In the early morning of December 23, 1948, Hideki Tojo ended his final struggle on the gallows of Tokyo Shoya Prison. The former prime minister, who once threatened to "let Americans see the spirit of Japanese samurai", died of anger after tightening the noose for 9 minutes. Subsequently, six Class A war criminals including Kenji Doihara and Seishiro Itagaki were sent to the gallows one after another. When dawn pierces the sky, seven corpses sway in the cold wind - this is the final result of the Tokyo trial lasting two years and seven months.
Only 7 were executed in the dock; 419 witnesses appeared in court, 4336 written evidence piled up, but countless crimes were still ruthless. This largest international trial in human history is the surface of the winner's ruling on the loser, but in fact it is undercurrent: Chinese judge Mei Ruyu wrote a suicide note before the sentencing vote: "If the war criminals cannot be severely punished, there will be no face to see the elders of Jiangdong again, but they will die after going through the sea!" The final hanging sentence was only thrillingly passed by a 6:5 vote.
When the noose falls, the real game has just begun. Those demons who escaped judgment are quietly weaving the net of resurrection of militarism.
The undercurrent judgement table
On May 3, 1946, the Far East International Military Tribunal held a hearing in the Japanese Army Provincial Auditorium in Tani Takata, Tokyo. Judges from 11 countries sat upright on the trial stand, and 28 Class A war criminals below the stage looked different. Outside the court, MacArthur's Allied Headquarters building in Japan looked down on all this - the five-star general held the right to appoint judges and the right to kill war criminals, turning the Tokyo trial into a stage dominated by the United States.
The court has not yet entered the substantive trial, and the dispute over the ranking has ignited the smoke of gunpowder. Australian presiding judge Weber arbitrarily lowered China's seat from second to third, but Britain rose to second. Mei Ruyu left the seat on the spot: "The Chinese government will never accept such an arrangement!" He pointed to the representatives of the United States and Britain, questioning: "China's fourteen years of the War of Resistance Against Japan, suffered 35 million casualties, and ranked second when signing the surrender letter. Today, if we sit in the second seat, it is better to return home and die!" With the focus of off-site reporters, Weber was forced to convene a judge to vote three times, and China finally regained the second seat.
This battle of ranking uncovers the difficulties of the trial:
The power gap: the Chinese delegation only has 17 people, while the defense lawyer team of 28 war criminals has as many as 130 people;
Rules Trap: The principle of presumption of innocence in the British and American legal system becomes the amulet of war criminals. When Qin Dechun, deputy chief of the Chinese Military and Political Department, accused the Japanese army of "killing people everywhere and setting fires", the judge scolded him for "no evidence" and almost expelled him from the court;
The arrogance of war criminals: Kenji Doihara fought silently throughout the whole process; Seishiro Itagaki shouted "innocence", saying that he wanted to "fight for three hundred rounds" with the prosecutor.
Prosecutor Ni Zhengyi felt heartbroken: "We thought that the winner punished the loser just by going through the form, but we didn't know that it was necessary to prove it!" The biggest obstacle to collecting evidence was time. The court actually set the starting point of Japan's invasion of China as the Pearl Harbor incident in 1941, completely erasing China's fourteen years of bloody resistance! After the Chinese team argued, the court reluctantly agreed to start from the Huanggutun incident in 1928. At that time, it was 18 years since the incident, the evidence was annihilated, the witnesses were separated, and the road to obtaining evidence was full of thorns.
Voice of China in a desperate situation
On August 16, 1946, the court air suddenly solidified. The last emperor Puyi slowly walked to the witness table, and Seishiro Itagaki's face twitched violently on the dock. When the judge asked for a sign, Puyi's eyes were like a torch: "It's him!" The sign was like thunder, and the Japanese defense lawyer team immediately launched a crazy siege.
Puyi appeared in court for eight consecutive days to set a trial record. Faced with the threats and intimidation of lawyers, he revealed in detail how Itagaki threatened and tempted him to be the "Emperor" of Manchukuo: "They showed me the photos of flesh and blood flying in the 'Tianjin Incident', and said that this would be the end of not cooperating." This testimony became the key sharp blade to crush the debauchery of war criminals.
On another battlefield, Chinese prosecutors are carrying out more difficult evidence collection. In order to overthrow the "Manchu Demon" Kenji Doihara, Ni Zhengyi used the puppet Manchukuo Fengtian Mayor Zhao Xinbo to testify. This person promised to cooperate first, but retreated fearing the crime. In a desperate situation, the investigation team dug out key witnesses in the vast sea of people: Qin Dechun, who signed the Qin Tu Agreement with Tuohara, and Wang Lengzhai, who personally experienced the July 7 Incident.
When Dohihara's old subordinate Aizawa Makoto argued for him, Qin Dechun revealed on the spot: "The people of Northeast China called Dohihara the 'Bandits Source', and the children cried at night, and stopped hearing this name!" European and American judges were stunned. Doihara gave up on defense at this point - he knew that every defense would reveal more bloody cases.
The most exciting game was staged in the case of Seishiro Itagaki. This person submitted a 48-page self-defense letter and dispatched a large group of witnesses. His old subordinate Masaichi Shimamoto turned black and white in court: "September 18th is a self-defense operation!" Mei Ruyu suddenly asked, "Where were you on the night of the incident?" Shimamoto blurted out: "Drunk at a friend's house..." Prosecutor Xiang Zhejun immediately stood up: "How can a drunk man testify?" The presiding judge immediately expelled him. The Chinese team used the mouths of enemy witnesses to tear the net woven by lies.
Trades behind the noose
As Tojo Hideki and seven others stepped onto the gallows, more demons were slipping away from the back door. Emperor Hirohito lived safely in the palace; Prince Hirohiko Asakamiya swung his hand at the golf course; Shiro Ishii, the leader of the 731st unit, submitted bacterial warfare data in the US military laboratory - these scenes form the ironic shadow of the Tokyo trial.
The Emperor's exemption is a meticulous deal. In September 1945, after Hirohito's confidant Yuichi Kido was imprisoned, the emperor secretly met with MacArthur late at night. An hour later, MacArthur called Washington: "The Emperor is the best tool to maintain order." At this time, the Soviet Union's call for severe punishment for the Emperor was fierce, but the United States needed Japan to become an anti-communist fortress. Therefore, Article 6 of the Court Charter was quietly amended: the head of state will not be held accountable.
Dirty transactions are carried out in secret rooms. Shiro Ishii exchanged 700 pages of human experiment data for the gold medal of exemption from crime. When Chinese prosecutors collected evidence of his live-dissection of a pregnant woman, the United States actually listed the evidence as a "top secret file." It was not until 2003 that a declassified "Kamakura Agreement" revealed the truth: the US military exchanged data for "not holding the 731 Unit accountable."
The wave of pardon is surging in the clouds of the Cold War. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, MacArthur urgently ordered the release of all untrialed war criminals. Nobusuke Kishi, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, was released from prison with his head high and was elected Prime Minister of Japan several years later - this person was Shinzo Abe's grandfather. By 1958, all war criminals in custody were free, including the demons who created the "Batan Death March".
"The United States needs Japan to fight communism, so it suspended the punishment." This political calculation has reduced the Tokyo trial to a half-final project. When the photos of Tojo being hanged were reported, the Japanese people learned about the Nanjing Massacre; and as the war criminals returned, the blood stains on the textbooks were quickly wiped clean.
One vote determines the world
In April 1948, the drafting of the verdict entered a moment of life and death. Mei Ruyu insists on listing the "Nanjing Massacre" chapter separately. In court, he showed the image: the Yangtze River was red, the women and children were killed... The judge's bench was silent. Suddenly, Indian judge Parr sneered: "Where is no one who can't die in the war?" Mei Ruyu slapped the table and said: "These are 300,000 unjust souls! If you are ruling the culprit, please step by my body first!" Finally, in the 1213-page verdict, Chapter 10 specifically describes the atrocities in Nanjing.
Sentence vote triggered a greater crisis. President Weber advocated exile of war criminals; American judges supported shooting but opposed hanging; Indian judges even claimed that all were not guilty. Mei Ruyu ran all night among judges from various countries, his throat was dull and his eyes were red. On the night of the final vote, he stepped into the conference room with his suicide note hidden in his pocket - if the war criminals cannot be severely punished, he will show his ambitions by death.
"Please hold up your six hands. "Antagonists?" Five hands raised. 6:5 Seven war criminals were sentenced to hang.
Behind this slight advantage, 35 million Chinese undead stood. When the noose was put on the east neck, Mei Ruyu wrote in his diary: "At this moment, I seem to hear the wailing on the Yangtze River in Nanjing gradually subside."
Unclosed historical wounds
Seven bodies on the gallows of Chaoya Prison failed to bring a complete liquidation to Asia. In the Yasukuni Shrine, 14 Class A war criminals secretly moved into the temple in 1978 still enjoy incense. Those released war criminals wrote memoirs, formed right-wing groups, and controlled the political and economic lifeline of Japan. Half of Kishi Nobusuke's cabinet members were pardoned war criminals.
The biggest flaw in the Tokyo Trial is that it has not cut off the roots of militarist thought. As the judges argued about the legal process, Shiro Ishii continued to study bacterial warfare in the US military laboratory; when the noose fell, the "research results" of Unit 731 were being imported into the US military's Korean battlefield. In Japanese textbooks, the Nanjing Massacre was downplayed as the "Nanjing Incident" and comfort women were called "wartime volunteers."
Mei Ruyu wrote the "International Military Tribunal of the Far East" in his later years, leaving a motto before his death: "Forgetting the sufferings of the past may lead to future disasters." His unfinished manuscript and the 1213-page judgment jointly prove that the historical trial has never ended.
On September 7, 2020, Gao Wenbin, the last witness of the Tokyo Trial. In 1946, he buried tens of millions of words of evidence and convicted Matsui Ishione. When the centenarian closed his eyes, Japanese politicians were queuing up to visit the Yasukuni Shrine. Sin and redemption under the gallows are still confronting in the corridor of time.
The bodies under the gallows have long turned into dust, but the protracted contest in the Kaede Highlands in Tokyo is still echoing in history. The seven heads that Mei Ruyu and others barely cut off with the sword of law ultimately failed to completely eliminate the lesions of militarism. When the data of Unit 731 became a bargaining chip for the Cold War and when Kishi Nobusuke and others regained their power, the slight victory of 6:5 on the judges seemed so tragic.
The ghosts of war criminals who escaped from the judgment are still wandering in the incense of the Yasukuni Shrine more than half a century later. And Judge Mei's alarm bell penetrates time and space: "Forget the suffering of the past may lead to future disasters." This may be the heaviest legacy left to us by the Tokyo Trial - the fruit of victory needs to be watered with the memories of generations to prevent it from drying out in the wind of time.
