LESSONS LEARNED OF WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS: 3/8: Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia Hardcover – by Gary J. Bass
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2024
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Tokyo-World-Making-Modern/dp/1101947101
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.
1945 Hiroshima
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Baffes with Professor Gary Bass, his new book is Judgment at Tokyo. |
| 0:10.0 | World War II on trial and the Making of Modern Asia. |
| 0:13.3 | Douglas MacArthur, five-star general, the American Occupation Force, |
| 0:18.5 | in place in September, October, November, December of 1945. |
| 0:24.2 | What is to be done? |
| 0:25.5 | Democratization, Christianization, |
| 0:29.1 | a rebuilding of the Japanese society. |
| 0:31.4 | It's not only in tatters, it's in ashes. |
| 0:34.0 | MacArthur rides in from the airport when he first lands in August of 45 and he rides past what the professor reports is 22 miles of ruins, charred ruins. |
| 0:47.0 | Curtis LeMay has burned Tokyo, burned Japan. |
| 0:51.4 | There's nothing there. They're beginning again. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki |
| 0:56.0 | war destruction resembles what the rest of Japan look like. Now we come to the fact that there are men who are waiting for |
| 1:06.2 | their own fate and it's important to mention as the professor does that the Army and |
| 1:11.7 | the Navy and the Ministry started burning papers immediately upon the day of surrender, |
| 1:17.0 | immediately burning what is estimated to be 70% of the documents about the Nanjing massacres. |
| 1:23.8 | So the trial ahead is going to struggle to recover information. |
| 1:29.1 | We need to go now to the arrest of Toto Hideki, a very vivid military man who became Prime Minister, |
| 1:38.9 | and there's a photograph in the professor's book of Tojo bowing to the Emperor. |
| 1:44.3 | You can understand the formality of his relationship to his, the Meiji Emperor. |
| 1:49.7 | Tojo tries to kill himself. |
| 1:51.1 | Do we believe it, Professor? |
| 1:52.3 | Because he does a very bad job of it and this is a very precise man. |
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