The Tokyo Tribunal: Precedent for Victor’s Justice II

Besides, previous publication of Nuremberg Tribunal: A Precedent for Victor’s Justice (2020), the study is named as The Tokyo Tribunal: Precedent for Victor’s Justice II. The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were heinous crimes against humankind that caused physical, material, socio-cultural, and emotional losses. The bombings violated humanitarian law. This paper aims to find out the situations of the investigation, prosecution and punishment, and analyse the preference for justice: victor’s justice or victim’s justice. During World War II, anti-communist Emperor Hirohito actively led Japan decorated by the Army’s uniform but pretended to be a ceremonial Emperor making scapegoats to his opponents. Former Prime Ministers Konoe and Tojo were conspiratorially assassinated. Hirohito bribed callous US Army General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur ordered to gather testimonies to prove Hirohito as innocent. The Tokyo Tribunal was biased since it did not speak a word against the indiscriminate bombings and mass killings in Chinese cities, among others. The Tribunal had a pseudo justice body, highly influenced by the US military and retributive justice doctrines. Judges were appointed from each allied victor excluding from Japan. Five of the 11 Judges submitted separate opinions on their judgment. Justice had been elusive for the innocent, weak, and poor victims. Most crimes committed went unpunished. The Tribunal ironically ensured the victor’s justice, further limiting the victim’s justice. Thus, the Tribunal appeared as a sword in a judge's toupee.

From Australia to Leyte Gulf

In 1940 a small group of mathematicians and classicists began to work on Japanese codes with the encouragement of the Australian Army, and several of them began to learn Japanese. In the same year the Censorship Office in Melbourne launched a Japanese course to meet the needs for censors with a command of Japanese. This was the first Allied response to the demand for Japanese linguists. Some of the graduates were posted to Wireless Units in Queensland or the Northern Territory where they derived intelligence from Japanese wireless communications. After US forces had been forced to abandon the Philippines, General Douglas MacArthur had set up his headquarters in Australia. While the US Navy established the Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne, MacArthur created Central Bureau in Brisbane to deal with encrypted messages. This was staffed by graduates of US language schools, the Censorship Office School in Melbourne and Bedford Japanese School. Soon afterwards the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section was formed, which provided linguists to follow the troops as they fought their way towards Japan: they interrogated prisoners and translated documents found on the battlefield.

Nothing to Fear

Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal provided a bonanza for the “Washington Merry-Go-Round.” The president and his cabinet members showered the columnists with strategic leaks, often to test the waters before making official announcements. This enabled Drew Pearson and Robert Allen to scoop the rest of the press corps on pending appointments and other issues. Although Pearson admired Roosevelt and his liberal policies, he resisted playing propagandist. He criticized the administration and irritated Roosevelt by revealing news the president was not yet ready to release. Roosevelt retaliated by prompting General Douglas MacArthur to file a libel suit against the columnists, and by denouncing Pearson as a “chronic liar.” Pearson used the column to attack his father’s critic, Senator Millard Tydings, which Robert Allen regarded as vindictive. The pressures of reporting eventually caused strains between the two columnists, leading Allen to quit the column after Pearson revealed damaging information about General George S. Patton during World War II.

The Shroud Slips: Guadalcanal

The Marines’ approach to publicity differed from that of both Douglas MacArthur and Ernest King. While these two commanders sought to control the news agenda from afar, using their own communiqués to reveal only what they wanted the public to know, the Marines pioneered the concept of combat correspondents. Two of them landed on Guadalcanal in early August, where they worked with two civilian correspondents, Richard Tregaskis and Robert Miller. Initially, a combination of tenuous communications and overzealous censorship meant that these correspondents struggled to tell the story of Guadalcanal. But this began to change once the Marines’ position became more secure and, crucially, Tregaskis left the island to write up his famous diary of the campaign.

Introduction

The Pacific War was particularly difficult for the media to cover. The long distances, the terrible weather, the tendency of Douglas MacArthur and Ernest King to prioritize operational security, especially during the defeats of 1941 and 1942, and media bosses in the United States who focused more on Europe than Asia all meant that the fighting in the Pacific was often shrouded from the American public. The situation did not start to improve until 1943 and 1944, as US forces took the offensive, and the army and navy engaged in a dynamic rivalry to grab the biggest share of the headlines. But while the war continued in Europe, even major battles like those fought on Saipan and Okinawa were often buried on the inside pages.

Fiasco in the Philippines

Douglas MacArthur was determined to control how the media portrayed his efforts to defend the Philippines. On occasion, this meant encouraging reporters to strike an upbeat tone in order to persuade Washington to send him reinforcements, but for the most part, it resulted in another act of concealment. MacArthur was keen to cover up the extent of the catastrophe that befell his air force on Clark Field at the start of the campaign. He also wanted to deny the Japanese operational information as his forces retreated to the Bataan peninsula. In the chaos of defeat, his command often lacked the capacity to censor and communicate long stories written by the group of highly competitive reporters who remained on Bataan. Not until these correspondents managed to evacuate to Australia in April did the home front become aware of the extent of the defeat in the Philippines.

“The Anatomy of Allied Occupation: Contesting the Resumption of Japanese Antarctic Whaling, 1945–1952”

This article scrutinizes the controversy surrounding the resumption of Japanese Antarctic whaling from 1946, focusing on the negotiations and concessions that underline the nature of the Allied Occupation as an international undertaking. Britain, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand objected to Japanese pelagic whaling, chiefly on the grounds of its past record of wasteful and inefficient operations. Their opposition forced the Natural Resources Section of General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, to increase the number of Allied inspectors on board the two Japanese whaling factories from one to two, and to respond carefully to the criticisms they made of the conduct of Japanese whaling. U.S. sensitivity to international censure caused the Occupation to encourage the factory vessels to prioritize oil yields over meat and blubber for domestic consumption. Moreover, General Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. Occupation commander, summarily rejected a proposal to increase the number of Japanese fleets from two to three in 1947. With its preponderance of power, the United States successfully promoted Japanese Antarctic whaling, but a tendency to focus only on outcomes obscures the lengthy and difficult processes that enabled Japanese whaling expeditions to take place on an annual basis from late 1946.