Debating Collaboration and Complicity in War Crimes Trials in Asia, 1945-1956 PDF Download

Author: Kerstin von Lingen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319531417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This innovative volume examines the nexus between war crimes trials and the pursuit of collaborators in post-war Asia. Global standards of behaviour in time of war underpinned the prosecution of Japanese military personnel in Allied courts in Asia and the Pacific. Japan’s contradictory roles in the Second World War as brutal oppressor of conquered regions in Asia and as liberator of Asia from both Western colonialism and stultifying tradition set the stage for a tangled legal and political debate: just where did colonized and oppressed peoples owe their loyalties in time of war? And where did the balance of responsibility lie between individuals and nations? But global standards jostled uneasily with the pluralism of the Western colonial order in Asia, where legal rights depended on race and nationality. In the end, these limits led to profound dissatisfaction with the trials process, despite its vast scale and ambitious intentions, which has implications until today.

Author: Tina Burrett
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000859398
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
This handbook explores trauma in East Asia from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, assessing how victims, perpetrators and societies have responded to such experiences and to what extent the legacies still resonate today. Mapping the trauma-scape of East Asia from an interdisciplinary perspective, including anthropologists, historians, film and literary critics, scholars of law, media and education, political scientists and sociologists, this book significantly enhances understandings of the region’s traumatic pasts and how those memories have since been suppressed, exhumed, represented and disputed. In Asia’s contested memory-scape there is much at stake for perpetrators, their victims and heirs to their respective traumas. The scholarly research in this volume examines the silencing and distortion of traumatic pasts and sustained efforts to interrogate denial and impunity in the search for accountability. Addressing collective traumas from across East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam), this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Trauma and Memory Studies, Asian Studies and Contemporary Asian History more broadly.

Author: Sarah Kovner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674250192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A pathbreaking account of World War II POW camps, challenging the longstanding belief that the Japanese Empire systematically mistreated Allied prisoners. In only five months, from the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to the fall of Corregidor in May 1942, the Japanese Empire took prisoner more than 140,000 Allied servicemen and 130,000 civilians from a dozen different countries. From Manchuria to Java, Burma to New Guinea, the Japanese army hastily set up over seven hundred camps to imprison these unfortunates. In the chaos, 40 percent of American POWs did not survive. More Australians died in captivity than were killed in combat. Sarah Kovner offers the first portrait of detention in the Pacific theater that explains why so many suffered. She follows Allied servicemen in Singapore and the Philippines transported to Japan on “hellships” and singled out for hard labor, but also describes the experience of guards and camp commanders, who were completely unprepared for the task. Much of the worst treatment resulted from a lack of planning, poor training, and bureaucratic incoherence rather than an established policy of debasing and tormenting prisoners. The struggle of POWs tended to be greatest where Tokyo exercised the least control, and many were killed by Allied bombs and torpedoes rather than deliberate mistreatment. By going beyond the horrific accounts of captivity to actually explain why inmates were neglected and abused, Prisoners of the Empire contributes to ongoing debates over POW treatment across myriad war zones, even to the present day.

Author: Marina Aksenova
Publisher: Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher
ISBN: 828348138X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
The ‘International Military Tribunal for the Far East’ (IMTFE), held in Tokyo from May 1946 to November 1948, was a landmark event in the development of modern international criminal law. The trial in Tokyo was a complex undertaking and international effort to hold individuals accountable for core international crimes and delivering justice. The Tribunal consisted of 11 judges and respective national prosecution teams from 11 countries, and a mixed Japanese–American team of defence lawyers. The IMTFE indicted 28 Japanese defendants, amongst them former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, military leaders, and diplomats, based on a 55-count indictment pertaining to crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The judgment was not unanimous, with one majority judgment, two concurring opinions, and three dissenting opinions. The trial and the outcome were the subject of significant controversy and the Tribunal’s files were subsequently shelved in the archives. While its counterpart in Europe, the ‘International Military Tribunal’ (IMT) at Nuremberg, has been at the centre of public and scholarly interest, the Tokyo Tribunal has more recently gained international scholarly attention. This volume combines perspectives from law, history, and the social sciences to discuss the legal, historical, political and cultural significance of the Tokyo Tribunal. The collection is based on an international conference marking the 70th anniversary of the judgment of the IMTFE, which was held in Nuremberg in 2018. The volume features reflections by eminent scholars and experts on the establishment and functioning of the Tribunal, procedural and substantive issues as well as receptions and repercussions of the trial.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004361057
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
While the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg has been at the centre of scholarly attention, the Tokyo Tribunal has for decades been largely neglected. This is surprising insofar as this tribunal was a well-organized Allied endeavour and prefigured the international courts and tribunals of our day. Eleven national teams were sent to Tokyo between 1946 and 1948 to bring about justice in the aftermath of the Pacific War. This volume offers an innovative approach to the Tokyo Tribunal as an arena of transcultural engagement. It contextualizes legal agents as products of transnational forces, constituted through dialogues about legal concepts and processes of faction-making. The endeavour was challenged by different national policies, divergent legal traditions, and varying cultural perceptions of the task ahead. Contributors are Milinda Banerjee, Anja Bihler, Neil Boister, David M. Crowe, Kerstin von Lingen, Narrelle Morris, Hitoshi Nagai, Valentyna Polunina, Ann-Sophie Schoepfel, Lisette Schouten, James Burnham Sedgwick, Yuki Takatori and Urs Matthias Zachmann.

Author: Frank Jacob
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110655101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In Asia the "Age of Extremes" witnessed many forms of mass violence and genocide, related to the rise and fall of the Japanese Empire, the proxy wars of the Cold War, and the anti-colonial nation building processes that often led to new conflicts and civil wars. The present volume is considered an introductory reader that deals with different forms of mass violence and genocide in Asia, discusses the perspectives of victims and perpetrators alike.

Author: Seiji Shirane
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501765590
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
In Imperial Gateway, Seiji Shirane explores the political, social, and economic significance of colonial Taiwan in the southern expansion of Japan's empire from 1895 to the end of World War II. Challenging understandings of empire that focus on bilateral relations between metropole and colonial periphery, Shirane uncovers a half century of dynamic relations between Japan, Taiwan, China, and Western regional powers. Japanese officials in Taiwan did not simply take orders from Tokyo; rather, they often pursued their own expansionist ambitions in South China and Southeast Asia. When outright conquest was not possible, they promoted alternative strategies, including naturalizing resident Chinese as overseas Taiwanese subjects, extending colonial police networks, and deploying tens of thousands of Taiwanese to war. The Taiwanese—merchants, gangsters, policemen, interpreters, nurses, and soldiers—seized new opportunities for socioeconomic advancement that did not always align with Japan's imperial interests. Drawing on multilingual archives in six countries, Imperial Gateway shows how Japanese officials and Taiwanese subjects transformed Taiwan into a regional gateway for expansion in an ever-shifting international order. Thanks to generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Open Book Program and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Author: Barak Kushner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501774034
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
In The Geography of Injustice, Barak Kushner argues that the war crimes tribunals in East Asia formed and cemented national divides that persist into the present day. In 1946 the Allies convened the Tokyo Trial to prosecute Japanese wartime atrocities and Japan's empire. At its conclusion one of the judges voiced dissent, claiming that the justice found at Tokyo was only "the sham employment of a legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge." War crimes tribunals, Kushner shows, allow for the history of the defeated to be heard. In contemporary East Asia a fierce battle between memory and history has consolidated political camps across this debate. The Tokyo Trial courtroom, as well as the thousands of other war crimes tribunals opened in about fifty venues across Asia, were legal stages where prosecution and defense curated facts and evidence to craft their story about World War Two. These narratives and counter narratives form the basis of postwar memory concerning Japan's imperial aims across the region. The archival record and the interpretation of court testimony together shape a competing set of histories for public consumption. The Geography of Injustice offers compelling evidence that despite the passage of seven decades since the end of the war, East Asia is more divided than united by history.

Author: Michael Sturma
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476642192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
On 12 September 1944, a wolfpack of U.S. submarines attacked the Japanese convoy HI-72 in the South China Sea. Among the ships sunk were two carrying Allied prisoners of war. Men who had already endured the trials of Japanese captivity faced a renewed struggle for survival at sea. This book tells the broader story of the HI-72 convoy through the stories of two survivors: Arthur Bancroft, who was rescued by an American submarine, and Charles "Rowley" Richards, who was rescued by the Japanese. The story of these men represents the thousands of Allied POWs who suffered not only the atrocious conditions of these Japanese hellships, but also the terror of friendly fire from their own side's submarines. For the first time, the personal, political and legal aftermath of these men's experiences is fully detailed. At its heart, this is a story of survival. Charting the survivors' fates from rescue to their attempts at retribution, this book reveals the trauma that continued long after the war was over.

Author: Shane Darcy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191093246
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
A constant yet oftentimes concealed practice in war has been the use of informers and collaborators by parties to an armed conflict. Despite the prevalence of such activity, and the serious and at times fatal consequences that befall those who collaborate with an enemy, international law applicable in times of armed conflict does not squarely address the phenomenon. The recruitment, use and treatment of informers and other collaborators is addressed only partially and at times indirectly by international humanitarian law. In this book, Shane Darcy examines the development and application of the relevant rules and principles of the laws of armed conflict in relation to collaboration. With a primary focus on international humanitarian law as may be applicable to various forms of collaboration, the book also offers an assessment of the relevance of international human rights law.