This film illustrates the cruelty imposed on Allied forces by the Japanese military including a crucifixion scene.
Watching this film recently got me thinking. Although the war crimes trials of the Germans were very well publicised and covered in history books, but I do not recall anything about wart crimes trials of the Japanese.
Were there any such trials?
Perhaps this is a matter of perspective; the war crimes and the subsequent trials are well known in Australia, the USA, China and in the Pacific area in general. For that matter, many Brits who were posted in the area suffered appalling treatment.
A little bit of Googling will give you plenty of references, both in books and otherwise. The highest Japanese politician actually executed was Hideki Tojo the Prime Minister. Controversially (at the time and up to the present)the Japanese Emperor and his family were given immunity by the MacArthur led American government of occupation.
But this is a vast subject - there is plenty of information around on the subject.
There were war crimes trials held in Tokyo in 1948, which resulted in death sentences for, among others, General Yamashita, who led the assault on Malaya and Singapore and was later in command of the Japanese defense of the Philippines when American forces landed to begin their liberation in October, 1944.
General MacArthur did not confer immunity upon the Emperor, which even he did not have the formal power to do. The Japanese surrender in 1945 was predicated in part on their being able to retain the Emperor, and the United States made the decision that this was a small concession to bring a quick end to the war. Many people felt (and feel) that Hirohito should have stood trial, but as the exact degree of his culpability has always been uncertain, given his largely figurehead status, a trial probably would not have resulted in a conviction and would have served no practical purpose. (Personally, I think he should have been compelled to abdicate, even if the monarchy was permitted to remain.) Both MacArthur and the American government clearly believed the terms of the surrender precluded any trial of the Emperor, and it was never seriously contemplated. As to his family, I have no idea what crimes they may have committed or been charged with, but I never heard that their fate was tied in with not prosecuting Hirohito.
In both the Pacific and Europe, I think it's safe to say, postwar justice was not always, or equally, served in the prosecution of war crimes.
The Japanese have always been reluctant to admit their wickedness. Even to this day I don't think there has been a sincere and unequivocal apology. Moreover, their aggression is routinely glossed-over in their own post-war educational history, preferring to labour the allied use of nuclear weapons in emphasis of themselves as victims. That's why I despise revisionist movies like `Letters From Iwo Jima' that present them as an enemy with a human face. They're still pretty much in denial about their role in the `Rape of Nanking'.
shareTo be fair and accurate, one must state WHICH Japanese don't want to take responsibility for what happened, just as one must state WHICH Americans think we were always lily pure and did nothing "wicked" that couldn't be shown to a Sunday School class.
shareThey had the Tokyo trials and executed a few but the big players got away with it.
Specially the scums of the Unit 731.
Even today the japaneses are still in denial and I read years ago they removed from their history books school what role they played. Sure they got nuked twice but they totally deserved.
In comparaison the nazis are like school boys.
But guess what, they make great videogames and the average weeboo don't care.
One more thing, you'll see plenty of movies of WW2 featuring the germans but nothing with the japaneses.
By the way, in Japan they still honor their war criminals in temples.
Imagine if Germany had such places...
Senior Sgt. Kazuo Mitomo described some of *Unit 100's human experiments:
"I put as much as a gram of heroin into some porridge and gave this porridge to an arrested Chinese citizen who ate it; about 20 minutes later he lost consciousness and remained in that state until he died 15-16 hours later. We knew that such a dose of heroin is fatal, but it did not make any difference to us whether he died or lived. On some of the prisoners I experimented 5-6 times, testing the action of Korean bindweed, bactal and castor oil seeds. One of the prisoners of Russian nationality became so exhausted from the experiments that no more could be performed on him, and Matsui ordered me to kill that Russian by giving him an injection of potassium cyanide. After the injection, the man died at once. Bodies were buried in the unit's cattle cemetery."
*Unit 100 is obviously different than the 731.