What If Japan faced war crime trials?
- Thread starter Joseph Weaver
- Start date
More or less rearmed but still under the auspices of Article 9. The Japanese are smart to call their helicopter carriers as "helicopter destroyers". Plus in 2015, Article 9 was reinterpreted the Japan could not come into the aid of allies as a form of "collective self-defense", drawing ire of China and both Koreas.
I think you mean to say they could come to the aid of their allies.
As above, but it's honestly questionable how long Article 9 is going to be sticking around. The IJN already has light carriers/helicopter destroyers, and while their ships don't carry cruise missiles, that's just it. They don't carry them, but they have the capability to carry and launch them, being based on the American Arleigh Burke Class. Ditto for their submarines. And even within the limits of Article 9, the IJN is already the world's fifth largest navy.
And while China and both Koreas are raging against such...creative, interpretations of Japan's constitutional limitations on the military, no one else in Asia seems to care. And the USA is actually very supporting of Japanese rearmament, if not outright wanting Japan to take it further. Unsurprising, considering how the USA has been pushing all its allies to spend more on their militaries and participate in common defense instead of just doing the bare minimum and letting the US take on the real burden. Japan's willingness to do just that must be a breath of fresh air for the exasperated people in Washington D.C.
Really, at this point, the only real opposition to full rearmament would be the Japanese public's own lukewarm attitude. And who knows how long that lasts, considering how bellicose China and North Korea have become.
Yeah, as many posters here have already supplied names and dates for, they did undergo a series of war crimes trials. Not entirely sure where one gets the idea they didn't.
I forgot to add this one: Masaharu Homma, one of the proponents of the Bataan Death March, was executed by firing squad in 1946.
... it isn't drawing *much* ire from Korea *right now*, but from *China*? Uh, no. China has protested every bit of Japanese military power. Korea *used* to, but let's just say Korea is looking at Japan, looking at China, and going "Well, fuck. America should keep the bastard Nips in their place, and we can use their navy as meat shields"
Japan's recent aggressiveness in Art 9 and similar activities (they've always run slightly above the 1% cap, but not much) (and why Korea and Taiwan and the Phils aren't saying shit since about 2014), is *directly Xi's* fault. No one in that region has *any* nativity over what China's planning. It's just how bad. To be deadly honest, if ROK and ROC haven't restarted their special weapons program, I'd be shocked, and it'd not surprise me one little bit if *Japan* is considering one.
As for "Which WW2 Axis nation was the worst" as I stated, it's arguable. I honestly can't determine. On one hand you have the sheer brutality and stupidity of a *fair* bit of the Japanese actions (and the Battle of Manila wasn't even their *high*, and that's TRULY a sad sad state of affairs), but the one (if you can believe this!) 'saving' grace was that it wasn't a top down, all hands on deck, government/national priority to commit their crimes against humanity, in most cases, Japan even had a fair bit of people in the government protesting and *trying* to stop the various war crimes (Houmra did, for example, but still hung, mostly because MacA wanted vengeance).
Germany cannot claim that. Not only were the various war crimes, de facto and de jure, ordered from the top, far fewer, people tried to stop the war crimes. It's by and large arguable, which was worse.
It really comes down to it: Japan acted like a barbarian horde, Germany under the Furher, as a national crusade bent their industry and will top down, to do it.
Unit 731... while it was technically sanctioned by the Imperial Council, no one really knew what it was doing, and the Japanese (ironically, this is one of the few things most people miss about the Japanese), while not having the latter horror that they do as a culture against WMD, were very leery of biowar, and couldn't find willing top flight researchers for it, in a lot of cases. Most Doctors in Japan are quietly horrified by Unit 731, even at the time, much less now.
As for Hirohito and war crimes.
Yes, he was the Emperor.
Yes, he was the head of state.
Yes, he 'approved' of the war... After it started.
However, like almost every emperor since Naha period, (Meji was an exception, folks!), "You can only give one order. Choose wisely."
He *was not de facto* the chief exec, and in real terms, he only could *give one order* in his entire life. MacA *understood this.* One of the reasons why Hirohito offered himself up for trial... was as the head of state and monarch, under Japanese (and to be fair, a lot of other cultures) he was the symbolic 'soul' of the nation, and was the representative of the nation and the people. MacA by *not putting him on trial* (and to be fair, a totally unbiased jury who understood the politics and culture, would have a hard time finding him truly guilty of more than one or two non capital crimes.) *absolved the Japanese people collectivity*
From the lowest eta to the highest prince. *That is why both actions were so brilliant*
Side note: I grew up in Japan, consider myself fond of the Japanese culture and history, and I can say this. I do not, and will never agree with the de jure whitewashing of the history of Japan in World War 2. Nor does my wife (Who is Japanese and who didn't learn about most of this, until she married me and stole my textbooks from my college days).
I do on the other hand, think the amount of kicking Germany *got* and *still* gets for the Nazi is juuuust a tad overdone today.
As for the Filipino people? Their actions and deeds in WW2 is *sadly* understudied. Anyone who's studied it, respects, and honors their bravery, their loyalty, and their stubborn determination.
As a Filipino, thank you. My countrymen's efforts to hold the Japanese down for 6 months is credited for giving the United States the preparations for the Battle of Midway. It meant that the Japanese advance was delayed causing them to reprioritize in pacifying the Philippines. Even then, the Japanese did not get to hold the entirety of the archipelago. Resistance continued in the far flung islands and the jungles. These resistance are also credited in providing intel where to land in Leyte.
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It would have resulted in an uprising among the Japanese people. This time, the U.S. occupational forces would have a difficult time to quell it. Thou shall not underestimate the resolve, devotion, and anger of a people who revere the Emperor with high regard.
A guerilla war against the OTL compliant right wingers. While winnable, it would require the cooperation of Communists and socialists. Basically, America would have to let them in power in order to stabilize Japan. That would be funny.
All that's true, of course, but to directly answer Joseph Weaver's question, Tsuji just seems to have been one of those who sneaked through the gaps of end-of-war chaos - like, say, Mengele and Eichmann did. He spent 1945-48 basically wandering through the backwoods of Southeast Asia and Southern China, often under assumed names; and these were areas were there weren't any U.S. or British troops hanging around with "Most Wanted" posters. By the time he returned to Japan, the war crimes trials were all wrapped up, and Japan was being transitioned to independent existence.
[There are rumors, as the Wiki article notes, that he worked for the CIA later. It's hard to evaluate that. It wouldn't surprise me, perhaps; but it's hard to know. I do think if that if Tsuji had been captured and ID'd at war's end, he would have been (as he should have been, in all justice) put on trial and stretched rope. He didn't have any intelligence value at that time to the U.S., and what he'd done would have raised the bar to waiving prosecution very, very high. It's alleged that Major General Charles Willoughby, General Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence chief, managed to get him off the hook (on grounds that he would be a good agent against the communists) when he first popped up on the radar in '48, but I haven't really looked into it. As if I needed any more reason to hate Willoughby.]
I do regret that we didn't make a more aggressive effort to track him down - and sustain that effort for as long as it took.
As I like to think of it: the Japanese engaged in murderous brutality as a widespread freelance exercise. The Germans made an industrial enterprise of it. Which is worse? Hmmmm.
The Nazis of course get more attention and not just because of the snappy Hugo Boss uniforms. On the other hand, they usually treated Western POW's humanely and the Soviet POW's as vermin; whereas the Japanese treated ALL of their POWs as vermin.
On body count, the Nazis probably come out on top, with about 14 million or so civilian dead versus 6-10 million for the Japanese; but really, the horror is piled so high on both ends that it feels inhumanely pedantic to try to award some kind of megadeath trophy out here.
I think Yamashita might not be executed if the trials are more widespread and less rushed.
I think that's a big part of the reason why Filipinos are so pro-American despite stuff like this. The Imperial Japanese were simply so much worse than the Americans (who were always kinda half-hearted in their colonization IIRC), and the Philippines got independence right after the war ended. Thus, the U.S. is remembered at least as much as liberators as they are as occupiers.
Possibly, but then if MacArthur really was the decisive factor, I can't see that his moxie would have been any weaker in 1947 or 1948 than it was in 1946.
But I do tend to think that Yamashita was another case of victor's justice. Tsuji was the one who really deserved to stretch rope.
That's the problem. Tsuji mostly spent his time in the areas of Southeast Asia and southern China were there were no Allied police. He did however travel to China where he was arrested by the Chinese communists. He was trying to undermine the U.S.-Japan post-war alliance. How he got into a deal with Mao Zedong is beyond me.
It was only 1952 when he ran for the Diet and fled to Laos in 1961 when he was never heard from again.
It would be ironic if Tsuji was killed by South Korean troops in the Vietnam War. That would be symbolic justice.
Or maybe the Pathet Lao or NVA turned on him once they realized his identity.
Or maybe he was killed by a B-52 bombing raid. We will never know.
If Yamashita got the gallows and Homma got the firing squad, Tsuji deserved something similar.
Here's a book regarding him (unfortunately hidden behind a paywall):
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The Philippine-American War is easily swept under the rug. Of course, us Filipinos would never forget the war crimes such as the Battle of Samar which saw the burning of villages and the looting of the Balangiga Bells. The bells were only returned in December 2018. Prior to that, several Philippine presidents unsuccessfully lobied to the U.S. to have it returned.
Here, the Japanese tried to keep the Filipinos in their sphere by letting them remember what the Americans did to them 40 years prior. Unfortunately, majority sided with the resistance and the Allies because of Japanese war crimes such as Bataan, comfort women, rapes, infanticide (throwing babies in the air and catching them with bayonets or katanas), and massacres.
The Americans did keep their promise to return and they did in October 1944. Then freedom was finally granted on July 4, 1946. Communism became the next threat so naturally, Filipinos who lived through the war chose the be in the U.S. bloc.