LESSONS LEARNED OF WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS: 4/8: 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
⏱️ 6 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 Bachelors with Professor Gary Bass. His new book is Judgment at Tokyo, World War II on trial and the making of modern Asia. |
| 0:12.0 | We come to an international war crimes |
| 0:15.2 | tribunal. The Class A suspects are chosen on the basis of different measurements of what was an |
| 0:25.4 | aggressive war, action of aggressive war, what's signed on to aggressive war, and |
| 0:30.0 | this aggressive war is in addition to committing |
| 0:35.0 | conventional war crimes and in addition to committing crimes against humanity. |
| 0:40.0 | Class A, they come up with a list of 28. |
| 0:43.0 | Two are fall ill or mentally ill and are not there. |
| 0:49.0 | So they're in this vast courtroom, which is the former Imperial military headquarters, the Army headquarters. |
| 0:57.5 | And the stages set with colleague lights, there are photographs, you can understand how vastly the canvas is but the choosing the |
| 1:04.9 | choosing of the judges is all determinative and professor I've made a list of |
| 1:09.9 | these judges some are chosen very wisely and very carefully by their countries, and some |
| 1:16.2 | are half-hearted. |
| 1:17.9 | And that is the case, as I learned from you, for the choice by Harry Truman. Not only for the judge but for the chief |
| 1:25.7 | prosecutor. Was Harry Truman briefed well on the needs of this trial? Did he |
| 1:32.4 | understand choosing cronies was not? of this crucial decision who you know it's one thing to create an institution is another thing to figure out |
| 1:45.3 | who's actually going to run the thing and Truman as you say has a kind of crony like Missouri |
| 1:50.9 | machine politician approach to it. |
| 1:54.0 | So he picks a kind of undistinguished guy |
| 1:56.5 | from the Justice Department, a buddy of his |
| 1:59.9 | called Joseph Keenan, who is temperamentally, very badly suited to the job, who is blustery, kind of incompetent, |
| 2:10.0 | noticeably less smart than a lot of the judges. |
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