoku is conscripted into the army and ordered by his commanding officer to bayonet a captured American airman. He is convicted and sentenced to death by an American tribunal (in reality, no privates were sentenced to death for killing prisoners on the direct orders of their superiors, so the scenario is entirely fictitious). As he is led to the gallows, the unfortunate barber gives a shorter version of Akagi’s shellfish monologue.

With support building for the campaign to release the B- and C-class war criminals, politicians, entertainers and journalists began to visit Sugamo in increasing numbers. A group of members of the Liberal Democratic Party formed an association in their support. On 9 June 1952 both houses of the Diet resolved that the government should lobby for all the class-B and -C war criminals being held overseas to be returned to Japan and subsequently released. The motion was opposed by Iwama Masao on behalf of the Communist Party, who claimed the resolution showed a lack of remorse for Japan’s wartime actions. The other members jeered him.12

This was the first significant foreign policy project of the Japanese government following the restoration of its powers, and in some cases involved difficult, three-party negotiations between Japan, another newly independent Asian country, and its former colonial power. The war criminals convicted at the Tokyo Trial and the American trials in Japan were already in Sugamo, so the government turned to the repatriation of those being held overseas. This process was uneven, and like the trials themselves was heavily influenced by political considerations.

The first prisoners to be returned were those held by the two Allies in the weakest position, Nationalist China and the Netherlands. When, by 1949, it was clear that Nationalist China was losing the war against the communists it sent all the class-B and -C war criminals it was holding to Sugamo.13 Excluded from the Treaty of San Francisco, Nationalist China then agreed to release all of them under a general amnesty in April 1952.14 This was the first unconditional release of B- and C-class criminals by an Allied power, and was further prompted by the government’s desire to have Formosans being held by the other Allies returned to Taiwan.

Under a peace treaty that came into effect on 27 December 1949, the Netherlands recognised the independence of the new Republic of Indonesia, ending Dutch colonial influence in the Far East. The Republic inherited the government of the Netherlands East Indies along with responsibility for the war criminals. Some of the Indonesian republican leaders had been backed by the Japanese during the war, and the Dutch, fearing the government might release the prisoners, transferred them from Cipinang prison to Sugamo in December 1949.15 Indonesia, with many bigger issues to be concerned with, did not object to them being released.

The French followed, with the release of prisoners in their overseas territories in 1950, and the UK in 1951. The expense of keeping the men in captivity was a problem, and holding them was unpopular in the countries of South-East Asia now moving towards independence. The French- and British-held prisoners were also subsequently paroled and then unconditionally released.

By 1953, the only countries still holding class-B and -C war criminals outside Japan were the Philippines and Australia. They were also the last countries to execute them – in 1951.16 The Japanese government found both difficult to persuade. The Filipino government maintained, not without justification, that no country except China had been more devastated by Japan than the Philippines. There were fresh memories of the Sack of Manila, the death marches of captured Filipino troops, and the destruction of monasteries. Japanese Navy orders issued between December 1944 and February 1945 quoted in the IMTFE judgement were seen as typical of Japanese attitudes in the archipelago: ‘When killing Filipinos, assemble them together in one place as far as possible thereby saving ammunition and labour.’17

So even as attitudes towards Japanese war criminals began to soften in other countries, they remained hard in the Philippines. This was typified by the hanging of fourteen Japanese war criminals in New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa, on the night of 19 January 1951. It was the first execution of Japanese war criminals anywhere since 1948 and a stern message to Tokyo.18

The Japanese government nonetheless began to petition Filipino President Elpidio Quirino for the return and eventual release of the remaining class-B and -C criminals. A popular 1952 song by Watanabe Hamako, ‘Ah, Montenrupa no yo wa fukete’ (‘It’s getting dark in Muntinlupa’) raised awareness of the Japanese still held at Muntinlupa. But the government’s overtures received a negative reaction in Filipino newspapers. One letter to the editor of the Philippines Free Press pointed out that a fair trial was more than the Japanese gave the Filipino civilians they summarily executed.19

But the Philippines was a poor, newly independent country in need of economic opportunities and allies in its region, and Japan, having rebuilt its own economy, was eventually in a position to offer both. As a result, on 27 June 1953, President Quirino announced that all Japanese war criminals would be returned to Sugamo. They arrived in Yokohama in December, and were pardoned by President Quirino in what he announced was an act of Christian forgiveness.20 In 1956, an agreement was concluded whereby Japan pledged $800 million in reparations to the Philippines, and in 1960 the two countries concluded a significant treaty of amity and co-operation.

At the time of the 1951 Peace Treaty, Australia was still holding Japanese war criminals on Manus Island and in prisons shared with British authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore. The last prisoners held in Rabaul had been transferred to Manus in March 1949. In August 1951, the remaining Japanese war criminals in Hong Kong and Singapore were sent to Sugamo. That same year, the Australian government enacted Statutory Rule No 11, which authorised remissions of sentences in cases of good conduct. Those prisoners serving sentences of between five and twenty-five years were eligible to have them shortened by a quarter, and those serving life terms were eligible for release after thirty years. The first to have their sentences remitted were those sentenced at Labuan on 9 January 1946, who were released on 8 January 1955.

From August 1952 on, Australia began to receive persistent requests for the repatriation and release of its class-B and -C war criminals. At this point, there were still roughly 180 at Manus Island, and fifty being held on Australia’s behalf in Sugamo.21 The Australian government was also under pressure to bring its approach to the war criminals into conformity with the other Allies, particularly the United States. The Menzies government was considering Japan as a market for Australian wool and wheat, and Japan, in turn, recognised the importance of Australia to its economic development and security in the Asia-Pacific. In December 1952, a Japanese ambassador was appointed to Canberra.

The prisoners on Manus Island themselves were also active on their own behalf. On 10 September 1951 they wrote a petition asking to be returned to Japan, pointing out they were the only war criminals still held within the British Commonwealth.22 And in June 1953, the Japanese House of Representatives petitioned Queen Elizabeth on the occasion of her coronation to send them back to Japan.23 These efforts were successful, and the Manus Island compound was closed in July 1953. By the end of that year, all the war criminals convicted by the Allied tribunals under the class A, B and C system were back in Japan.24 The Japanese government then set about securing their release. A number of the class-A criminals convicted at Tokyo, such as former Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru, had already been paroled or released on MacArthur’s orders. Due to ill health, Kido was also released that year. In 1951 he had again written to the Emperor advising him to abdicate; the Emperor again refused. Kido kept a low profile for the rest of his life, dying in 1977 in the Imperial Palace Hospital.

The Japanese government found Australia still wary of consenting to release its war criminals, and various requests made between 1952 and 1955 were refused. In one such request, on 3 August 1955, the Japanese proposed a general release of all war criminals to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the end of the war. The Australian government did not accept the proposal.25

But there were cracks appearing. In May 1954, the US government urged Australia to go easier on Japan. The Australian Cabinet resolved on 17 August 1954 that ‘. . . Australia should give special attention to the need to prevent the formation of a close alliance between Japan and communist China; and that Australia should be guided by the principle of allowing Japan, through co-operation with non-communist nations, to have reasonable facilities for taking part in its own defence, and for meeting her economic difficulties by expanding her export trade, and for developing her political and economic life and institutions in a way that will strengthen Japan’s association with the west.’26

Under American control, Sugamo prisoners received a monthly rating on their behaviour ranging from ‘unsatisfactory’ to ‘very excellent’. The Japanese authorities continued with this system when they resumed control of the prison in April 1952, although they regularly reported prisoners’ behaviour as ‘excellent’ or ‘very excellent’. The exception seems to have been the small group of politically active prisoners, including Katō.27 In April 1955, in line with its allies, the Australian government introduced a system whereby war criminals held on behalf of Australia became eligible for release on parole after completing the major part of their sentences. In July 1956 the system was expanded so war criminals were eligible for release after completing a minimum of a third of their sentence or a maximum of ten years.28 This added to the remission of sentences for good conduct, and saw more of the war criminals released.

Over 1956 and 1957, the Australia–Japan relationship continued to improve. In October 1956, the Japanese flag was raised at the Melbourne Olympic Games by an Australian Second World War veteran, in a show of reconciliation.29 That same year saw a significant relaxation of the White Australia policy begin. In January 1957, the Japanese embassy in Canberra reported to Tokyo that there was a ‘developing genuine friendship’ between the two countries.30 Plans were rapidly being made for Robert Menzies to visit Japan, and for the new Japanese Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke to visit Australia. In March 1957, with Menzies’ visit approaching, the Australian government quietly approved the release of all remaining war criminals.31 The final war criminal under Australian control was released from Sugamo on 28 June 1957,32 and that year, Australia and Japan signed a historic trade agreement.

On 5 September 1957, Eddie Ward, the Labor member for East Sydney, who had closely followed the trials, accused Billy McMahon, then Minister for Primary Industry, of breaking his assurance that the war criminals would not be released if they were returned to Japan.33 McMahon denied giving any such assurance, but insisted that the prisoners at Manus Island had needed to be returned on humanitarian grounds. He told the House of Representatives: ‘On at least two occasions I had visited Manus Island, and during my visits there I had inspected the war criminals at the Manus compound. I came to the conclusion that the conditions under which they were living were totally unsatisfactory and should not be continued. The climate up there is rigorous. It is a climate in which ordinary human beings cannot live for very long periods.’34

His answer did not satisfy Ward. ‘What about their crimes against Australian servicemen?’ he asked. Clyde Cameron, Labor MP for Hindmarsh in South Australia, was also not persuaded:

McMahon: I want to make it perfectly clear that I was not willing to continue to persecute these people and to compel them to be separated from their families, because connexion with their families does mean a lot to these people. I was not prepared to compel them to live in a most ––

Cameron: A lot of criminals in the Adelaide gaol are going mental, too.

McMahon: Oh, shut up!

Speaker: Order!

McMahon: Mr. Speaker, these people on the other side of the House giggle their heads off. One minute they pretend that they care and the next minute they ridicule their own suggestions, showing what hypocrites they are . . .35

The issue was, nonetheless, resolved, and by May 1958, Sugamo was empty. Katō Tetsutarō was released on 31 March 1958, one of the last of the class-B and -C to be paroled.36 By December 1958, all prisoners on parole were made unconditionally free.37 Katō was freed on 29 December 1958, a week after the screening of the second part of the TV series I Want to Be a Shellfish.38

Japan also succeeded in recovering its remaining prisoners from the Soviet Union and communist China. The Soviets continued to hold Japanese POWs after 1950, claiming they were guilty of war crimes (although it is not clear what, if any, process of trial they were subject to). But by December 1956, all known survivors had been repatriated save for those who had married and started families and so elected to stay. The People’s Republic of China released its prisoners over 1956 and 1957. Controversially, it also published an anthology called The Three Alls: Japanese Confessions of War Crimes in China. Unfortunately for the accuracy of the historical record it had a communist slant and was dismissed by Japanese nationalists as propaganda when it was published in Japan in 1957.

In the European theatre, there was also a steady release of convicted German and other European Axis war criminals. The Soviet Union released its convicted German war criminals in 1955, and the Western Allies agreed to the release of those held in prisons in Germany over the late 1950s. By the end of the 1950s, the only war criminals from the Second World War still behind bars were Albert Speer, Baldur von Schirach and Rudolf Hess, three class-A criminals convicted at Nuremberg and held in Spandau Prison in Berlin. Releasing them before the expiry of their sentences required the agreement of the four prosecuting powers at Nuremberg, and the Soviet Union vetoed any such proposal. Speer and von Schirach were released in 1966 when their twenty-year sentences ended, and Hess died in prison in 1987.

By 1967, Australia and Japan were enjoying a close and profitable relationship. Japan was Australia’s largest trading partner, providing a ready market for its beef, wool and wheat. In return, Australians bought Japanese cars, electronics, and other manufactured goods. And so the sword-wielding soldier shouting ‘Banzai!’ was replaced by the Toyota Corolla, the Fujifilm camera, and the Sony radio. Japan had presented a new image to the world.