Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 187, Lifting the Lost, Part 5.

So last week, we covered the lead-up to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East,

better known as the Tokyo War Crimes Trials.

This week, we're going to talk about the substance of the trial.

Now, as a reminder, the Tokyo trials were originally conceived as the first step in a multi-stage process.

The vast, complicated apparatus of the Japanese government during World War II,

which did, of course, operate under a model of diffusing as much responsibility around as possible,

meant that so many people were culpable that it was impractical to do the trials in the

single round. Instead, 29 defendants were chosen for the first run. Others would naturally follow.

And, hey, that seemed sensible enough at the time. After all, the Nuremberg trials

took just under a year to complete. A few rounds of trials in Japan couldn't possibly last

beyond 1948 or 49, right? As we discussed last week, our first lucky 29 contestants were primarily a military crowd.

Even those indicted in civilian posts were sometimes military, active duty military, not retired,

who had simply crossed over to work in civilian jobs.

On the military side, the leading defendant was Tojo Hideki, who had been both army minister and prime minister from just before Pearl Harbor to the fall of Saipan in 1944.

And also included were upper-level army leaders who had directed policy in Tokyo, men like Iraqi Sado and Itigaki Seshiro, both former army ministers, or Nagano Osami and Shimada Shigataro, both former Navy ministers.

In those cases, they were indicted for failing to control their subordinates.

Interestingly, two of the people indicted, Oshima Hiroshi and Shiratori Toshio, were indicted for being

ambassadors to the other Axis powers, Germany for Oshima, Italy for Shuritori.

The theory being that by supporting the alliance, both men had committed crimes against the peace.

This was a very big breach of existing diplomatic protocols, which treated

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