During the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, military personnel from the Empire of Japan were accused — and in some cases later convicted by war crimes tribunals — of a series of human rights abuses, against civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) throughout East Asia and the Western Pacific. These events reached their height during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 and the Pacific War (1941-45).
Historians and the governments of many countries officially hold the Japanese military responsible for the deaths of many millions of civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) during the early 20th century. For example, in China during 1937-45, there are said to have been 8.4 million "non-military casualties", not including civilians killed accidentally during battle. (See Chinese Casualties in the Sino-Japanese War.) Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to the Japanese military are also regarded by many as war crimes. For example, about two million civilians in Indonesia, a major rice-growing nation, are said to have died from famine in 1944-45 alone.
During 1946-51, 5,600 Japanese personnel were prosecuted in more than 2,200 trials, in several different cities in the Asia-Pacific region, including Tokyo. US, Chinese, British, Australian, Dutch, French and Soviet judges presided. More than 4,400 were convicted and about 1,000 were sentenced to death. Those found guilty included three Japanese prime ministers: Koki Hirota, Hideki Tojo, and Kuniaki Koiso. The largest single trial was that of 93 Japanese personnel charged with the summary execution of more than 300 Allied POWs, in the Laha massacre (1942).
Japanese military culture and imperialism
Seven centuries of Bushido, the militaristic Samurai warrior code taught unquestioning obedience to the Emperor, and fearlessness in battle. During the so-called "Age of Empire", in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers in aggressively seeking an overseas empire.
As in other imperial powers, Japanese popular culture is said to have became increasingly racist, or at least ethnocentric, at around this time. The rise of Japanese nationalism was seen partly in the adoption of Shinto as a state religion from 1890, including its entrenchment in the education system. Shinto held the Emperor to be divine because he was deemed to be a descendent of the sun goddess Amaterasu. This provided justification for the requirement that the emperor and his representatives to be obeyed without question. Also, since many Japanese believed that Japan was a special place created by Gods, and not part of the ordinary world, and that the Japanese people had a divine mission to expand their culture and conquer other lands.
Victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) symbolised Japan's rise to the status of a world power. Signs of a growing ruthlessness, inculcated by militarist and imperial ideologies, were symbolised by the murder by alleged Japanese agents of Empress Myeongseong, the last Empress of Korea, in 1895, as the Japanese regime attempted to increase its influence in Korea.
From the point of view of Bushido, POWs taken by Japanese forces were not worthy of treatment as soldiers. Compassion for defeated enemies was considered a sign of weakness. Some Japanese personnel considered the execution of prisoners as honourable, since it released the POWs from the dishonour of surrender. Perhaps as a consequence, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention — which stipulates the human treatment of POWs — until after World War II. Nevertheless, the treatment of prisoners by the Japanese military in earlier wars, such as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) had been at least as humane as that of other militaries.
The 1930s and 1940s
By the late 1930s, the practices of Japan's military dictatorship created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of Nazi Germany's elite military personnel, such as those in the Waffen SS. Japan also had a secret police force known as the Kempeitai, its own equivalent of the Gestapo or NKVD. The Kempeitai operated throughout the empire and in occupied countries. As in other dictatorships, irrational brutality, hatred and fear became commonplace. Perceived failure, or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, not infrequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating on to lower ranks, all the way down. In POW camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all.
The traditional severity of Bushido, and the ethnocentrism of Japan's modern imperial phase often coalesced into brutality towards civilians and POW's. After the launching of a full-scale military campaign against China in 1937, Japanese soldiers were often encouraged to go on rampages of murder, torture, rape and/or looting — or at the very least were not discouraged from so doing.
By comparison, in western societies, most people regard such beliefs and actions to be in sharp conflict with the western view of human rights, which generally considers the Japanese military's treatment of subject peoples as no less than "barbaric". Many people also regard the general reluctance of Japanese governments and officials to accept full guilt as insulting and callous. Western culture,as a result of the influence of christianity, generally regards kindness to individuals as good, even if they are a defeated enemy. In the 1940s, westerners expected non-western peoples to think the same way and to have similar moral and ethical values. It often came as a shock to Allied military personnel and civilians in Asia and the Pacific to discover that the Japanese did not see things in exactly the same way as them.
Post-1945 attitudes
While there is no disputing that many of the alleged events occured, and some limited apologies have been issued by Japanese governments since 1945. These are often viewed as as inadequate by the survivors of such crimes. There is also perceived to be a widespread reluctance in Japan to discuss such events and/or admit that they were war crimes. The tension this causes in other countries is furthered by the persistence of some extreme, irrational and violent nationalist groups in Japan, as well as practices such as yearly visits by the prime minister to the Yasukuni Shrine and the tendency of Japanese school history books to downplay war crimes. There along with ongoing campaigns by Japanese extreme right activists to expunge all mention of war crimes.
In the early 21st century, one of the most well-known apologists for Japanese imperialism is a South Korean, Ji Man-Won , whose views — published on his website — have caused uproar and protest among his fellow Koreans. Ji recently upset women forced to became sex slaves to the Japanese military by writing: "most of the old women claiming to be former comfort women or sex slaves to the Japanese military during World War II are fakes."
Major incidents
See also
External links
References
- Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 4900737399
- Williams, Peter. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. ISBN 0029353017
- Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0415091055 ISBN 0415932149
- Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0253334721
- Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. ISBN 0375502319 ISBN 0385334966
- Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing : The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. ISBN 0812966538
- Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1883319854 ISBN 0756756987 ISBN 0826412580 ISBN 082641415X
- Rees, Laurence. Horror in the East, published 2001 by the British Broadcasting Company
- Ji Man-Won's website (in Japanese)