LESSONS LEARNED OF WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS: 8/8: 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
⏱️ 7 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 Batsworth, Professor Gary Bass, his book is judgment at Tokyo, World War II |
| 0:08.3 | on trial in the Making of Modern Asia. |
| 0:11.6 | The Chinese judge on the tribunal, born in |
| 0:15.0 | 1904, his name is May, May Ruou. He is extremely well-educated and |
| 0:20.0 | a modernizer. He's a Stanford graduate. He's a University of Chicago law graduate. He's gifted. |
| 0:26.6 | He becomes part of the transformation of the Ching Dynasty to the National Sun Yetzen in nearly part of the century. |
| 0:35.0 | And he keeps going through changes because so does his nation. |
| 0:38.0 | He's chosen to be on this tribunal. |
| 0:40.0 | He arrives. |
| 0:42.0 | He's very successful on the court. He understands that it is his burden to explain |
| 0:48.6 | that the brutality that the Japanese visited upon his nation. to the same time there's a civil war |
| 0:54.9 | underway even then he knows about it and it will be his fate to be a man of two worlds |
| 1:01.2 | professor the may man of two worlds. Professor, the May biography is moving because he's a man for |
| 1:09.8 | all seasons. He's a man for the Nationalists. He's a man for the nationalists, he's a man for the courts in Tokyo, he's a man for the |
| 1:16.0 | communists. After he becomes a part of the transformation of China. |
| 1:24.4 | Does he leave an autobiography that |
| 1:27.6 | explains how he how to manage these different parts of his life? So he's another extraordinary figure, and as you said, more than anybody else, he's the one |
| 1:39.0 | who brings the suffering of Asian peoples to the center of the judgment. So rather than this just being as |
| 1:46.2 | MacArthur would have had a quick trial for Pearl Harbor, May says we have to have a recognition |
| 1:51.4 | of the Japanese aggression and atrocities against Chinese and other Asian peoples. |
| 1:59.0 | But at the same time, he's, you know, the country that he belongs to is going through this terrible |
| 2:04.8 | civil war and he like a lot of Chinese intellectuals in the period is swept up in the |
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