Eight decades after the Tokyo Trial helped redefine international norms in the aftermath of World War II (WWII), its lessons on justice, responsibility and the rule of law continue to resonate.

Eight months after WWII ended in September 1945, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) was convened in Tokyo. The IMTFE, also known as the Tokyo Trial, was composed of judges from 11 nations, including China, the United States, the United Kingdom and France. From May 1946 to November 1948, the IMTFE tried 28 Japanese Class A war crime suspects and convicted 25. Two defendants died during the trial, while another one's trial was suspended due to mental illness.

At a commemorative event held on April 29 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, marking the 80th anniversary of the opening of the trial, attendees reflected on its enduring legacy. Themed Truths of the Past, Voices of the Present, the event was organized by the China International Communications Group (CICG) Center for the Americas and the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Nanjing Municipal Committee, and hosted by the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders.

"For 80 years, the facts of the Tokyo Trial have never been shaken by revisionist noise. Court transcripts, witness accounts and archives stand as irrefutable evidence and a shared international memory," Gao Anming, Editor in Chief of CICG, told the event.

Moving forward, CICG, a leading media and publishing organization based in Beijing, will expand cooperation with partners at home and abroad, uphold shared human values, and let the voice of justice from the Tokyo Trial ring out, he added.

Xu Ning, Deputy Director of the Publicity Department of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee, said as part of efforts to reach global audiences, Nanjing has held exhibitions abroad, hosted peace forums, and produced artistic works including operas, documentaries and films on the Nanjing Massacre.

On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops captured Nanjing, then China's capital, slaughtering over 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers over the following six weeks.

According to Zhou Feng, the memorial hall's curator, the memorial hall has assembled a team of inheritors of the historical memory of the Nanjing Massacre, and developed an international volunteer service team.

The review of this history is aimed at safeguarding the hard-won postwar international order, promoting an objective understanding of WWII and defending justice, Zhou said.

During the event, the memorial hall, the Research Institute of War Trial and World Peace at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in Shanghai, and the SJTU Press signed an agreement on jointly developing a Nanjing Massacre Documentation Center database.

Consolidating the truth

The descendants of witnesses of the Tokyo Trial shared their memories at the event. Eighty years ago, Chinese prosecutor Xiang Zhejun, also known as Hsiang Che-chun, stood before the Tokyo Trial and fought to define Japan's aggression in its true terms. Recalling Xiang's accounts of the trial, his son Xiang Longwan shared difficulties facing the prosecutors in collecting evidence as the Japanese military largely destroyed records. Xiang Longwan is now a professor at the Research Institute of War Trial and World Peace at SJTU.

"Any denial of the Nanjing Massacre betrays the 300,000 victims. History cannot be altered; truth will never be absent," Zhang Qing, great-granddaughter of Xu Chuanyin, a Chinese witness at the Tokyo Trial, said.

Xu was one of the first Chinese witnesses traveling to Tokyo to testify in court. His testimony revealed that the Red Cross branch he managed alone buried the bodies of 43,000 victims. It was one of the key pieces of evidence underpinning convictions and sentencing at the Tokyo Trial.

Chris Magee, grandson of John Magee, an American witness at the Tokyo Trial, said in a video message his grandfather remained in Nanjing after the invasion and collected evidence of the atrocities. Chris Magee said he has passed on this legacy through visual storytelling.

In early 1938, John Magee worked with several foreign nationals to secretly take the film footage out of China. This material is the only known video record of the Nanjing Massacre preserved by an international witness.

During the event, Zou Dehuai, a collector and writer, donated a collection of archival materials belonging to David Nelson Sutton, a U.S. associate prosecutor at the Tokyo Trial, to the memorial hall.

The materials include six original diaries kept by Sutton between 1946 and 1948, a report on the Japanese military's opium and narcotics trade in China, and copies of part of the 1946 trial transcripts from the IMTFE.

Keeping memory alive

"It is not enough to establish the truth and to punish the crimes; we must also continually resist the twin poisons of the modern world: denial and oblivion," Kléber Arhoul, Curator of the Caen Memorial Museum in France, a museum promotes peace and pays tribute to WWII victims, said.

According to him, only very few students in Europe have heard of the Tokyo Trial, following Japan's defeat. It is because of this that the museum has launched a dedicated space for the Nanjing Massacre, seeking to challenge the overly Eurocentric chronology and geography of WWII.

"The Tokyo Trial and the tragedy of Nanjing are not only about the past. They are about the kind of international order we seek to build now and in the future," Evandro Menezes de Carvalho, a professor of international law at Fluminense Federal University in Brazil, said.

The Tokyo Trial contributed to the evolution of international law by

incorporating Asian perspectives into a system previously dominated by Western powers. From this standpoint, the trial was about recognizing that the suffering endured in Nanjing and across China must be integrated into the global legal and historical record, he said.

The trial, however, was unable to deliver full justice because of constraints such as the destruction of evidence and political maneuvering. According to Einar Tangen, a U.S. commentator and a senior researcher with the Center for International Governance Innovation in Canada, Japan remains unreconciled with its wartime past. The Yasukuni Shrine controversy, the revisionist history textbooks, the denial of the Japanese military's use of sex slaves, known as "comfort women," and the ongoing territorial disputes with China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) all trace their origins to the Tokyo Trial's compromised proceeding.

The Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo holds the souls of Japan's war dead. As they include those of 14 Class A war criminals from WWII, visits by senior Japanese politicians are seen as moves to rehabilitate a militarist narrative and therefore spark wide condemnation.

"China and the ROK live with those decisions every day. So does any hope for genuine reconciliation in East Asia," Tangen said.

During the event, organizers presented two books compiled by the memorial hall, Tokyo Trial: Evidence and Judgment of the Nanjing Massacre and The Nanjing Trial: Evidence and Verdict on the Nanjing Massacre, to international guests.

The Tokyo Trial serves as historical documentation, providing undeniable proof that the Nanjing Massacre did occur and that some of the major Japanese war criminals were held accountable, Eric Foster, nephew of Edgar Snow, a U.S. journalist who authored the 1937 book Red Star Over China, said.

"In an era where historical denial and revisionism continue to obscure the truth of this tragic event, works like Tokyo Trial are essential. They preserve and record the factual history of these atrocities, ensuring that the lessons of the past remain clear and unaltered for future generations," Foster said. BR

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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