The Evening Star (September 9, 1946)
Mrs. F. S. Tavenner dies; Tokyo prosecutor’s mother
WOODSTOCK, Virginia – Mrs. Frank S. Tavenner Sr., 85, mother of Frank S. Tavenner Jr., United States attorney for the western district of Virginia who now is in Tokyo on the war crimes prosecuting staff, died last night at the Cora Miller Memorial Hospital.
Funeral services will be held tomorrow afternoon at her home. Burial will be in Massanutten Cemetery in Woodstock.
Besides her son, she leaves her husband, Judge Frank S. Tavenner Sr., and a sister, Mrs. Walter Newman, both of Woodstock. She was active in the DAR and civic groups in Woodstock for many years.
Mrs. Tavenner was a native of Parkersburg, West Virginia.
The Evening Star (September 10, 1946)
British loss of Singapore laid to respect for Siam
TOKYO (AP) – A British colonel who spent four years in Japanese prison camps told the International War Crimes Tribunal today that Britain lost the mighty Singapore naval base because she refused to violate the Siamese border.
Col. Cyril Hew Dalrymple Wild said “the Malay command knew it would give us a tremendous advantage to violate the Siamese border and advance to meet the Japanese attack but we were restrained.
As Col. Wild testified, a photographic bulb exploded, startling everyone in the courtroom. Military police sprang to the alert. Justices covered their heads as bits showered on them.
The defense objected strenuously to Col. Wild’s testimony, but the tribunal ruled it was proper to support prosecution charges that Japan had no such compunctions as the British and sent its troops across Siam from Indo-China to attack at the rear of the naval base that had all of its big guns pointing to sea.
The Pittsburgh Press (September 10, 1946)
Jap plot to kill Stalin charged
Evidence prepared for Tokyo war trial
TOKYO (UP) – Jap diplomats in Germany sent agents into Russia in 1934 to kill Premier Josef Stalin, it was learned today from documents which will be introduced in evidence in the Jap war crimes trials.
The evidence was part of a mass of documents by which the international prosecution section hopes to establish that Germany and Japan connived to eventually squeeze Russia into a vassal state.
The evidence showed that as early as 1937 there existed an agreement between German and Jap militarists to exchange intelligence information on the Red Army.
Much of the information came from White Russians who were actually in the pay of the Jap intelligence service.
At one point, the Jap diplomatic service in Berlin sent hired killers to Russia with instructions to crash the practically impenetrable Kremlin gates and seek out Stalin.
“Kill him by any means at your disposal,” were the orders supposedly given the hired agents, according to a member of the prosecution staff.
Jap consular officials in Berlin also apparently directed the sending of small balloons carrying Jap propaganda pamphlets into Russia from German-occupied Poland.
The Wilmington Morning Star (September 12, 1946)
Japs killed men on Siam railway
British officer testifies to seeing hundreds die at work
TOKYO, Thursday (AP) – Thousands of British troops starved to death in filth, in building a railway from Burma to Siam for their Japanese captors, the International War Crimes Tribunal heard Wednesday.
“The railway was built through mountainous jungle with men dying beside the road bed,” Col. Cyril Hew Dalrymple Wild, a British colonel in the Indian Army testified. Wild was captured at Singapore by the Japanese.
“In one force of which I personally know, almost half of the men died – 3,087 out of 7,000.”
Wild declared seriously ill soldiers and civilians were loaded into steel box cars with the able-bodied and all were forced to ride four days without food or water to the point where they were put to work.
“The men had ulcers, dysentery and all sorts of other illnesses,” Wild said, “but despite efforts of Allied officers to intercede for their men they were treated as though they were well, moved by rail, and put to work on job that killed them.”
The Evening Star (September 13, 1946)
Tokyo court told of 10,000 Allied deaths on rail work
TOKYO (AP) – British Col. Cyril H. D Wild testified at the international war crimes trial today that approximately 10,000 Allied prisoners of war died in forced labor on the Burma-Siam railroad and declared: “If anyone is to be called to account, it is Gen. (former Premier) Hideki Tojo, who ordered that construction.”
Col. Wild, who survived four years of Japanese imprisonment, told the International Military Tribunal trying Tojo and 26 other major suspects that every mile of the road is marked with soldiers’ graves.
“By special order of the construction director, a monument was erected in Thailand (Siam) and Burma to console the departed spirits of the prisoners of war,” he said. “A mass was held and their souls were deeply venerated in the fashion of the imperial Japanese.”
British POWs were tortured and starved by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore, he said.
Wiener Kurier (September 16, 1946)
Kaiser von Japan soll als Kriegsverbrecher vor Gericht
Forderung der Sowjetzeitung ‚Roter Stern‘
London (Reuter) - Wie der Moskauer Rundfunk berichtet, verlangte das Organ der Roten Armee, „Der Rote Stern“, daß der Kaiser von Japan als Kriegsverbrecher vor Gericht gestellt werden solle.
The Pittsburgh Press (September 16, 1946)
Testimony against Tojo under attack
TOKYO (UP) – The defense today began a severe cross-examination of a war crimes trial witness in an effort to shake his testimony naming Hideki Tojo as the man responsible for the deaths of 16,000 Allied prisoners of war and 150,000 Asiatic civilians.
Tojo’s attorney, George F. Blewett of Philadelphia, drew from British Col. Cyril Wild, the witness, the admission that some of his testimony on the deaths was hearsay. He earlier was unsuccessful in having Col. Wild’s testimony stricken from the record.
The Evening Star (September 18, 1946)
Geneva pact exploited by Japs, Tokyo court told
TOKYO (AP) – Col. C. H. D. Wild told the International War Crimes Tribunal today that the Japanese contended they were not bound by the Geneva Convention for treatment of prisoners of war, but never hesitated to use its terms when it worked against Allied prisoners.
“In many arguments we had in camp with the Japanese about treatment of prisoners, we always had the Geneva Convention quoted against us but we always were told it was not binding on the Japanese,” said Col. Wild, a Briton taken at Singapore and held prisoner four years.
He made this statement after Tokisaburo Shiohara, attorney for Heitaro Kimura, former commander in chief in Burma, tried to explain away Col. Wild’s testimony that, over the protest of British officers, they were separated from their Indian troops. Shiohara contended the Geneva Convention advocated separating troops of different nationalities.
“The Geneva treaty in that respect certainly does not apply to soldiers of the same army,” commented Sir William Webb, tribunal president.
Shiohara a few minutes earlier had taken an opposite stand on another phase of Col. Wild’s testimony.
The Evening Star (September 19, 1946)
Tokyo trial adjourned to give prosecutor time to reconsider
TOKYO (AP) – The defense took such quick advantage of a prosecution statement at the war crimes trial today that court adjourned to give prosecution chiefs an opportunity to reconsider.
Deputy Prosecutor Frank S. Tavenner J. of Woodstock, Virginia, tying Japan into its Axis war plots, read a statement in which a defendant, Hiroshi Oshima. former ambassador to Germany, admitted secret dealings with Joachim von Ribbentrop.
“I will prove that negotiations for military pacts were conducted through Japanese military channels,” declared Mr. Tavenner.
“I will prove the Japanese Army was strong enough to force its will upon the government…”
Might absolve civilians
“That’s something new,” interjected Defense Attorney William Logan of New York. “Does Mr. Tavenner speak for himself, or for the entire prosecution?”
The tribunal president, Sir William Webb, smiled.
The prosecution statement, if proved, might win acquittal on war plotting charges for civilian government leaders – cabinet members and the like – and involve them merely as having carried out orders of the military.
“The tribunal also would like to know,” said Sir William. He “presumed” Mr. Tavenner spoke for the chief prosecutor, Joseph B. Keenan.
Mr. Tavenner appeared a little dazed.
Sir William adjourned court early, “to give him a little time to think” – to confer with Mr. Keenan.
Mr. Tavenner thus has until tomorrow to come up with an answer.
Tojo hears boast recalled
Former Premier Hideki Tojo stared at the ceiling and scratched his chin slowly as Mr. Tavenner said Tojo was so confident he had told Germany only a part of Japan’s army would be needed to humble the United States.
Oshima stared coldly at Tojo as this statement was read.
Mr. Tavenner, tracing the sinuous trail of German-Japanese relations, made these major assertions:
That Hitler’s Germany, disliking Japanese tactics in China, told Japan in 1937, after the Marco Polo bridge incident touched off an undeclared war, that she must “beat responsibility to the world.”
Reich withdrew advisers
That a year later Germany, in an abrupt about-face, withdrew her military advisers from China, stopped delivery of all war materials to China, and recognized Manchukuo, the empire Japan carved out of Manchuria.
That in 1938 Germany and Japan agreed Russia was their enemy and agreed to spy on the Soviet and to trade information, only to have Japan’s leaders terrified in 1939, when Hitler signed the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union.
That in 1940 Japan’s chieftains began to worry lest an onrushing Germany envelop French Indo-China and Siam, which Japan wanted herself.
That to reassure Germany the Japanese sent word to Berlin they were keeping the United States fleet worried in the Pacific and out of the war in Europe.
Last-minute change
Japan’s disastrous decision to attack Pearl Harbor also appeared to have been a last-minute change in her long-range plans of conquest.
Wiener Kurier (September 20, 1946)
Rivalität und Doppelspiel bestimmten das deutsch-japanische Verhältnis
Tokioter Kriegsverbrecherprozeß enthüllt interessante Einzelheiten
Tokio (AP.) - Die Geschichte des japanisch-deutschen Bündnisses gegen Großbritannien und die Vereinigten Staaten wurde im japanischen Kriegsverbrecherprozeß aufgerollt, als zu Beginn der Verhandlungen die Anklage gegen Ministerpräsident Tojo und andere führende Persönlichkeiten Japans als Verantwortliche an dieser Weltverschwörung erhoben wurde. Der Prozeß enthüllte die Rivalität, das Doppelspiel und die Furcht unter den Achsenmächten sowie das übergroße Vertrauen Japans. Tojo war so sehr vom Sieg überzeugt, daß er im Jahre 1940 Deutschland versicherte, daß nur ein Teil der japanischen Armeen nötig sein würde, um die Vereinigten Staaten zu vernichten.
Deutschland mißbilligte Japans Haltung gegenüber China
Der stellvertretende Staatsanwalt Frank S. Tavenner, der die Einvernahmen über die deutsch-japanischen Beziehungen durchführte, machte folgende Feststellungen: Hitlerdeutschland, das die japanische Taktik in China mißbilligte, erklärte 1937 Japan gegenüber, daß die japanische Regierung die Verantwortung für diese Politik vor der Welt zu tragen habe. Ein Jahr später zog Deutschland seine militärischen Berater aus China zurück, stellte sämtliche Kriegsmateriallieferungen an China ein und anerkannte Mandschukuo, das Reich, das Japan aus der Mandschurei losgelöst hatte.
1938 kamen Deutschland und Japan übereinstimmend zu der Ansicht, daß Rußland ihr Feind sei und beschlossen, in Sowjetrußland gemeinsam Spionage zu betreiben; kurz darauf wurde von Deutschland der Nichtangriffspakt mit der Sowjetunion unterzeichnet, der die Führer Japans in Schrecken versetzte.
1940 begannen die japanischen Führer, Befürchtungen zu hegen, daß Deutschland sich Indochinas und Siams zu bemächtigen beabsichtige, während Japan diese Länder für sich wünschte. Um Deutschland in Sicherheit zu wiegen, gaben die Japaner in Berlin die Erklärung ab, daß sie die amerikanische Flotte im Pazifik beschäftigen und somit vom Krieg in Europa fernhalten würden.
Änderung der Politik
Im Frühjahr 1941 vertagte Japan eine Entscheidung hinsichtlich der deutschen Forderung, zuerst im Norden gegen Rußland vorzugehen und sich erst dann gegen Süden zu wenden. Japan teilte der deutschen Regierung damals sogar mit, daß es nicht sofort einzugreifen beabsichtige, falls sich die Vereinigten Staaten am Krieg in Europa beteiligen würden.
Die Japaner wandten sich dann nach Süden in der Absicht, gegen Singapore vorzugehen, doch trat, wie Tavenner darlegte, nach Juli 1941 eine noch nicht aufgeklärte Änderung ihrer Politik ein: der Angriff gegen Singapore wurde verschoben und die militärischen Führer Japans trafen die schwerwiegende Entscheidung bei Pearl Harbour loszuschlagen.
Abschließend stellte Tavenner fest, daß es Generalleutnant Oshima, der japanische Botschafter in Berlin, sowie der japanische Botschafter m Italien gewesen seien, welche die deutsche Regierung dabei unterstützten, um Japan in den Krieg zu treiben.