Quartermasters can also fight the devils

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo also ignored the trials of certain war crimes and crimes against humanity against Japanese war criminals. For example, there were no prosecutions for forced labor, sexual slavery, biological experiments, and the use of chemical weapons.

On the one hand, this was due to the Allies' desire to quickly conclude the International Military Tribunal for the Far East's trial in Tokyo, which led to an incomplete criminal investigation during the trial. On the other hand, it was attributed to the United States obtaining information about the Japanese military's chemical weapons research and keeping it for its own purposes.

Although the 1956 trials of the Chinese Special Military Tribunal in Shenyang and Taiyuan did prosecute the crime of forced labor in China, at least 40,000 Chinese were forcibly taken to Japan to work for 135 construction and mining companies between 1943 and 1945 alone.

About 7,000 of these Chinese laborers who were forcibly taken to Japan died due to cruel treatment. However, this fact was not within the scope of prosecution of the Chinese Special Military Tribunal. The Chinese Special Military Tribunal could have prosecuted war criminals who helped send forced Chinese laborers to Japan. As a result, this negligence of the Chinese Special Military Tribunal became the focus of attention of the victims of forced Chinese laborers in the years that followed.

In two cases of the Huaxia Special Military Tribunal, prosecutors charged three Japanese war criminal defendants with the crimes of manufacturing biological weapons and conducting biological experiments. In another case, two defendants were charged with the crime of using chemical weapons. The indictment of the Huaxia Special Military Tribunal found that the Japanese army's use of tear gas or poison gas caused injuries and deaths to hundreds of Chinese civilians.

However, this accusation made by the Chinese Special Military Tribunal cannot fully reflect the seriousness of the crimes committed by Japanese war criminals. It should be noted that during the war between China and Japan, the Japanese army used explosion-proof agents, phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, corrosive gas and mustard gas to widely attack targets throughout China.

It is estimated that two thousand chemical weapons attacks during the war between China and Japan resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and countless injuries in China. In addition, since the end of the war between China and Japan, some chemical weapons abandoned by the Japanese army have been accidentally discovered in China, causing many illnesses and casualties.

In addition, it was not until a book on Korean comfort women was published in the 1970s that the world became aware of the crime of sexual slavery that took place during World War II, the so-called "comfort women" issue.

Therefore, the Chinese Special Military Tribunal in 1956 did not prosecute the crimes related to Chinese comfort women. However, the Japanese army established thousands of "comfort stations" in 21 cities in China, and a total of more than 200,000 Chinese women were forced to engage in prostitution for the Japanese army.

Such facts, along with the people and families harmed in this unbearable past, are easily forgotten and ignored. If these crimes could have been investigated and prosecuted at the time, the trial at the Huaxia Special Military Tribunal in 1956 could have helped to identify these crimes and made more contributions to the development of international and domestic criminal justice.

The issue of compensation is another issue that the Chinese Special Military Tribunal did not deal with. According to the Potsdam Declaration, the Japanese government should pay compensation to the victim country. In cases of serious violations of international humanitarian law, victims have the right to demand redress and compensation from the Japanese government, and this principle has been adopted by the United Nations.

The Chinese government had stated in the early 1950s that it reserved the right to demand compensation from the Japanese government because China suffered the greatest losses in the war between China and Japan, including the deaths of 10 million people and economic losses of more than 50 billion US dollars in the invasion of Japanese troops.

However, in 1956, the Chinese government changed its position. Yuan Guang, deputy chief judge of the Shenyang Special Military Tribunal of the Chinese Special Military Tribunal, and Liao Chengzhi once pointed out in their report that since Germany had already paid huge compensation for the previous invasion war and the Soviet Union had also confiscated Japan's assets and property in China's northeast region, the Chinese Special Military Tribunal should also have the right to demand that the Japanese government compensate the Chinese victims.

The Chinese government's response to the compensation issue was that it would be a better way for China to give up its claims against Japan, because in the Chinese government's view, if the Japanese government was required to pay war reparations, the burden of compensation would ultimately fall on the Japanese people, not the Japanese government.

As in the sentencing policy for Japanese war criminals, giving up compensation is part of China's magnanimous policy toward Japan. For the sake of friendship between the two countries, the policy adopted by the Chinese government is to repay evil with kindness.

Unfortunately, this decision has ignored the rights of Chinese victims to seek compensation from the Japanese government. Compensation is not only measured by monetary value, but is also an extremely prominent part of restorative justice and plays an important role in the reconciliation process.

The Nuremberg and Tokyo International Military Tribunals established after World War II initiated the practice of international criminal law and had pioneering significance in international law. Among them, the trials of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo made important contributions to the development of international law in terms of initiating the practice of international criminal law, establishing the principle of individual criminal responsibility under international law, and the non-exemption of official status.

The mistakes in the trial cannot be ignored. Although there were many demands in public opinion and among the Allies to punish Emperor Hirohito of Japan, as the war progressed, especially as the American army occupied the Japanese mainland, the demand to try Emperor Hirohito of Japan also caused the Allies to worry about the resistance of the Japanese people, which became an increasingly heavy weight for the Japanese government.

If the International Military Tribunal for the Far East were to try Emperor Hirohito of Japan, then the Allied occupation plan for the Japanese mainland would have to undergo major changes. This was because if the International Military Tribunal for the Far East prosecuted Emperor Hirohito of Japan, it would certainly cause great unrest among the Japanese people, and the impact would be difficult to overestimate.

You must know that Emperor Hirohito of Japan is a symbol of the unity of the Japanese nation. If the International Military Tribunal for the Far East prosecutes and tries Emperor Hirohito of Japan, the country of Japan will completely collapse.

The exemption of Japanese Emperor Hirohito from prosecution was an arbitrary decision of the United States. The decision of General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Japan, was based on two considerations, the main one being to avoid intensifying the resistance of the Japanese people and to stabilize the Allied occupation of Japan.