This essay reexamines the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, commonly known as the Tokyo Trial, by addressing the principle of legality, the non-retroactivity of law, General Douglas MacArthur’s 1951 testimony before the U.S. Senate, and the statements of Justice Radhabinod Pal and Major General Charles A. Willoughby. It questions the Tokyo Trial view of history and its influence on Japan’s postwar historical understanding.

August 29, 2020
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
■ The International Military Tribunal for the Far East
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, conducted from 1946 to 1948 and hereinafter referred to simply as the Tokyo Trial, bore the name of a “trial,” but had no underlying legal basis and was therefore nothing more than a lynching carried out by the victorious powers, in disregard of both the “principle of legality” and the “principle of the non-retroactivity of law.”
If anything could be called its legal basis, it was the “Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East” issued by MacArthur.
However, after the Korean War, MacArthur himself testified before a U.S. Senate military committee that the Allied economic blockade and oil embargo against Japan had driven the country into a profoundly desperate situation, and gave testimony to the effect that the Tokyo Trial had been wrong because “the war Japan fought was a war of self-defense.”
At the Tokyo Trial, seven men were found guilty of crimes against peace as Class-A war criminals, hanged, and had their remains discarded in Tokyo Bay.
Is that something the people of a civilized nation would do?
In addition, approximately 2,000 people were executed for war crimes as Class-B war criminals and for crimes against humanity as Class-C war criminals.
It was a war, and many scholars of international law around the world later pointed out that it was unjust to condemn only the officers and soldiers of the defeated nations.
Immediately before the end of the war, Japan was already in a lame-duck condition and was even attempting to ask the Soviet Union to mediate peace negotiations—something of which the United States was, of course, aware—and therefore there was absolutely no need to drop the atomic bombs in order to bring the war to an early end.
President Truman deliberately decided to drop the atomic bombs in order to conduct an atomic-bomb experiment and make a show of force against the Soviet Union, thereby slaughtering 300,000 people.
He was the true Class-B and Class-C war criminal.
Justice Pal of India stated: “It was the Western powers themselves that were primarily responsible for the invasion of Asia. Nevertheless, you teach your own children that ‘Japan committed crimes’ and that ‘Japan dared to commit the outrage of aggression.’ … I cannot overlook the way in which Japan’s young people are being made to bear a distorted sense of guilt, becoming servile, and suffering the devastation of their hearts.”
5: MacArthur’s testimony: Testimony given on May 3, 1951, before the U.S. Senate Joint Committee on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations.
He testified: “Japan had practically nothing indigenous, except the silkworm. … All of those materials existed in the waters of Asia. If those supplies were cut off, there was a fear that Japan would be faced with between 10 million and 12 million unemployed people. Therefore, the purpose for which they entered the war was largely dictated by the necessities of security.”
Even Major General Charles Willoughby, who occupied the important position of chief of GHQ’s Military Intelligence Section and personally engaged in the work of indoctrinating the Japanese people through intelligence operations and censorship, considered that the Tokyo Trial had gone too far, stating: “This trial was the worst hypocrisy in history. … I believe that if the United States had been placed in the same circumstances in which Japan found itself, it would undoubtedly have gone to war just as Japan did.”
Nevertheless, as will be explained two sections later, the Japanese historians of that time unanimously supported the Tokyo Trial view of history, leaving one utterly at a loss for words (!).