The International Military Tribunal for the Far East

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The Evening Star (September 20, 1946)

Chief of Jap Kwantung army dies violently in Red custody

Gen. Kusaba gulped poison, Russians in Tokyo declare

TOKYO (AP) – Lt. Gen. Tatsumi Kusaba, scheduled to be a leading witness for Russia at the international crimes trial, died violently early today. Russian Army officers said Kusaba had gulped poison in the downtown room where they held him under armed guard.

An American investigator. Capt. Mike Frisch of Ithaca, N.Y., said the former commander of Japan’s Kwantung army “died violently and vomited considerably.”

American intelligence officers said Kusaba arrived yesterday with two other Japanese prisoners whom the Russians plan to use as key witnesses against former Premier Tojo and 26 other warmakers.

A Russian spokesman said Kusaba insisted on wearing the uniform in which he was captured last summer in Manchuria. He said the poison presumably was secreted in the uniform.

At dinner last night with the other two Japanese prisoners and several Russian officers, Kusaba drank several glasses of wine. He ate a hearty meal, then retired, explaining “I would like to be alone.”

The Russian spokesman said there was nothing in Kusaba’s attitude indicating he contemplated suicide.

“There is unmistakable evidence he took his own life,” the prosecution reported officially. “In his notebook he mentioned certain failures in the performance of his military duties in Manchuria as the reason for his suicide.”

American investigators said they culled this phrase from Kusaba’s notes: “Give up for lost and forced to commit suicide.” There was no explanation.

Commanded Kwantung army

Because Russian officers refused to talk, it was hours before even Americans in the Allied prosecution section could get details on even Kusaba’s arrival or his military record. The Russians bring in their own witnesses, as they recently did Henry Pu-yi, one-time puppet emperor of Manchuria, and retain armed control of them.

Kusaba was commander of the Kwantung Defense Army from November 1941 to February 1944, then was attached to the general staff in Tokyo. He retired temporarily December 2, 1944, but was recalled two weeks later to become chief of the continental railroad command.

The body was removed to the U.S. Army’s 42nd General Hospital where staff doctors performed an autopsy with two Russian doctors as observers. Normally, a routine report would be available in 10 days.

The trial continued, meanwhile, with Deputy Prosecutor Frank S. Tavenner explaining, at the court’s request, that he did not mean to exonerate civilian defendants by his assertion yesterday that the military forced its will on the Japanese government.

“Each of the accused had a clear understanding and opportunity to choose the path he followed,” Mr. Tavenner said. “We make no claims that duress was applied toward a single accused.”

He spent the entire day reading documents tracing Japan’s entrance into the Axis alliance.

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The Pittsburgh Press (September 24, 1946)

Jap attack backed by Nazis, record shows

TOKYO (UP) – Germany told Japan in June 1940 that she had no objections to Japanese aggression in the Far East provided Japan could promise to attack the Philippines and Hawaii in the event the United States entered the war against Germany, evidence submitted in the war crimes trial showed today.

The information was revealed in a secret telegram from Dr. Eugen Ott, Nazi ambassador in Tokyo, to the German Foreign Office. It was the report of a conversation with Gen. Kuniaki Koiso, then the minister of overseas affairs and now one of the defendants.

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The Daily Alaska Empire (September 25, 1946)

Atty. puzzled by Russ role at tribunals

Tokyo trials defense council sees possible acquittal for Schacht

TOKYO – Owen Cunningham, one of the defense attorneys in the International War Crimes trial here, told fellow defense lawyers today “the same puzzle exists at Nuernberg as does here: ‘How can we reconcile the Moscow system of justice with that of the Democracies?’”

Cunningham, a Des Moines attorney, just returned from Nuernberg where he conferred with Joachim von Ribbentrop in search of evidence to help his particular Tokyo client, Hiroshi Oshima, former ambassador to Germany.

Speaking of the introduction into the Nuernberg evidence of a Russo-German pact to divide Poland, Cunningham said: “On the one hand Russia was co-author of a law making aggressive warfare a crime; on the other hand she was a co-conspirator in a crime thus created. It did not and does not make sense.”

Neither is it good logic that Russia should be one of the prosecutors in the case against former Premier Tojo and others, he continued. He declared that Russia prosecuting Japan lor planning to divide China, and yet Russia at Yalta agreed to divide China (Presumably, he referred to the Yalta approval of the Sino-Soviet treaty giving Russia joint control with China of the South Manchurian railway, a 30-year lease of Port Arthur and declaring Dairen an open port under joint Sino-Soviet control.)

Of the Nuernberg war crimes cases, in which a decision is due soon, Cunningham speculated: “If anyone is acquitted, I predict he will be Hjalmar Schacht,” Hitler’s finance expert. “Former Foreign Minister Von Neurath has a pretty fair chance of acquittal, and Diplomat Von Papen, also.”

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The Daily Alaska Empire (September 25, 1946)

Hirohito resented move to boost Tojo into war council

TOKYO – Japanese militarists were so eager to push Hideki Tojo, then a general, into the War Ministry, that they badly irritated Emperor Hirohito in 1940, the War Crimes Commission heard today.

The story came from the diary – introduced as evidence – of Marquis Koichi Kido, one of the defendants and formerly one of the emperor’s closest advisors.

Kido wrote that Hirohito told him he did not like the militarists approaching him secretly to recommend Tojo before Prince Konoye, as premier, had completed his cabinet, or accepted Tojo.

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The Waterbury Democrat (September 25, 1946)

19 die in RAF plane in China

Hong Kong (UP) – Unconfirmed reports said that one of the passengers aboard an RAF plane that crashed and burned near here today was Royal Arch Gunnison, American radio correspondent.

Nineteen persons were killed when the plane crashed into a hillside.

Among the other passengers reportedly were Col. E. A. Wild, chief Tokyo war crimes trial liaison officer, and M. I. Davies, chief British prosecutor of the trial.

The RAF did not divulge the names of the victims pending notification of the next of kin.

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The Brooksville Journal (September 26, 1946)

Masters of Jap torture ships are under arrest

TOKYO - Masters of two alleged Japanese torture ships and the former chief of staff of Japan’s Formosan army have been arrested as war-crimes suspects, Allied headquarters reported.

Charges against Lt. Gen. Keichiro Higuchi, the former chief of staff, were not announced.

Ship’s captains held were Kozo Ozaki, master of the Nagano Maru, on which 500 Allied military personnel reportedly were mistreated, and Ryoichi Tsubokura, master of the Buryo Maru, also allegedly a torture ship.

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Reluctant Yanks are helping out Japanese

WASHINGTON - Reluctance of American witnesses to travel to war crimes trials is permitting Jap war criminals to escape with acquittals or light sentences.

Col. D. M. Dunn, acting chief of the war crimes branch of the civil affairs division, said Gen. MacArthur recently asked 92 witnesses to appear at the trials but only 15 agreed to go.

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The Evening Star (September 27, 1946)

Woman aide in Jap war trials glad to be back in Washington

Mrs. Llewellyn given much attention by press in Tokyo

Mrs. Grace Kanode Llewellyn, Washington attorney who was the only woman prosecutor at the Japanese war criminals trial in Tokyo, arrived at Union Station today, delighted to get home even in the middle of a meat shortage.

“No trouble in Japan during my year’s stay on that point,” she explained. “We were fed with military supplies.”

Asked about the progress of the trial of the top 28 Japanese leaders, she replied, “The ethics of my profession preclude any statement about a case pending its final determination. I have nothing to say except that the trial is proceeding most satisfactorily indeed.”

Mrs. Llewellyn made the trip back from Japan on an Army transport in eight days and came across the country from California by train.

In Japan, she admitted, she received much attention because she was the first woman prosecutor the Japanese had seen – and she arrived in the country soon after Gen. Douglas MacArthur had established the franchise for Japanese women.

The Japanese press stook delight in interviewing her and describing her to their readers. One Japanese reporter’s version of an interview opened this way: “In her prosecutor’s room, wrapping up her body of small build in a black dress, she was reading the documents on the Manchurian problems. When she was visited by the newspaper men and cameramen, she greeted them smilingly and she showed herself to be a courteous gentlewoman and an agreeable Madame Prosecutor.”

Mrs. Llewellyn went to Japan on a special War Department assignment to collaborate with other prosecutors in preparing the case against the war criminals. When she presented her case relating to Japanese military aggression in Manchuria from 1928 to 1945, she became the first woman in history to appear before an International Military Commission.

A graduate of the National University School of Law, she was associated with former Secretary of State Robert Lansing in the practice of law and subsequently was employed in the chief justice’s office at the United States District Court here.

“My present plans are a little vague,” she said. “However, I wouldn’t be surprised if I returned to the Orient on another War Department assignment later on. Right now I’m interested in a hot bath.”

She was met at the station by her mother, Mrs. Albert Kanode, 9703 Hastings Drive, Silver Spring; her brother, Albert E. Kanode, and his wife, both of Baltimore and a group of close friends.

Whatever happens, Mrs. Llewellyn is convinced she impressed the Japanese, a conviction supported by another Tokyo newspaper clipping which described her as “the only American female prosecutor with gentle, delicate features which we least expected from a woman of such a profession.”

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The Waterbury Democrat (September 28, 1946)

Axis pledged aid to Japan

Given as Japanese held peace talks

Tokyo (UP) – Hitler and Mussolini promised Japan when it was preparing for the Pearl Harbor attack that they would declare war on the United States simultaneously and would not sign separate peace treaties, war crimes trial evidence showed today.

The evidence, introduced by the prosecution, was in the form of intercepted messages from Berlin and Rome.

A series of telegrams beginning November 29, 1941, and continuing to the date of the beginning of the Pacific War, disclosed that Japan obtained these pledges from its co-conspirators while conducting “peace” negotiations in Washington.

Attached to the telegrams were certificates from the intelligence division of the U.S. War Department which showed that they had been Intercepted and translated by American officials.

The evidence revealed that Hitler urged Japan to join the war and promised it a share in the spoils. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop warned the Japanese ambassador in Berlin that if Japan hesitated, it might face the military might of Britain and the United States.

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The Wilmington Morning Star (September 28, 1946)

Editorial: To Russia’s profit

Testimony has been offered at the Pacific war crimes trial that Hitler decided to invade Russia after efforts by von Ribbentrop had failed to bring Russia into the war on the side of the German-Japanese-Italian alliance. The United Press, in a Tokyo dispatch says:

“On March 28, 1941, Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop told the late Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka at a conference in Berlin that negotiations with Russia had broken down. Von Ribbentrop added that Hitler, highly annoyed by the Russian failure, to sign, had threatened to ‘shatter Russia’ if Stalin did anything further to displease him.”

The dispatch adds that German armies invaded Russia less than three months later.

The records of von Ribbentrop’s mission to Moscow have not been publicized, but it is understood that the negotiations broke down because Stalin’s price in territory was greater than Hitler would agree to, and that as a result of Hitler’s invasion and Russia’s consequent war partnership with the Western Allies, the Soviet Union is now far better off territorially than it would have been by signing on with Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.

This Russo-German episode is destined to make an interesting chapter in the history of World War II when a Bancroft or Gibbon or Hume gets around to writing it.

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The Daily Alaska Empire (September 28, 1946)

Jap’s 1941 worry was U.S. Navy might not fight

TOKYO – The War Crimes Tribunal trying Japan’s accused war criminals has been told that Japan’s biggest worry nine months before Pearl Harbor was that the United States fleet might not fight and the war therefore might drag on for costly years.

The record of a secret conference between Jap Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsouka and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop has been introduced as evidence in the trial. The record quoted the Nazi as urging a sneak attack in Singapore to shorten war in Europe. That was in March 1941.

Ribbentrop is said to have told the Japs the United States would be powerless to retaliate if the Japs took Singapore. But Matsouka is quoted as replying that the very fact that the United States might not send its fleet west of Hawaii was causing considerable worry in Tokyo.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (October 1, 1946)

Asks no pardon for his French

TOKYO (UP) – French Prosecutor Robert Oneto threatened today to withdraw France from the prosecution of ex-Premier Hideki Tojo and other accused Japanese war criminals unless he was permitted to present his case in French.

The threat followed an angry verbal clash between Tribunal President Sir William Webb and Oneto over his use of French.

Webb had warmed Oneto at the last session of the court that he was to use English. Oneto, however, arose this morning and began speaking in French.

“You are still speaking French and that Is almost contempt,” Webb said.

Oneto ignored him and continued, talking French. Webb quickly adjourned court.

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