What do we do when the war is over? The treaties and surrenders have been signed. The prisoners have been returned (hopefully). The armies have been demobbed. But the trauma remains, especially after wars as horrific as World War II. So many millions died that it seems wrong to just allow the surviving leaders of the German, Italian, and Japanese governments to live out their lives in peace, especially when the violence committed by Nazi and Imperial Japanese forces went well beyond the battlefield. After World War I, the victors relied on reparations, forced demilitarization, and treaties to ensure peace. After World War II, the victors turned to international law to hold (at least some) of their former enemies responsible. In Europe, Nazis were tried and sentenced at the Nuremberg Tribunals. In Asia, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, held in Tokyo, attempted to do the same to leaders of the former Japanese Empire. In Judgment at Tokyo, Gary J. Bass uses archival materials—letters, diaries, newspapers, testimonies, and court documents—to examine the thorny legal issues, judicial backbiting, realpolitik, and more to tell the story of the long fight to administer some kind of justice after long years of war.
After discussing the last years of the war in the Pacific and the decision-making process that led up to the American decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities, Bass outlines the differences between conditions in Germany and Japan in the wake of their surrenders. These differences—the necessity of keeping the post-war Japanese government cooperative with the Allies, the widespread destruction of documentary evidence of atrocities across formerly occupied territories, and irreconcilable disagreements among the judges, chief among them—caused the Japanese trials to follow a much different path than the Nuremberg trials. Defendants in both sets of trials faced roughly the same charges: the waging of aggressive war, conspiracy to wage aggressive war, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But unlike the Nuremberg trials, where most of the judges were in accord about their authority and jurisdiction, three of the judges in Tokyo ended up dissenting, wholly or in part, with the very illegality of the charges. Radhabinod Pal, the judge from India, wrote a mammoth dissent that acquitted all of the defendants. Bert Röling, the Dutch Judge, and Henri Bernard, the judge from France, dissented on the grounds that waging aggressive war was not a crime. The chief justice, Australian Sir William Webb, was unable to come up with a compelling argument justifying war as a crime to his fellow judges or to control his temper enough to cajole them along. (At one point early in the trial, Webb stated that the court has jurisdiction for “reasons to be given later” when challenged by a lawyer for the defense. These reasons were only given in the judgments at the end of the roughly two-year tribunal.)
Meanwhile, the Tokyo trials were hampered by their inability to charge Emperor Hirohito with any crimes. General Douglas MacArthur (another man with an explosive temper) was in charge of the Allied occupation of Japan which, unlike the total occupation of Germany, required the cooperation of the Japanese government. To do that, the Americans made a sweeping decision to make the emperor totally out of bounds for the tribunal—even though the emperor was ostensibly the final authority during the war and a lot of the evidence (including an accidental admission on the stand from former prime minister and army minister Tojo Hideki) implicated him in major decisions. This, coupled with the lack of documentary evidence (Japanese officials and soldiers burned a lot of material before the surrender) from across Asia made it even more difficult for the prosecution to make their case and for the judges to make a coherent ruling.
Bass does sterling work bringing the personalities of politicians, generals, judges, and lawyers to vibrant life with small details like Röling’s emphatic NOs on drafts written by Soviet justice Ivan Michyevich Zaryanov, the open court snappishness of Sir William, and the flop sweat of American chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan. Bass is also outstanding at explaining dense legal matters in easy-to-understand and deeply thoughtful language. Above all, I appreciate Bass’s thoroughness in covering the long war in Asia and international politics during and after Japan surrendered. This book feels like a master course and I have so much to think about now that I’ve finished. However, I am dinging the author for a tendency to include too many irrelevancies and tangents, especially towards the end of Judgment at Tokyo, which might have been solved with some more trimming by Bass’s editor(s).
Readers who are looking for an in-depth history of the Tokyo trials or the history of war crimes tribunals will enjoy Judgment in Tokyo for its superior documentation, often lively writing, and its ability to blend pithy details with overarching political, legal, and philosophical questions. Bass also dives into the fractured legacy of the Tokyo trials, especially as they’ve influenced right-wing Japanese. Most importantly, I think, Bass leaves his readers the freedom to draw their own conclusions about the authority of the court and whether or not justice was served (although he firmly argues that Togo Shigenori, foreign minister for much of the war, was more a victim of circumstances rather than a war criminal). This book is an amazing work of scholarship.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
