Wiki Philippines

Tag: imtfe

  • International Military Tribunal for the Far East

    Definition

    The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial, was the military tribunal convened in occupied Tokyo to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed up to and during the Second World War. It was constituted by a special proclamation of General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers on January 19, 1946, which the same day approved the tribunal’s Charter, modeled on the Nuremberg tribunal formed months earlier; the indictment of 28 defendants was filed on April 29, 1946, the prosecution opened on May 3, 1946, and the judgment ran to November 12, 1948. The tribunal sat at Ichigaya, Tokyo, with judges from eleven Allied nations — Australia, Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States — under the presidency of Sir William Webb of Australia. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    The Philippines sat on the bench through Delfín Jaranilla, a survivor of the Bataan Death March who had served as Attorney General of the Philippines and as an Associate Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court. The verdicts closed the Class A reckoning: two defendants died during the trial and one was ruled unfit, all twenty-five of the remainder were convicted, and seven were hanged at Sugamo Prison on December 23, 1948 — Hideki Tojo, Koki Hirota, Seishiro Itagaki, Kenji Doihara, Heitaro Kimura, Iwane Matsui, and Akira Muto, Yamashita’s chief of staff in the Philippines, whose Tokyo conviction this wiki’s Akira Muto entry keeps distinct from the Manila commission that tried his chief. (Wikipedia — Delfín Jaranilla, Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    Identities

    Source Type Identity
    Wikipedia International Military Tribunal for the Far East — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Military_Tribunal_for_the_Far_East (verified this session)
    Wikidata International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Q133539310) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133539310 (verified this session as the item linked from the English Wikipedia article)
    DBpedia International_Military_Tribunal_for_the_Far_East — https://dbpedia.org/page/International_Military_Tribunal_for_the_Far_East (verified this session; typed as Court)
    ProductOntology N/A
    Wiktionary N/A
    Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) N/A — id.loc.gov returned HTTP 403 this session
    MeSH N/A
    NCBI Taxonomy N/A
    AGROVOC N/A
    Google Scholar International Military Tribunal for the Far East IMTFE Tokyo Trial Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal charter January 19 1946 MacArthur special proclamation CIMTFE indictment April 29 1946 trial May 3 1946 November 12 1948 Ichigaya eleven nations William Webb Delfin Jaranilla Philippines Radhabinod Pal dissent 28 defendants Class A seven hanged Sugamo December 23 1948 Tojo Muto Matsui Nanjing victor’s justice ex post facto Treaty of San Francisco Article 11
    ConceptNet N/A
    OpenCyc N/A

    Also Known As

    • IMTFE — the standard initialism
    • Tokyo Trial — the common English name
    • Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal
    • 極東国際軍事裁判 (Kyokutō Kokusai Gunji Saiban) — the formal Japanese styling
    • 東京裁判 (Tōkyō Saiban) — the short Japanese name

    Examples and Analogies

    Usage Scenarios

    1. Citing the Tokyo Charter in International Criminal Law

    The tribunal is the Far East pillar of postwar criminal law — the January 19, 1946 Charter defining crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, alongside the Nuremberg charter it was modeled on. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East)

    2. Researching the Philippine Seat

    Jaranilla’s file anchors the Philippine presence: pensionado scholar of 1903, Georgetown law graduate of 1907, Attorney General 1927–1932, briefly Secretary of Justice, Agriculture, and Commerce in 1945, then Associate Justice before the Tokyo seat. (Wikipedia — Delfín Jaranilla)

    3. Tracing the Command-Responsibility Doctrine’s Tokyo Evolution

    Where the Yamashita case supplied command responsibility’s modern form at Manila, Tokyo carried the doctrine up the chain: Matsui was convicted for the Nanjing Massacre — the tribunal finding more than 200,000 Chinese killed in about two months — though acquitted of crimes against peace, and Muto’s conviction reached the staff officer’s share of the Philippine atrocities. (Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判, Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East)

    4. Teaching Judicial Dissent

    The opinion structure is a syllabus in plural adjudication: Pal’s dissent holding all accused not guilty, Röling’s partial dissents, Bernard’s procedural objection, Webb’s and Jaranilla’s separate opinions. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    5. Administering the Peace-Treaty Settlement

    Article 11 of the Treaty of San Francisco made Japan’s acceptance of the judgments the treaty basis for the sentences, with clemency and parole decided by the sentencing governments — the machinery that emptied the Class-A roll by 1956 and granted final clemency in 1957. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East)

    Strategies

    Security and Safety Measures

    Historical Context

    MacArthur’s January 19, 1946 proclamation and Charter gave the court its law; the indictment of April 29, 1946 charged twenty-eight civilian and military leaders, and the trial opened at the Ichigaya courtroom on May 3, 1946, running two and a half years to the judgment of November 4–12, 1948. The Japanese government bore the trial’s costs, in the Japanese account some 2.7 billion yen, and the executions at Sugamo began minutes after midnight on December 23, 1948. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    The Philippines’ place at Tokyo ran through its own occupation. Jaranilla — born in La Paz, Iloilo in 1883, forced on the Bataan Death March in 1942, and an Associate Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court in 1945–1946 before taking the tribunal seat — is recorded among the bench’s harsher members, in the Japanese account of the view that the sentences were too lenient. The Philippine war record entered the trial through the charges against Muto — “a campaign of slaughter, torture and other atrocities against the Filipino civilian population, prisoners of war and civilian internees,” the charge this wiki’s Akira Muto entry preserves — while Yamashita had already gone to the Manila commission and the gallows at Los Baños in February 1946. (Wikipedia — Delfín Jaranilla, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    MacArthur confirmed the verdicts on November 24, 1948; the Treaty of San Francisco of September 8, 1951 recorded Japan’s acceptance of the judgments and routed clemency through the sentencing governments; parole emptied the Class-A roll by March 1956, with final clemency on April 7, 1957. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    Challenges and Controversies

    The Emperor’s Exemption

    Emperor Hirohito and the imperial family were excluded from prosecution, testimony, and incriminating evidence by the occupation’s decision — the Far Eastern Commission resolved on April 3, 1946 not to prosecute, and the record carries the arrangement by which Tojo “should be made to bear all responsibility.” Justice Bernard pointed at the gap: the war’s “principal author” had escaped all prosecution. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    Victor’s Justice and Ex Post Facto Law

    The standing critique — pressed in Pal’s 1,235-page dissent and the Japanese account’s criticism section — is that the victors tried the vanquished under crimes, above all crimes against peace, defined after the fact; that Allied acts, the atomic bombings included, lay outside the tribunal’s jurisdiction; and that the bench sat entirely from victorious nations, with hearsay admitted. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    A Divided Bench

    Pal would have acquitted all the accused while conceding the atrocities overwhelming; Röling sought acquittals for five defendants; Bernard withheld concurrence on procedural grounds; Webb and Jaranilla wrote separately — the Philippine justice reading the sentences as too lenient against the record of his own country’s occupation. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Japanese Wikipedia — 極東国際軍事裁判)

    Selective Prosecution

    Unit 731’s members, including Shiro Ishii, received immunity in exchange for germ-warfare data, and some forty-two untried Class A suspects — Nobusuke Kishi among them, a future prime minister — were released in 1947–1948. (Wikipedia — International Military Tribunal for the Far East)

    Related Topic

    • Akira Muto
    • Tomoyuki Yamashita
    • Yamashita Trial
    • Delfín Jaranilla
    • Command responsibility
    • Nanjing Massacre
    • Bataan Death March
    • Battle of Manila (1945)
    • Sugamo Prison
    • Nuremberg trials
    • Radhabinod Pal
    • Treaty of San Francisco
    • Occupation of Japan
    • War crimes in the Philippines

    References

    1. International Military Tribunal for the Far East — Wikipedia
    2. 極東国際軍事裁判 (Kyokutō Kokusai Gunji Saiban) — Japanese Wikipedia
    3. Delfín Jaranilla — Wikipedia