Japanese war crimes

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The term Japanese War Crimes is used to refer to events which occurred during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, although events outside this period may also be included. Other names, such as Asian Holocaust, are sometimes used for these events. Many of these events are subject to controversy among historians and/or people of different nationalities. The greatest controversies concern the deaths and forced labour of many millions of civilians and prisoners of war.

Contents

Definitions

There are differences from one country to another regarding the definition of Japanese war crimes.

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Japanese definitions

In Japan itself, the term "Japanese war crimes" generally refers to cases tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Trials, following the end of the Pacific War. The Potsdam Declaration, which the Japanese government accepted after the end of the war, alluded in Article 10, to two kinds of war crime: one was the violation of international laws, such as the abuse of prisoners of war (POWs); the other was obstructing "democratic tendencies among the Japanese people" and civil liberties within Japan.

International definitions

War crimes may be broadly defined as unconscionable behavior by a government or military personnel against either enemy civilians or enemy combatants. Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been accused and/or convicted or of committing many such acts during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. They have been accused of conducting a series of human rights abuses against civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) throughout east Asia and the western Pacific. These events reached their height during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 and the Pacific War of 1941-45.

Although Japan did not sign the Geneva Convention — which provides the standard definitions of war crimes — until after World War II, its government signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1929, thereby rendering its actions in 1937-45, at the very least, liable to charges of crimes against peace.

Different societies define the subject of Japanese war crimes somewhat differently. For example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 was followed by the widespread use of violence and deprivation of civil liberties against the Korean people. Millions of Koreans may have been killed during the occupation. Thus, some Koreans refer to "Japanese war crimes" as events occurring during a period from 1910 to 1945. By comparison, the United States did not come into military conflict with Japan until 1941, and thus Americans may consider "Japanese war crimes" as encompassing only those events that occurred from 1941 to 1945.

Historians and the governments of many countries officially hold the Japanese military, namely the Imperial Japanese Army (especially the military police, or Kempeitai) and the Imperial Japanese Navy, responsible for the deaths of many millions of civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) during the early 20th century.

These events are often compared to similar suffering imposed by Nazi Germany during 1933–45. The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that:

It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers — and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4 per cent chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30 per cent.[1]

Other sources claim the Japanese military was responsible for the deaths of more than 20 million non-combatants during 1937–45, although all such figures are controversial.

In China during 1937–45, there are said to have been 8.4 million "non-military casualties", not including civilians killed accidentally during battle. (See Chinese Casualties in the Sino-Japanese War.) The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanjing Massacre, when the Japanese army massacred more than 100,000 civilians — some accounts say 300,000.

The Japanese military's use of forced labour, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths — more than 100,000 in the case of the Burma Railway.

Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to the Japanese military in occupied countries are also regarded as war crimes by many people. Millions of civilians in South East Asia, a major rice-growing region, died during a preventable famine in 1944–45.

A complicating factor is that a small minority of people in every Asian and Pacific country conquered by Japan collaborated with the Japanese military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other imperialist powers. The Indian National Army is perhaps the best-known example of a movement opposed to European imperialism which served as part of the Japanese military. Prominent individual nationalists in other countries, such as the later Indonesian president, Suharto, also served with Japanese forces. In some cases such non-Japanese personnel were also responsible for war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan. For political reasons, many of these people were never investigated or tried and brought to justice after 1945. In South Korea especially, it is alleged that such people were often able to acquire wealth by serving Japan. It is further alleged in South Korea that some former collaborators have covered up "Japanese" war crimes in order to avoid their own prosecution and/or exposure.

There is been sketched discussion as to the sovereign status of Korea from 1910 to 1945, whether the forced Union of the Crowns between Japan and Korea has precipitated the sovereign status of the Choson Emperor upon abdication under the Treaty of Annexation and inherited by the people of Korea. Thereafter Japanese brutal repression of the freedoms of Korean persons during the period has been a series of war crimes as opposed to internal strife. However the practices of occupation by the Japanese Crown is rephrehensible notwithstanding the contestable de jure status of the occupation, such that these acts deserve to be compared with other oppressive practices Japan has conducted against the Asian Continent.

Background

The Rise of Japanese military culture and imperialism

Military culture, especially during Japan's imperialist phase had great bearing on the conduct of the Japanese military before and during World War II.

Seven centuries of bushido, the militaristic samurai warrior code taught unquestioning obedience to the Emperor, and fearlessness in battle. During the so-called "Age of Empire", in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers in aggressively seeking an overseas empire.

As in other imperial powers, Japanese popular culture is said to have become increasingly racist, or at least ethnocentric, at around this time. The rise of Japanese nationalism was seen partly in the adoption of Shinto as a state religion from 1890, including its entrenchment in the education system. Shinto held the Emperor to be divine because he was deemed to be a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. This provided justification for the requirement that the emperor and his representatives to be obeyed without question. In addition, many Japanese believed that Japan was a special place created by gods, rather than part of the ordinary world, and that the Japanese people had a divine mission to expand their culture and conquer other lands. This is little different than the American philosophy of Manifest Destiny or the European philosophies such as la mission civilatrice ("the civilising mission"), that supported colonialism.

Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) signified Japan's rise to the status of a world power. There were concomitant signs of a growing ruthlessness, inculcated by militarist and imperial ideologies.

From the point of view of bushido, POWs taken by Japanese forces were not worthy of treatment as soldiers. Compassion for defeated enemies was considered a sign of weakness. Some Japanese personnel considered the execution of prisoners as honourable, since it released the POWs from the dishonour of surrender. Perhaps as a consequence, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention — which stipulates the humane treatment of POWs — until after World War II. Nevertheless, the treatment of prisoners by the Japanese military in earlier wars, such as the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), had been at least as humane as that of other militaries.

The 1930s and 1940s

By the late 1930s, the practices of Japan's military dictatorship created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of Nazi Germany's elite military personnel, such as those in the Waffen-SS. Japan also had a military secret police force, known as the Kempeitai, its equivalent of the Gestapo or NKVD. The Kempeitai operated throughout the empire and in occupied countries. As in other dictatorships, irrational brutality, hatred and fear became commonplace. Perceived failure, or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating on to lower ranks, all the way down. In POW camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all.

The traditional severity of bushido, and the ethnocentrism of Japan's modern imperial phase, often coalesced into brutality towards civilians and POW's. After the launching of a full-scale military campaign against China in 1937, Japanese soldiers were often encouraged to go on rampages of murder, torture and rape — or at the very least, were not discouraged from so doing. Such acts were repeated throughout the Pacific War.

Many historians state that violence by Japanese personnel was closely tied to looting. For example, Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in a 2003 book on "Yamashita's gold" — secret repositories of loot from across Southeast Asia, in the Philippines — argued that the theft was organised on a massive scale, either by yakuza gangsters such as Yoshio Kodama, or by officials at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, who wanted to ensure that as many of the proceeds as possible went to the government. [2] The Seagraves allege that Hirohito appointed his brother, Prince Chichibu, to head a secret organisation called Kin no yuri (Golden Lily) for this purpose.

The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. During World War II such rules were largely respected in German POW camps, except in the case of Soviet POWs. However, Japanese forces did not follow the convention.

Post-1945 reactions

The Tokyo Trials

Main article: International Military Tribunal for the Far East

The Tokyo Trials, which were conducted by the Allied powers, found many people guilty of such crimes, including three (unelected) prime ministers: Koki Hirota, Hideki Tojo, and Kuniaki Koiso. Many military leaders were also convicted.

Other trials

Besides the Tokyo Trials, other prosecutions of Japanese personnel for war crimes were also held in many other cities throughout Asia, during 1946–51. Some 5,600 Japanese personnel were prosecuted in more than 2,200 trials, in several different cities in the Asia-Pacific region, including Tokyo. The judges presiding came from the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, France, the Soviet Union, New Zealand, India and The Philippines. More than 4,400 Japanese personnel were convicted and about 1,000 were sentenced to death. The largest single trial was that of 93 Japanese personnel charged with the summary execution of more than 300 Allied POWs, in the Laha massacre (1942).

Official apologies

While there is no dispute that many of the alleged events occurred, and many apologies have been issued by the Japanese government since 1945, these are widely viewed as inadequate by the survivors of such crimes. There is also perceived to be a widespread reluctance in Japan to discuss such events and/or admit that they were war crimes. The tension this causes in other countries is furthered by the persistence of some extreme, irrational and violent nationalist groups in Japan, as well as practices such as yearly visits by the prime minister to the Yasukuni Shrine and the tendency of Japanese school history books to downplay war crimes. Furthermore, there are ongoing campaigns by Japanese extreme right activists to expunge all mention of war crimes in Japanese society. This, of course, has caused outcry in neighboring countries such as China and Korea which have increased tensions in foreign relations between these countries.

Controversial reinterpretations

Some activists, both inside and outside Japan, are attempting controversial reinterpretations of Japanese imperialism. For example, the views of a South Korean, Ji Man-Won, have caused controversy in Korea and further abroad. Ji has praised Japan for "modernising" Korea, and has said of women forced to become sex slaves: "most of the old women claiming to be former comfort women, or sex slaves to the Japanese military during World War II, are fakes." In Korea, such views are widely regarded as being offensive, libellous of the women concerned, and as representing historical revisionism. [3]

Later investigations

As with investigations of Nazi war criminals, official investigations and enquiries are still occurring. During the 1990s, the South Korean government started investigating some individuals who had allegedly become wealthy while collaborating with the Japanese military. In South Korea it is also alleged that, during the political climate of the Cold War, many such individuals — and/or their associates or relatives — were able to acquire influence and to assist in the covering-up, or non-investigation, of war crimes in order not to incriminate themselves.

Non-government bodies and individuals have also undertaken their own investigations. For example, in 2005, a South Korean freelance journalist, Jung Soo-woong, located in Japan some descendants of people involved in the 1895 assassination of Empress Myeongseong (Queen Min), the last Empress of Korea. The assassination was conducted by Japanese government agents, because of the Empress's involvement in attempts to reduce Japanese influence in Korea. Jung recorded the apologies of the individuals.

The Iraq War

In early 2003, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi declared his governing party's support for the United States-led Coalition and the invasion of Iraq. This extent of its support was limited by the Japanese constitution. Nevertheless, 1,000 non-combat Japanese Army personnel were deployed to the coalition-occupied city of Samawah. These events triggered a nationwide controversy within Japan, because of international controversial regarding the war, and the government's perceived indifference to the post-1945 convictions of high-ranking Japanese public officials for crimes against peace. However it is highly controversial to describe Japan's involvement in Iraq as a war crime, and it is considered most unlikely that any official will be charged in relation to these events.

Major incidents

See also


References

  • Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1883319854 ISBN 0756756987 ISBN 0826412580 ISBN 082641415X
  • Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0253334721
  • Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 4900737399
  • Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. ISBN 0375502319 ISBN 0385334966
  • Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing : The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. ISBN 0812966538
  • Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0415091055 ISBN 0415932149
  • Rees, Laurence. Horror in the East, published 2001 by the British Broadcasting Company
  • Seagrave, Peggy & Seagrave, Sterling. Gold Warriors: The Covert History of Yamashita's Treasure, Verso Books, 2003. ISBN 1859845428
  • Williams, Peter. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. ISBN 0029353017

External links

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