The Evening Star (October 17, 1946)
Dr. Brendan F. Brown has returned to law teaching at Catholic University after three months’ service with the American War Crimes Commission in Tokyo, the university announced today.
Dr. Brown was juridical consultant to Joseph B. Keenan, chief of the prosecution section of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
The Daily Alaska Empire (October 17, 1946)
TOKYO – The Japanese repeatedly violated their non-aggression pact with Russia by searching and attacking Soviet ships during the war, the Russian prosecutor S. A. Golunsky said to day to the International War Crimes Tribunal.
He presented documents reporting also that Russian crews were mistreated. He said the Japanese went beyond their rights under international law in searching ships, many of them plying between the United States west coast and Vladivostok with food and clothing.
Golunsky said he expected to conclude Russia’s prosecution Monday. He has yet to present Japan ese army officers captured when the Red Army overran Manchuria and northern Korea.
The Evening Star (October 18, 1946)
There is always a compelling interest in the phrase: “Now it can be told.” This certainly applies to a statement made by Soviet Prosecutor S. A. Golunsky, Russian representative to the “war crimes” trial now starting in Tokyo, where the chief leaders of the former imperial regime are to be brought to justice for their parts in planning and launching aggressive warfare.
As part of the buildup for the Soviet case, the world is, for the first time, told at least the Russian side of those armed clashes which occurred during the late 1930s along many parts of the remote frontiers which separated Russian Siberia and the Russian satellite state of Outer Mongolia from Japanese-held Korea, Manchuria (Manchukuo), and Inner Mongolia.
Of course, news of those events reached the outer world at the time. But they leaked out through thick veils of censorship and designing propaganda. Certainly, the precise military operations and their strategic, tactical and technical lessons were not then disclosed, albeit general staffs would have given much to have been fully informed of them.
According to the Soviet statement, Japan was always the aggressor, its aim being to test out the strength of the Red Army in the Far East as part of a plan eventually to invade and conquer Siberia as far as Lake Baikal – an objective which Japan actually undertook between 1918 and 1920, when the former czarist empire was dissolving into temporary chaos and civil strife as a result of the Bolshevik revolution. Furthermore, Japan is now charged with having supplemented these military attacks by extensive use of White Russian emigres trained to sabotage and anti-Communist propaganda.
Those Japanese attacks ranged from small skirmishes to large-scale operations precipitating regular battles, especially those on the Korean border in 1938 and on the Mongolian border early in 1939. That they were not the prelude to a regular Russo-Japanese war was due to the fact that they resulted in crushing Japanese defeats due largely to the superiority of Soviet equipment, especially new model tanks. All this convinced the Japanese warlords that the attempt to conquer Eastern Siberia would have to be postponed, although a Japanese army, a million strong, was kept in Korea and Manchuria even after Japan had challenged America and Britain at Pearl Harbor.
So much for the Russian statement. How much Japanese forbearance toward Russia was due to the decision of the Japanese high command to launch a war against the English-speaking powers rather than against the Soviet Union will probably be revealed at the trial now starting in Tokyo. But the Soviet revelation of this “hidden war” is both interesting and instructive, as far as it goes.
Muncie Evening Press (October 21, 1946)
War crimes tribunal hears how stroke mapped
TOKYO (INS) – Japan’s well-laid plans for the Pacific war – including the date for the Pearl Harbor attack which was set almost a month in advance – were outlined today before the international war crimes tribunal.
Brig. R. H. Quilliam, associated prosecutor from New Zealand, described the plans in opening the phase of the war crimes case dealing with Japan’s general preparations for war.
Quilliam said that by the end of October 1941, Japan had secretly committed herself to war against the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands.
In addition, Quilliam said the Japanese, on November 10, 1941, chose December 7 as the date for the surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor and other points in the Pacific. The prosecutor said the December 7 date was printed in secret Japanese operations orders.
Part of war games
Also laid at the door of Hideki Tojo and the 26 other defendants was the charge that details of an air attack on Pearl Harbor were part of the Japanese Navy’s war games in August 1941. The prosecutor also declared that the Japanese Navy also studied operations for the occupation of Malaya, Burma, the East Indies, the Philippines, the Solomons and the Central Pacific islands.
Quilliam charged that as early as 1932 Japan’s leaders began financial, industrial and military preparations for a war of aggression.
It was said that the Japanese government directed the printing in January 1941 of worthless military currency for the army’s planned undertakings in the Philippines and other areas.
Quilliam named defendants Umezu and Kaya as sparkplugs of a 1937 five-year plan for production of which Japan would be ready in 1941 to execute plans for conquest of the nations of East Asia and the Pacific.
The prosecutor said Japan’s government paid out subsidies to war plants in Korea and Formosa of as much as 207 million yen.
The Daily Alaska Empire (October 21, 1946)
TOKYO – Japan began gearing her industry for war five years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, according to evidence presented before the War Crimes Tribunal trying ex-Premier Hideki Tojo and other high-ranking Japanese officials today.
Amarillo Daily News (October 23, 1946)
TOKYO, Oct. 22 (UP) – Allied headquarters said today that three former Japanese prisoner of war camp commanders had received praise – instead of condemnation – from former U.S. soldiers held by them.
The respected Japanese are Shoichi Negishi, now back on his pre-war job as a postmaster; Yoshaiki Komatsu, a graduate chemist at Kyoto Imperial University, and Shoichi Hiraki, former commander of the Yokkaichi camp.
The Evening Star (October 24, 1946)
Lt. Leo E. Hunter, former Washington attorney, has been assigned as associate prosecutor in a Japanese war crimes trial.
An announcement from Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters said Lt. Hunter will help prosecute Tetsuo Kobayashi, known as “Frogeyes.” Kobayashi, a former Japanese Army lieutenant, is accused of criminal negligence in the care of American prisoners of war which caused the death of one and the unnecessary amputation of the leg of another.
Lt. Hunter practiced law here from 1924 to 1942, when he enlisted in the Army. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1923.
The Berkshire Eagle (October 28, 1946)
Hits ex post facto objection as false reasoning
ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey (UP) – Joseph B. Keenan, chief prosecutor in the Japanese war crimes trials, charged today that objections to the Nuernberg and Tokyo trials were based on “shallow and false” reasoning.
Keenan’s defense of the proceedings, an obvious reply to recent criticism by Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), was contained in an address read on his behalf before the annual convention of the American Bar Association here.
Keenan did not mention Taft by name. But he rejected the senator’s argument that the Nuernberg verdict violated the fundamental American principle against ex post facto laws – the principle that a man cannot be tried for an act that is classified as a crime after he commits it.
Declaring that opposition to the trials had “the same blind support of tradition as that compelling children to be thrown in the pathway of a juggernaut by their parents,” Keenan said it was “discouraging” to hear the trials criticized on ex post facto grounds.
No permissive law either
“This doctrine never meant more than objection to the making of a crime after the event,” he said. “Converting a lawful act into a crime for the first time after it took place. Where is the law that makes legitimate breaking a nation’s law contained in a treaty, especially when it means certain death to hundreds of thousands and even millions of people.”
He traced the prewar policy of Japanese-American relations and pointed out Japan’s violation of the nine-power pact of 1922 which guaranteed the territorial integrity of China.
“Do the proponents of this objection actually claim that such action is protected or even allowed by law – and if so, by what law?” Keenan demanded, adding: “Does the breaking of the law cease to be unlawful because it has not been punished?”
Replying to Taft’s expressed doubt that the executions would discourage further aggressors. Keenan noted that the nations of the individuals involved “have already condemned such individual conduct as being worthy of the sternest punishment…”
“It is more than barely possible that this in itself and the type of punishment imposed might have some influence in impeding the progress in seizing the reins of government,” he said.
The Evening Star (October 28, 1946)
ATLANTIC CITY (AP) – Chief Prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan told the American Bar Association today that the Tokyo was crimes trials are based on sound law and justice and are the alternative to “lynchings.”
Terming the proceedings before the international tribunal “neither blood purges nor judicial lynchings,” Mr. Keenan added: “If they are not held, the (Japanese) people in impatience and disgust will have their own lynchings and blood purgings.”
In an 8,000-word address sent from Tokyo to be read by Otto H. Lowe, Cape Charles (Virginia) attorney, the American prosecutor noted that there are “some well-known citizens, including members of our Congress, who do not believe at all in these international war crimes trials.”
With this obvious reference to the criticism of the Nuernberg Tribunal voiced by Sen. Taft (R-Ohio), Mr. Keenan undertook a detailed defense of the purpose and conduct of the Japanese hearing.
He declared the Supreme Court, in upholding the action of a 1942 military commission which sentenced German spies to death, had “held that valid law could be made by treaties among nations – after which such treaties, having been enacted, became sufficiently binding law to establish crime.”
Japan, a party to the 1922 nine-power treaty and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand pact outlawing war, “embarked upon a career of conquest and could have stopped at any time it wanted to,” Mr. Keenan contended, adding:
“When crimes of violence are committed in our country, we arrest the accused, bring them before judges and juries and punish them upon conviction. Here in the Tokyo trials we are carrying out these same principles and practices…
Crime to plan war
“We hold that it is a crime even to plan a war in violation of international law, treaties, agreements and assurances.”
“Is it not time that we attempt to make our treaties real in every respect?” Mr. Keenan asked. “Do they not create law? Are they not binding upon, the individuals of nations as well as the nations themselves?”
Without referring directly to Sen. Taft’s contention that American justice does not condone convictions under a law not in effect at the time a crime was committed, Mr. Keenan asserted:
“It is discouraging to hear voiced repeated objections on ex post facto grounds. This doctrine never meant more than objection to the making of a crime after the event converting a lawful act into a crime for the first time after it took place.
Discusses tradition
“Where is the law that makes legitimate breaking a nation’s law contained in a treaty?” he asked.
On the score of tradition, Mr. Keenan recalled that Woodrow Wilson told the Bar Association in 1910 that “the people will not be argued into impotency by lawyers.” Thus, the prosecutor went on, when the people “enforced their own law by lynching Mussolini and Robespierre they recorded their reaction to the failure of lawful processes to operate…
“We can expect nothing less when the law or its just enforcement fails to march alone to meet the requirements of justice applicable to existing realities.”
TOKYO (AP) – Chief Prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan indicated today that additional Japanese leaders, including some members of the Zaibatsu (family monopoly groups), might be tried on war crimes charges even before conclusion of the present cases against former Premier Hideki Tojo and 26 others under indictment.
Mr. Keenan said the prosecution was studying the war guilt of bankers and industrialists in line with its policy of trying “those chiefly responsible for planning, initiating and waging aggressive war.”
The American Economic Mission to Japan recently blamed the Zaibatsu as one of the groups primarily responsible for the Pacific war.
Allied headquarters has prepared a plan under which the industrial banking monopolies of four Zaibatsu families – Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Yasuda – are to be broken up. There has been considerable speculation, too, that Zaibatsu leaders would be barred from participating in Japan’s future economy.
By the Associated Press
The Japanese people are building up “a furious resentment” against their war leaders, Capt. Luke Lea of Nashville, Tennessee, liaison officer for the prosecution staff of the Japanese war crimes trials, said yesterday.
Capt. Lea said in a broadcast that former Premier Tojo and other war lords would be safer walking the streets of Washington than Tokyo.
“Their own people would kill them,” he said.
Capt. Lea is here temporarily to obtain additional data for the trials.