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Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
Top of the pile
91
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
85/100Critics
96/100Scholars
Author:
Gary J. Bass
Publisher:
Knopf
Date:
October 17, 2023
A history of the trial of Japan's leaders as war criminalsâthe largely overlooked Asian counterpart to Nuremberg. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march. For the Allied powers, the trial was an opportunity to render judgment on their vanquished foes, but also to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war, building a more peaceful world under international law and American hegemony. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was victors' justice.
What The Reviewers Say
An elegantly written and comprehensive treatment of the prosecution of Japanese war crimes after the Second World War.
Bass begins his massive, magisterial account of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials with American military police arriving to arrest former Japanese prime minister Tojo Hideki at his home on September 11, 1945.
[A] comprehensive, landmark and riveting book, which is both a sickening record of atrocities and a legal, hairsplitting analysis, as the judges argued over natural law, aggressive war, chain of command and more.
Exhaustive and fascinating.
