The Pittsburgh Press (October 8, 1946)
Plan for conquest by Japs charged
Tanaka Memorial to be shown in trial
TOKYO (UP) – The Soviet Union will present evidence in the war crimes trial against 27 leading Jap suspects designed to prove the actual existence of the “Tanaka Memorial.” The latter allegedly served as an outline for Japan’s plans for world aggression.
The evidence will be contained in an affidavit by former Cossack Gen. Grigori Mikhailovich Semenov, recently convicted and hanged in Moscow as a traitor. Semenov fought against the Russians with the support of the Japs. He was captured in Manchuria after the war.
Hit as fiction
Earlier in the trial, witnesses denied the existence of the memorial and intimated that it was a fiction dreamed up by “anti-Japanese propagandists.”
The memorial allegedly was submitted to Emperor Hirohito in 1927 by Premier Baron Giichi Tanaka. It was supposed to be the plan left by the Emperor Meiji to his posterity, in which Japan was told that the road to world conquest lay over Manchuria, Mongolia, China and the United States. This aim could be attained only by a policy of “blood and iron,” the memorial was said to have specified.
Charge pact violated
Disputed at the time it was published, the memorial was later used as a text by government speakers, pamphleteers, publicists and militarists who proclaimed Japan’s “divine mission” to rule the world.
In a 65-page statement, bitterly protested by American members of the defense, the Russians opened their case against the defendants by accusing Japan of violating her neutrality pact with the Soviet Union and stressing Russia’s role in the defeat of the Axis.
The Daily Alaska Empire (October 8, 1946)
Tribunal split over affidavit of Czarist general
TOKYO – The War Crimes Tribunal at Tokyo has admitted into evidence a 16-page affidavit by the recently-executed former Czarist general, Grigori Semenov.
The defense protested that Semenov was executed by the Russians before the counter-revolutionist could be cross-examined in court. The President of the Tribunal, Sir William Webb, declared that Semenov’s affidavit “certainly would not be received ill any British court.” Later, however, Webb announced alter a court recess – and we quote again – “the Tribunal has decided to admit the affidavit – that is, the majority opinion.”
The affidavit in question was dated April 11, of this year. It had been taken in Moscow. Only a few excerpts were admitted today. Semenov is said to have readily conceded that since the Russian revolution overthrowing the Czar’s regime he had collaborated with the Japanese until he was captured near the war’s end.
The Evening Star (October 9, 1946)
About Washington
By Hope Ridings Miller
Most sought-after speaker on the current Capital scene is a woman who won’t talk. Not, anyway, about the subject on which she has been concentrating the past year – the Japanese war criminals’ trials in Tokyo.
She is Mrs. Grace Kanode Llewellyn, Washington attorney who was the only woman prosecutor at the trials and the first woman in history to appear before an international military commission. Recently returned from the Japanese capital, she has been besieged with requests to speak before innumerable Washington groups. “I can’t talk about the trials,” she has said recently, “nor can I express any opinion as to what their outcome will be. All I can say is that they are proceeding satisfactorily.”
Mrs. Llewellyn was in Japan on a special War Department assignment to help prepare the case against the war criminals. Her arrival there, incidentally, was close on the heels of the granting of the franchise for Japanese women. In a word, Tokyo was more “woman-conscious” than ever in its history, and it was only natural that the only woman prosecutor was the center of much interest Japanese women watched her closely wherever she went, took special note of her clothes, asked her about postwar life in the Occidental world.
The patience of the people in Tokyo impressed Mrs. Llewellyn. Waiting in long queues for food, clothing, or orders of the day, they never seemed resentful of the time consumed. On her arrival, she was somewhat surprised to see that nine out of ten persons on the street wore surgical masks – to help protect them from diseases rampant in the war-torn city.
Like everyone else who has watched Gen. MacArthur in action in Tokyo, Mrs. Llewellyn was enthusiastic in her praise of him. “Americans have every reason to be extravagantly proud of him,” she said. “No one in the world could do the job more effectively.”
The Daily Alaska Empire (October 10, 1946)
Drunken doctor of Japs cuts up war prisoners
TOKYO – A former Japanese medical officer today was accused of operating on Allied prisoners of war while under the influence of liquor and of performing surgery although he was qualified only as a physician.
He is 2nd Lt. Hiroshi Fujii, formerly of Omori POW camp, who also was accused in war crimes charges of beating prisoners and converting Red Cross and medical supplies to his own use.
The charges specified that Fujii performed a hemorrhoid operation on a screaming soldier without anesthetic, although there was a liberal supply in the next room then held up his scalpel and exclaimed: “This knife has now found American blood.”
He was charged with torturing James Dennis Landrum of Richmond, Virginia, by performing an appendectomy before a spinal anesthetic took effect.
The Evening Star (October 13, 1946)
Dr. Nielsen returns to teach at G.U.
Dr. Fred K. Nielsen, professor of international law at Georgetown University, has returned to Washington from official duties at the Tokyo war crime trials to resume teaching, the university announced last night.
He obtained leave from the law school last May when appointed adviser on international law to the Allied Military Tribunal trying the Japanese war criminals. Chief prosecutor of the tribunal is John W. Fihelly, assistant U.S. attorney in the District, also a Georgetown man.
Dr. Nielsen has joined the faculty of the graduate school at Georgetown to give lectures in international law in addition to his regular classes at the law school, it was announced. He is one of five new faculty appointees in that school for the fall term, which has just opened. A former counselor of the State Department, Dr. Nielsen is one of the most prominent authorities in his field of the law. He has served as American delegate to many international conferences.
The other four new appointments on the graduate faculty were announced by the Rev. Hunter Guthrie, S.J., dean, as follows:
-
Louis J. A. Merrier, professor of comparative philosophy and literature. He comes to Georgetown after teaching at Harvard University.
-
Dr. John F. Callahan, associate professor of classics and the history of ancient philosophy. He served with Naval Communications during the war, and before that he had taught for a year at Harvard.
-
Eugene E. Oakes, guest professor of economics, who was an assistant professor at Yale University from 1938 to 1942.
-
Dr. Stefan T. Possony, guest professor of geopolitics, who received his doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Vienna in 1933.
Registration for the new term of the graduate school set a new high record of more than 300 students, it was reported. Among them are 28 officers assigned by the War Department for special studies to equip them for overseas staff duties.
The Evening Star (October 14, 1946)
Japanese feared paratroop drop on Tokyo offices
TOKYO (AP) – Japan’s general staff was so fearful American and Russian paratroopers would drop on Tokyo for a whirlwind finish to the war that three days before the emperor accepted the Potsdam terms employees began burning secret documents, the war crimes tribunal was told today.
The witness, Torashiro Kawabe, deputy chief of the general staff, said important military plans and records of the Supreme War Council went up in flames starting August 13, 1945. It was feared paratroopers might drop on the roof of the general staff building itself.
Meantime, observers expressed the belief the Russians may be planning a trial in the Soviet Union of some Japanese they accuse of plotting against Siberia.
This theory solidified today when Russian Prosecutor S. A. Golunsky introduced, over strong defense objection, an affidavit by Japanese Maj. Gen. Shun Akikusa dealing with alleged Japanese plans for wartime sabotage within the Soviet Far East.
Defense Attorney William Logan demanded to know what the Russians were planning to do with the Japanese, and Mr. Golunsky said he had dispatched a message to Moscow to find out.
The Evening Star (October 15, 1946)
Dr. Nielsen to address women’s bar group
Dr. Fred K. Nielsen, professor of international law at Georgetown University, will address the first fall meeting of the International Relations Committee of the Women’s Bar Association at the Dodge Hotel at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow.
Dr. Nielsen recently returned from Tokyo where he was adviser to the Allied Military Tribunal trying the major Japanese war criminals.
Mrs. Marie M. Allen, chairman of the committee, will preside.
Saskatoon Star-Phoenix (October 16, 1946)
Tied to stake for ten days
TOKYO (AP) – A Canadian was roped to a stake for taking soldier, Red Cross supplies, a witness testified today at the war crimes trial of Lieut. Masato Yoshida, former commander of a war prison camp near Niigata, and three other Japanese.
The witness, Warrant Officer Robert Manchester of Winnipeg, said the prisoner, Rfmn. James Mortimer of Durward, Ont., was exposed to the weather clad only in light trousers, a shirt and socks.
Manchester also declared that Sgt. James Martin of Quebec City, was refused footwear that head guards at the camp, who also are on trial, laughed and stamped on Martin’s feet.
He accused another defendant, Takeo Takahashi, of refusing medical treatment to Pte. Albert Boulding of Pilot Butte, Alta. He charged another defendant, Hyoichi Okuda, with responsibility for the death of Ernest Heuft of Winnipeg, by ordering him to sleep in exposed quarters.
The Evening Star (October 16, 1946)
Ribbentrop’s accusation of Tojo read in Tokyo
TOKYO – While Joachim von Ribbentrop and nine fellow Nazi conspirators dangled at rope ends in Nuernberg, his words of accusation against Hideki Tojo and 26 other Japanese war leaders were read into the international war crimes trial record today.
There was no official recognition in the courtroom of the Nuernberg executions, but Russian Prosecutor S. A. Golunsky chose today to present excerpts of Ribbentrop’s conversations with Japanese and his messages to German diplomats here dealing with the tripartite pact.
Ironically, Ribbentrop’s words disclosed that he mistrusted Japanese leaders as late as July 1941. In a telegram to the German ambassador in Tokyo, he asked if it were possible that the Japanese ambassador in Washington might have concluded an oral agreement with the Americans “which could have induced Roosevelt to occupy Iceland, knowing that in the rear he has nothing to fear from Japan.”
He said he feared the sending of American forces to Iceland presaged quick United States entry into the European war.