Who Were War Criminals?

Given all of the furor coming from mainland China and South Korea recently regarding the visit of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Yasukuni Shrine, it is worthwhile to look at what the critics at least claim the outrage to be about; the enrollment in the shrine of the names of a number of men condemned as war criminals by the Tokyo Tribunal after World War II. Now, in the first place, it should be remembered that these are a tiny fraction of the millions of people enrolled at Yasukuni Shrine who did nothing wrong, have never been accused of doing anything wrong and who gave their lives in service to their country. It should also be remembered that Yasukuni Shrine was built and operates to remember those who lost their lives in national service and certainly not to honor war criminals or make any judgment on the deeds of each and every soul whose name is enrolled there. However, all of that being said, let us take a look at the cases of just a few of those men who were condemned as “war criminals” by the Allied forces after the war.

Already here we have discussed the fate of some men, not part of the Tokyo Trials, who were executed by the Allies as “war criminals”. There was General Tomoyuki Yamashita  who was executed for crimes he did not order nor was even aware of. This was a man who, when his troops committed crimes after the conquest of Malaysia and Singapore, personally apologized to the victims and who had his own troops shot for looting and unlawful killings. Another was General Masaharu Homma , conqueror of the U.S. forces in The Philippines, who was executed for crimes committed by troops not even under his command. On the contrary, General Homma had ordered his soldiers to treat the Filipinos as friends, took precautions to prevent misbehavior by his troops and who was removed from his command for being too lenient toward the enemies Japan was at war with. These men were certainly not war criminals but were more likely executed for the simple fact that they had both inflicting very embarrassing defeats on the two major countries at war with Japan.

What about some of the others, condemned as war criminals by the Tokyo Tribunal who are enrolled in Yasukuni Shrine? Most were convicted of waging or conspiring to wage an aggressive war, something which was not against the law at the time nor is it against the law today. Were that the case, most of the Allies would have been guilty as well. But what else can tell us what kind of men these were. There was Colonel Seishiro Itagaki, a man who actually submitted a formal proposal to the Imperial Japanese government to refuse any participation with the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany; a proposal which was accepted, even while Japan and Germany were in a diplomatic partnership. There was Mr. Yosuke Matsuoka, former Japanese delegate to the League of Nations and former Foreign Minister. When he was the president of the Manchuria Railway Company he gave passage to Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe and the Soviet Union free of charge. Far from wanting war, when it broke out, he said that signing the Axis pact was the greatest mistake of his life. Most prominent of all though was surely General Hideki Tojo, wartime prime minister of Japan. This was the man who, when Japan’s Axis partner Germany demanded that Japan stop allowing Jewish refugees to escape via the Manchuria Railway Company, refused to do so and continued the Japanese policy of helping Jews fleeing persecution rather than assisting Germany in arresting them.

Were these the actions of war criminals? Furthermore, if waging an aggressive war was ground for conviction as a war criminal, why were there no trials for the many aggressive wars waged by the Allies? Even in the World War II years, the Soviets had invaded Poland along with Germany, they had invaded Finland, invaded and conquered Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, they had occupied Mongolia and briefly invaded western China. They had also participated, along with the British, in the invasion and occupation of neutral Iran. Britain and America had both invaded French Algeria even though neither was at war with France and that was particularly hypocritical given that the Japanese occupation of French Indochina was cited by the U.S. and Britain as the reason for the freezing of Japanese assets and the embargo on trade with Japan, cutting off Japan from 80% of all the resources Japan needed even though, unlike the Allied invasion of Algeria, the Japanese occupation of Indochina was done with the permission of the French government.

Unfortunately, in any war, there are almost invariably atrocities that are committed. However, most of the time (excepting cases such as the Holocaust) these are not matters of official policy but rather criminal activity or negligence by low level officials. War is brutal and often even the most benevolent powers have troops that commit brutalities. Yet, all too often those who actually commit these misdeeds go unpunished and it rises to a different level, one of hypocrisy and double-standards when the victor seeks to punish a defeated enemy for crimes they themselves have committed as well. The Allies were certainly not blameless. The Soviet Union was ruled by one of the most murderous dictators in human history and even among the western Allies there were men like Sir Arthur Harris who admitted that his bombing campaign in Germany was primarily aimed at killing as many German civilians as possible. There were blockades that starved whole populations, for the United States there was the fire-bombing of Japan and finally the two atomic bombings that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, men, women, children, the elderly and helpless along with all the rest. If some are to be singled out as “war criminals” there should be one standard of justice applied equally to all. Since when did that become a controversial statement or an unreasonable demand? Consider that the next time someone brings up the subject of the war criminals enrolled at Yasukuni Shrine.