After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1945, under the guidance of the United Nations War Crimes Investigation Commission, the Chinese government set up military tribunals in 10 cities of Beiping, Shenyang, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Jinan, Hankou, Taiyuan, Shanghai, Xuzhou and Taipei, and organized a large-scale trial of Japan.
The four-year trial was part of the Tokyo International Trial, the first independent international trial in China, and an unprecedented war trial conducted by Chinese judicial personnel in combination with International Law and China's domestic law.
However, for various reasons, such a major trial has been obliterated for a long time and little is known. Where did the judgment arise? What was the process like? What was the result? On the afternoon of March 21, Professor Liu Tong, a well-known expert in military history and doctor of history, brought his new book "The Great Trial - The National Government's Handling of Japanese War Criminals" to build a book office, bringing a wonderful new book sharing meeting to readers. At the meeting, Professor Liu revealed the whole process of the establishment of ten tribunals by the Nationalist government to try Japanese war criminals in a panoramic manner through precious photos and archives that have not yet been made public, and presented many shocking details, so that readers can feel the importance of justice to world peace.
The following is professor Liu Tong's speech at the sharing meeting.
Hello readers, the book I have in my hand, "The Great Trial – The National Government's Trial of Japanese War Criminals," is the result of a major project of the National Social Science Fund that I have just completed. The book restores a period of obliterated history. Why? The trial was rarely mentioned. By the beginning of this century, Japan's right-wingers were constantly overturning cases and denying Japan's war crimes. China has also strengthened the study of the history of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. We recognize that post-war trials were also an indispensable part of the War of Resistance Against Japan. In the past, when we studied the Tokyo Trials or the Nanjing Massacre, we didn't know much about the overall situation of the postwar trials in Japan. So I did the task of restoring this history.
The trial of war criminals began in January 1942 when the British government convened a meeting of the nine governments in exile in London to discuss how to try Nazi German war criminals after the war. Why did it be discussed so early? Because at the end of the First World War, there was no consensus among the countries, Kaiser Wilhelm II fled, and there was no public trial of German war criminals, which is considered a historical regret. After attending the meeting as an observer, Chinese Minister to the Netherlands Jin Wensi felt that China should also participate in this matter. So he reported to the National Government in Chongqing, and Chongqing immediately stated: We will also try Japanese war criminals after the war.
When discussing the basic principles of the trial, Kim Wensi, on behalf of the Republic of China, made clear his position: Your trial of German fascist crimes began in 1939, and China was invaded by Japan since the "September 18 Incident" in 1931, so we will set the investigation of war crimes to begin in 1931. The second position was put forward by Gu Weijun, the then ambassador to Britain. Gu Weijun said that when the United Kingdom and nine other countries discussed, they all said that the trial of war criminals should be based on international law and the Hague Convention as the theoretical basis and legal basis, and China should embody national sovereignty and use our own laws to try Japanese war criminals, but we also try our best to be in line with international standards. This is a very important position, indicating that at the beginning of the trial, China took into account that China must conduct the trial independently and in accordance with domestic law.
In October 1943, the International War Crimes Commission was established in London, later known as the United Nations War Crimes Commission, and a branch was set up in Chongqing, China. The London Commission of Inquiry set the standard for trial, which was conviction. Under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, 34 offences were filed. The Chinese government has compared these charges with China's domestic laws, including the Criminal Code. For example, killing civilians and enslaving civilians as laborers are equivalent to how many articles of our Criminal Law and how many articles of the Criminal Procedure Law. In this way, china's domestic law and international law have been brought into line, and we have a legal basis in the trial. Later, so many Japanese war criminals were tried, so many verdicts were written, all of which said that there was a clear legal basis according to several paragraphs of articles of the Criminal Law of the Republic of China, or according to certain provisions of a certain law. We cannot follow the foreign situation completely, and the 34 charges proposed by the London Conference are basically based on the situation in Britain. For example, there is a crime called "bombing a medical ship", which is against public international law, but this article is not suitable for China. There were a few that he didn't. The first is to destroy China's cultural relics and monuments, and the second is to plunder China's cultural relics and national treasures. The Nationalist government said that we would add a few more articles, adding a total of 38 crimes.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in January 1946, China, the United States, and the United Kingdom held a meeting of three foreign ministers in Moscow, and decided that the United States would preside over the establishment of an International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Japan to try Japanese Class-A war criminals. Our previous understanding of the Tokyo trial was too narrow, thinking it was in Tokyo. In fact, Tokyo only tried Class A war criminals, and 53 military tribunals have been set up in Asian countries, including 10 in China, to try the rest of the war criminals.
The National Government set up a War Crimes Commission to investigate and began its investigation. It is particularly difficult to find, because to try war crimes, it is necessary to have corresponding documents, evidence and evidence that meet the requirements of international practice. This presents a big problem for our Chinese. The prosecutor went down to investigate, and the people all said when our family was killed by the Japanese, when our family was burned by the Japanese, when the Japanese robbed it... Who killed it? Who grabbed it? Which Japanese unit? Who's last name? Can't say. This gave rise to one of the biggest problems: the Chinese people were in the midst of war, slaughtered, plundered, and fled everywhere by the Japanese. When you are fleeing, how can you look back and see who snatched you, who chased you, what was his last name? Therefore, it is a huge difficulty for China to investigate and collect evidence. When investigating and collecting evidence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs pays attention to some major cases. The first is the Nanjing Massacre, which was not originally told by our Chinese, but by a British journalist, Tian Bolie, who published a book called "Outsiders Witnessing the Atrocities of the Japanese Army in China." He interviewed many witnesses to the Nanjing Massacre, especially foreigners living in Nanjing, and obtained a lot of materials for the Nanjing Massacre. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs hurried to find these people to see who was still in China. At that time, some foreign professors at Jinling University were in Chengdu and Chongqing, and a person named Fei Zhi was found. He was an important witness to the Nanjing Massacre. The person from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked: "Mr. Fei Zhi, we are now going to investigate the crimes of the Japanese army, will you testify for us?" Fei Zhi agreed. Later, Fei Zhi not only provided a large amount of empirical evidence of Japanese aggression, but also wrote a lot of testimony, and later he also appeared in court at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to testify about the Nanjing Massacre. This foreign friend was a very noble man.
Despite this, we still have many difficulties in investigating the war crimes of the Japanese army. For example, Chongqing's "Xinhua Daily" once reported that on a certain day in a certain month in 1944, the Japanese army carried out a large-scale sweep and massacre in the Shandong base area, and the blood flowed like a river. The Chongqing Investigation Commission wrote a letter to the Xinhua Daily, asking if it could be specific about the incident, what were the names of the people killed, the specific locations were in which villages, and which unit of the Japanese army was swept up. The result is not clear. Therefore, there is still a long way to go from news reports and court trials.
Before the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there was a peace village far away in Guizhou Town, which was the Kuomintang's Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and the person in charge was zou Renzhi, a Japanese student studying abroad and with the rank of major general. Among the staff of the Peace Village was the underground Communist Party of China, who conducted anti-war education on Japanese war criminals, so that Japanese prisoners of war gradually realized their crimes and confessed their guilt. Chongqing let the Peace Village Prisoner of War Camp investigate Japanese war crimes. So Zou Renzhi mobilized these Japanese prisoners to write evidence of the crime. The Japanese captives wrote more than 100 incriminating documents, and these incriminating evidence met the requirements of the Nationalist government to try war criminals: What was the name of the offender? Which unit? When was the sin committed? Who is the witness? All of these elements. With these testimonies in place, we can arrest Japanese war criminals and go to court for trial. The Second Historical Archive printed the Certificate of Japanese Crimes, which provided us with a model for the investigation of japanese crimes.
The War of Resistance was victorious, and Our country began a large-scale investigation into the crimes of the Japanese army. At that time, this work was two things at the same time, one was that the Japanese army was to be gradually repatriated, 1 million Japanese troops laid down their weapons, they wanted to return to China ship by ship, it was in Shanghai and Tianjin Tanggu at that time, so the gendarmes blocked these two ports, one by one, to see which of these Japanese troops were criminal suspects. We didn't have that much evidence at the time, what to do? First, the Japanese generals, major generals and the above, were all detained. Second, all the Japanese gendarmes in the big cities were detained. Third, secret agents and suspected relatively famous war criminals were detained first. When the investigation is clear, if it is all right, it will be repatriated. In this way, a number of people were detained in detention centers and let ordinary people everywhere to give evidence. In order to allow the people to provide evidence, the procuratorates in various places went down to collect evidence and printed the standard certificate, which is the certificate of the crime of the Japanese army. It is required to fill in the name, occupation, address, who the Japanese soldier who reported it, what things, and then to conclude "what I said is the truth, I bear legal responsibility", sign and draw a handprint, a complete set.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the people complained one after another, although there was a lot of evidence, but there was very little useful evidence, and there was very little evidence that could be put in court. What is the reason? Just because the people of that time did not have a clear sense of law, not as high as the level of law we have today, most of the words spoken by the people at that time were specious. A few years ago, do you remember exactly what year, month and day? You only remember that it was hot and cold, which really made you accurate to which day and which day, most ordinary people can't say clearly. Coupled with the fact that the people fled the war and fled everywhere at that time, you let him talk about his hometown, and he couldn't say it clearly. In addition, many ordinary people are afraid of causing trouble, afraid of going to court, afraid of trouble, timid, and dare not give evidence. So at that time, after the procurator in Guangdong went down to look for evidence, he came back and said: "It's really difficult, you have to guide the people, teach the people how to say, and then write for them, and then let them see if this is the case, and then let them press a handprint." ”
The Beijing Archives produced a large set of books, printing more than 2,000 usable pieces of evidence. There are tens of thousands of pieces of evidence provided, but there are only 2,000 japanese war crimes that are really famous and surnamed. And these 2,000 copies are basically concentrated in the gendarmerie and secret agents, that is, they are stationed in a city, the people can know, they can know what the name is, they beat people and kill people, the people can remember. This is why the war trials were initially concentrated on gendarmes and spies, and very few soldiers in the Japanese army were tried.
Prosecutors everywhere work hard. In order to improve the level of prosecution, after the establishment of the Tokyo International Tribunal, in May 1946, the Tokyo Court sent two American military prosecutors to China to collect evidence. Mainly the Nanjing Massacre, chemical warfare, crimes against humanity, these crimes. The National Government actively cooperated, and second, it sent officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to accompany them on patrols. From Guangzhou, Guilin, and Beiping to Changchun and Shenyang, a large circle was made, on the one hand, to collect evidence to serve the trial in the Far East, and on the other hand, to communicate and train with judicial personnel from all over the world, telling them how the international trial should be conducted, to try japanese people, to make him confess, and what work should be done. After returning from his inspection tour, Yang Jueyong, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote a very long report, recording the level of trials in various places at that time, the difficulties in collecting evidence, and how to train, and also told everyone how to investigate and how to collect evidence, which was a very important help for the preparations for the trial of Japanese war criminals in various places.
At the same time as the investigation and collection of evidence, the National Government set up 10 tribunals according to the military establishment, of which Beiping, Jinan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Shenyang were relatively large. The Xuzhou and Taiyuan courts are relatively small; the last Taipei court, because we first have to take back Taiwan and take over Taiwan. Only when a government is established can a court be established. Therefore, the Taipei court was the latest to be established, and there were relatively few war criminals tried.
After the establishment of the court, with judges and prosecutors, the list of war criminals began to be drawn up. At the beginning, all the generals and officers above the commander of the Japanese division were listed as war criminals, and more than 300 people were listed. But if more than 300 people have not received the conclusive crime, how will they be tried? So the Tokyo court said that they would try Class A war criminals first, and let China provide a list of Class A war criminals first. The Justice Department quickly made a list of Class A war criminals. After Chiang Kai-shek's personal examination and approval, 20 people were finally identified. Among the 20 people, Hideki Tojo, Kenji Doihara, and Ishigen Matsui all went to the court of the Tokyo trial and were punished as they deserved. During the Tokyo trial, the evidence provided by China and the list of war criminals played a decisive role.
After all the preparations, the establishment of the Tribunal, the enactment of trial regulations, and the Establishment of a Joint War Criminals Handling Committee in the Executive Yuan to lead the trial before the formal trial began. At the beginning, the courts were very eye-catching, first of all, the military police were tried, because the crimes of the Japanese gendarmes were the most obvious, and the ordinary people gave the most accurate evidence. The first person to be tried by the Shanghai court was Haruki Yonemura, the captain of the Changshu Gendarmerie, nicknamed "The Wolf of Changshu". This guy turned out to be an intelligence officer, and later in the gendarmerie specially to capture the underground anti-Japanese forces, he broke an underground anti-Japanese armed force in Changshu and arrested more than 50 people. He personally slaughtered 7 people in Changshu, and the rest were sent to Shanghai. During the trial of Mi Village, the Shanghai court spent a lot of effort to investigate, and found a local ordinary person who specialized in funerals on a hillside outside Changshu City. He took the investigator up the hill and shaved out several heads. So he took Mimura to court, how many people were killed, when he killed them, who they were, one by one, and Mimura could not be denied. Yonemura didn't want to die, he wanted to make a meritorious deed. He drew six maps for the Kuomintang, called "Schematic Map of the Activities of the New Fourth Army of the Communist Party of China in Jiangnan", and these 6 pictures surprised me that the Japanese devils knew our anti-Japanese armed forces very well. If you look at the picture he drew, where Su Yu's troops are and where Wang Bicheng's troops are, they all match the history of our New Fourth Army. Moreover, the pictures he drew were all dynamic, where the troops were today and where they were tomorrow, and he also wrote a large number of explanations, which shows that when the Japanese army invaded China, the intelligence work was very strong. But it was too late, because according to the Double Tenth Agreement, the Communist Party south of the Yangtze River did not leave a single soldier, and Su Yu had already crossed the river to northern Jiangsu, so this map was worthless. Yonemura was escorted to Tilanqiao in Shanghai, paraded in a torture car, and was finally shot and left with a documentary. This is a very representative case of the trial of the Japanese gendarmerie.
In the Jinan trial, there was a very big case called the Xinhuayuan case. Xinhuayuan was a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and the captured officers and men of the Kuomintang army, the anti-Japanese common people, and some communist guerrillas were all detained in Jinan's Xinhuayuan, which was a compound of more than 20,000 square meters. Three or four thousand people are imprisoned all year round. The dean's name is Makoto Aoi. Everyone in Jinan knew that Xinhuayuan was a hall of Yan Wang, and when the procurator went to The Xinhuayuan to investigate, he saw many rooms stained with blood; there were many Chinese buried in the mass burial pit on the outskirts. Chinese suffered abuse in Xinhuayuan, some of whom died of malnutrition and abuse. Some of the Chinese were continuously imported to Tohoku and Japan to work as hard laborers. The Jinan court collected a large amount of evidence to try Qingjing Zhenguang, and finally found that since the establishment of xinhuayuan for four years, there have been more than 15,000 Chinese killed, starved to death, and died of illness. After the verdict, He shot Maki Aoi.
In the Jinan trial, some secret service agencies were also involved, which were called guild halls at that time, which were actually gendarmerie units. They were not gendarmes who took to the streets to maintain order, but organizations that specialized in capturing resistance fighters. At that time, there was a very famous place in Jinan called the Phoenix Guild Hall, and an arrested Kuomintang underground intelligence officer wrote a whistle-blowing statement stating how long he had been detained there and how much torture he had suffered, and the person who tried him was the gendarme squad leader at the time, named Masao Tanaka. Masao Tanaka was arrested from the internment camp. At the beginning of the trial, Tanaka desperately denied it, and later received a report, a widow, saying that her husband may have been an underground member of the Kuomintang, and as a result, he was arrested by Masao Tanaka on a certain day and night in a certain month of a certain year. Tanaka denied it. The victim's daughter, 15 years old, appeared in court to recognize someone, and the girl took one look at it and said, "That's him!" The lights were on in my house that day and I could see very clearly! Tanaka could not deny this and was sentenced to death. None of the Japanese gendarmes in the trial could honestly admit guilt, they all denied everything, all of them were human and material evidence, and the verdict was pronounced according to law.
There are many kinds of crimes committed by the Japanese gendarmes, and one of the most bizarre things is that in January 1945, American bombers bombed Tokyo, bombers ran out of oil, could not fly back, and forced landings in Chinese mainland. The Doolittle Air Force, which we know well, was forced to land in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, and was rescued by the local people, who carried them on stretchers and carried them station by station. Two other Americans fell in Pudong, Shanghai, and the local village chief, named Monk Xue, saw that the plane had fallen from the sky, and two U.S. pilots parachuted, so they quickly organized their own people and transferred the two American pilots away one stop at a time. This made the Japanese gendarmerie know about it, when the Japanese gendarmerie team, Long Baojiang Baoji, arrested more than a dozen villagers in this village and beat the monk Xue to death. The case was a sensation at the time, with the Shanghai court trying Kubo Eboji and five gendarmes who committed the murder and sentencing them to death and life imprisonment respectively.
When the Shanghai court investigated and collected evidence, it found that many ordinary people were persecuted by the Japanese gendarmes, beaten, and imprisoned, but they did not know what the gendarmes were called. What to do? Therefore, hundreds of Japanese gendarmes were all stationed on the field, and all the people who had been persecuted by the Japanese army went to identify them one by one, and more than 40 Japanese criminals were identified on the spot. Therefore, the japanese gendarmerie agents account for the largest proportion of trials, and in all the courts, the number of trials is the largest, but these people are not major criminals, and we still have to take seriously the really major cases.
What is the most significant case? It was the Nanjing Massacre. We know that the Japanese army captured Nanjing, where it was massacred for a week, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese civilians and soldiers. The purpose of the massacre was to destroy the anti-Japanese morale of the Chinese people. Later, why did the Japanese army vigorously deny the Nanjing Massacre? The Japanese army said that many Chinese soldiers changed into ordinary people's clothes after the defeat and mixed into the homes of ordinary people, so that we could not distinguish between them. The Nanjing Massacre was a very serious event at the time. A British journalist, Tian Bolie, wrote a book called "Outsiders Witnessing the Atrocities of the Japanese Army in China", which was the first to disclose the Nanjing Massacre.
The most important case in the Nanjing trial was the Nanjing Massacre. At that time, the Nanjing court was called the Court of The Ministry of National Defense, and the chief judge was Shi Meiyu, who was responsible for presiding over the investigation of the Nanjing Massacre. At that time, the Japanese army hired the charity Red Swastika to bury the bodies, and the Red Swastika and Chongshan Hall recorded how many people were buried every day, and then took this list to the Japanese army to collect labor fees. The investigators found the staff of the Red Swastika Society and Chongshan Hall and asked them to lead them to the outskirts of Nanjing to find mass graves one by one, and as a result, several huge mass graves were found, and all the heads and bones of people were taken out from here. On trial was the japanese division commander Gu Shoufu, who was the first to rush into the city of Nanjing and carry out a massacre. The court enumerated his crimes, which Gu Shoufu completely denied, and he wrote a long complaint. Gu Shoufu said, first, he went to Nanjing for a day and left, and then he didn't know what happened, there were 5 divisions and regiments behind him, you asked them to go. Second, his military discipline was strict, and there were no acts of massacre, robbery, or rape. How did the prosecutor refute him? First, how many people did you kill, how much evidence, how much evidence did you kill in the Zhonghua Gate, in the area where your division and regiment were stationed, how many people did you kill, how much evidence did you say that other divisions and regiments killed? Second, after the Nanjing Massacre, foreigners were made public, and even the Japanese authorities felt very humiliated, so they sent high-ranking generals to investigate, scolded several generals of the Japanese army who had entered Nanjing at that time, and dismissed the commander-in-chief Matsui Ishigen and transferred back to China. In addition, gendarmes were dispatched and comfort stations were established to prevent the Japanese army from committing such crimes again. If there had been no Holocaust, how could there have been such a pile of investigative and remedial actions? So in the end, the evidence is conclusive, but it is not the case of Gu Shoufu alone, but the collective crime of the Japanese troops who rushed into Nanjing. Therefore, a major feature of the Nanjing Massacre trial is the responsibility for war, and what we prosecute and try is the entire Nanjing Massacre crime of the Japanese army, and Gu Shoufu is just a representative standing in the courtroom.
After the trial of gu shoufu's case, another trial of the "hundred people beheading" case was followed. Our staff involved in the Tokyo trial found a series of reports in Tokyo from the Daily News, namely two officers competing to kill a hundred people first, one named Toshiaki Xiang and the other named Takeshi Noda. From Jiangnan all the way to Nanjing, one killed 106 people and the other killed 105 people. It's not a day's thing, it's a month of continuous tracking in the newspaper. After discovering this report, the Chinese side, through the US military police, escorted Noda Andi and Xiang Toshiaki back to the Nanjing court for trial. At that time, the two had already returned to their hometown in Japan and arrested them from the village. They went back to court, saying that one of us was a staff officer at the regimental headquarters and the other was an artillery lieutenant, so how could we kill so many people? He also said that Japanese reporters are bragging, and they just want to be a fake hero and go home to find a wife. Can the court believe it? So the court listed their various behaviors, saying that how can Japanese journalists follow up and report without telling the truth at all, all of which are fake news? So in the end, the two major murderers were sentenced to death.
During the trial of the Nanjing Massacre, the Nanjing court sentenced a total of three people, who were representatives of the crimes of the Japanese army. We will never limit our eyes to three criminals, but through the case of the Nanjing Massacre, we will make public the most barbaric crimes of the Japanese army.
There were also major cases of trials of officers of the rank of Japanese general. The Takashi Sakai case is also important. Takashi Sakai was a Japanese general whom Chiang Kai-shek and He Ying had appointed to arrest, interrogate, and sentence first, and this man was the vanguard of the invasion of China. In 1927 he served as a military attaché at the Japanese consulate in Jinan. When the Northern Expeditionary Army reached Jinan, the soldiers in the city were in chaos, and some people took advantage of the fire to loot, and as a result, the Japanese army killed hundreds of civilians in the city under the pretext of protecting the Japanese expatriates, and did not allow the Northern Expeditionary Army to enter the city. At that time, the commander-in-chief was Chiang Kai-shek, and it was Sakai Takashi who came forward to negotiate. Chiang Kai-shek did not want to entangle with the Japanese for the sake of the Northern Expedition, so he swallowed this breath and bypassed the side of Jinan. But Sakai Takashi's arrogance and insidiousness left a deep impression on Chiang Kai-shek.
During the invasion of North China, Sakai served as a military attaché of the Japanese army in Beiping. In 1936, the Japanese army tried every means to invade and occupy North China, constantly looking for excuses to provoke. At that time, underground anti-Japanese personnel killed two traitors in Tianjin. Under the pretext that the security of the Japanese diaspora was threatened, Sakai Takashi demanded that all armed and gendarmes of the Nationalist government be withdrawn from northern China. At that time, the head of the Beijing branch of the Military Commission was He Yingqin, and Takashi Takashi and Takahashi Tan directly approached He Yingqin. Takashi Sakai drew up a request for the Nationalist government to withdraw its troops from all of northern China and turn it into a neutral zone. As a mid-level officer, Sakai Takashi drafted the ultimatum himself, quarreled with He Yingqin, and forced He to sign it. He also drafted a reply for He Yingqin, saying that "we fully accept it." How can He Yingqin sign this word? He wrote a sentence: "We will seriously consider the requirements of the Japanese side and gradually carry out these things." History calls it the "He Mei Agreement", so that the Japanese army won without a fight and captured North China without a single shot. We have transferred all the national treasures of The University of Beiping and the Forbidden City. Chiang Kai-shek and He Yingqin hated Takashi Sakai. During the trial of Takashi Sakai, the court asked the government what was going on with the "Ho Mei Agreement", but we did not see the original text, and showed us the file, and as a result, the Military Commission had to hand over the text of the "Ho Mei Agreement" to the court. At first glance, it was not an agreement, but a condition written by the Japanese, and He Yingqin did not sign it, but only promised us to take it slowly.
Takashi Sakai was the vanguard of the invasion of China, and he did a lot of things that endangered China's national interests, so we convicted him of the crime of aggression, not ordinary war crimes. What is the crime of aggression? It is through conspiracy and planning to achieve the result of infringing on China's sovereignty and infringing on China's interests. But this evidence alone was not enough to convict the person to death, and the British helped.
When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, Takashi Sakai served as the governor of the Japanese army in Hong Kong. The British army sent back a large amount of evidence of how many ordinary people Sakai had killed and how much damage had been caused during his tenure as governor of Hong Kong, and Sakai Takashi's evidence was confirmed. The judges of the Nanjing court considered writing the judgment well, which was in full compliance with international standards. The verdict is very long, part of which is sakai Takashi's pre-war conspiracy to create war, and part of which is sakai Takashi's crime of invading Hong Kong and massacring civilians during the Sakai War, when the people slaughtered by the Japanese army have names and surnames, and the records are accurate, and Sakai Takashi, as the governor of Hong Kong, bears the first responsibility. Takashi Sakai's verdict was drafted, followed by more than 50 appendages of incriminating evidence. The Nationalist government read Sakai Takashi's verdict and said that it would be sent to the United Nations as a model for the Chinese trial, and let the United Nations see what the level of Chinese trial was. Jiangsu Television station filmed the documentary "Sword of Justice", and we made a special trip to the archives of the United Nations Headquarters in New York and saw the verdict sent by the National Government at that time. The trial of Takashi Sakai is one of the most representative cases in Chinese trials and the most able to show the level of trial.
The Guangzhou court's largest case was the trial of Lieutenant General Hisaichi Tanaka, japan's supreme commander in southern China. The case was tried fifteen times, mainly against how many civilians Tanaka's men killed during the Japanese invasion of Guangzhou. Tanaka Kuichi said that he had been in Guangzhou, and how did he know in which county and which village the people below were killing people. The Tribunal held that he, as supreme commander, was of course primarily responsible for the war.
In the course of his trial, the U.S. military had a military tribunal at Tilanqiao in Shanghai, where Tanaka extradited Tanaka, saying that Tanaka was responsible for the capture and murder of a U.S. pilot in Guangdong and sentenced him to death. Zhang Fakui, director of the Guangzhou camp, instructed Tanaka Kuichi to be taken back to Guangzhou, saying that Tanaka was a criminal to be tried by China, and that the crimes he had committed against China were much more serious than those committed against the US troops, thus pulling Tanaka Kuiichi back to Guangzhou. Finally, after a trial and several additional indictments, Tanaka Was sentenced to death. This is the case that the Guangzhou court has taken the longest time, investigated the most extensively, and worked hard. Finally Tanaka confessed his guilt, saying that I didn't know that my men had committed so many crimes, and as a commander, I felt sad and sorry. Finally, Tanaka Hisaichi sat on a truck, pulled him to the execution ground in Guangzhou, and was shot.
In the trial of important war criminals, more than 30 Japanese war criminals of the rank of general were tried. The characteristics of the trial of these cases are: many ordinary people accuse the Japanese army of burning and looting, but they do not know who the Japanese army is, how to deal with so many accusations? We found out which Japanese force was fighting in the area at the time, and whose commander it was. These commanders were then held accountable for the war, and a number of Japanese division commanders were tried. The complaints of the common people have finally come to fruition.
In the process of trial in China, there are still some foreign-related cases. What is a foreign-related case? It is the case of foreign expatriates, which is related to the Japanese. A particularly interesting case is the Andon Lee case.
As we all know, in 1950, Beijing suppressed the counter-revolution, and the first major criminal who was shot was the Italian Andong Lee. He wanted to shell Tiananmen Square, and this was the first major case in New China. As a result, I saw that Andong Lee had been arrested by the Nationalist government in 1946. At that time, the Central Unification Investigator handed over a report to the Beijing court, saying that an Italian Li Andong had been arrested in Ganyu Hutong, and he usually did not know what he was doing, but his life was very generous, and he suspected that there was something wrong, and as a result, He arrested Li Andong.
The trial begins as soon as it is arrested. To justify himself, Lee wrote an autobiography of more than 20,000 words, which is very valuable material. Lee andong was originally the Italian air force, after the end of the First World War he ran to China to get rich, what to do? Be an arms dealer. At that time, when China was in a chaotic war with warlords, the warlords also wanted guns, the landlords also wanted guns, and the bandit armed forces also wanted guns, so Li Andong transported the surplus weapons on the European battlefield to China one ship at a time to sell, and made a fortune for several years. After the Japanese came, he became an informant of the Japanese. The Japanese secret service agency used Lee Andong to learn about the situation of the Italian expatriates and embassies stationed in Peiping, Andong Lee organized a "friendship association" and became a red man of the Japanese, and the Kuomintang believed that Lee Andong was a Japanese secret agent, so it arrested Li, and the court called the most important witness, RiGao Fuming, the head of the Japanese secret service in Beiping, to testify in court, but Rigao could not come. What's going on? It turned out that Hidaka Fuming had been taken over by Dai Kasa, who wanted to use those Japanese agents in Peiping to decipher the Communist Telegram Code and understand the information of the Communist Party's activities. Therefore, Rigao Fuming was used by the military commander at that time. The Beiping court court begged Nanjing, saying that you let RiGao come out of court. Then Hidaka Fuming finally came, and the judge asked Hidaka Fuming, "Do you know Andong Lee?" Answer: "Recognize." "Did he give you any information?" A: "He has not given me information, what value can his intelligence have?" "That's it. There was no way, Lee Andong was locked up for more than a year, and then released home. After the Japanese were finished, he turned to the Americans, and the military attaché of the US consulate in Peiping was called Bao Ruide. This Bo Ruide is very famous, in 1942 he was the head of the U.S. Military Observation Group in Yan'an, and was once a guest of Mao Zedong. Bao Ruide went to the Beiping consulate to develop a spy network and find informants. After the liberation of Peiping, he did not leave, and watched the founding ceremony of new China on the upper floor of Dongjiaomin Lane. He thought that with his face, the Communist Party could let him stay, and the CCP's foreign policy called to clean up the house and invite guests, and to blow up all the Americans. Borid was gone, and the informants continued to provide him with intelligence. In September 1950, the Beijing public security organs intercepted a letter sent to Japan, written by a Japanese named Ryuichi Yamaguchi, who drew a sketch saying that the fire extinguisher I sold could directly spray water columns onto the top floor of Tiananmen Square. The public security organs are very vigilant, it is almost past the National Day, our National Day is about to parade, what do you mean by drawing this picture? Ryuichi Yamaguchi is a librarian and in the business of fire prevention? Not at all. Public Security Minister Luo Ruiqing decided that this was a case in which foreign agents wanted to shell Tiananmen. At that time, this was a big case, and He asked Premier Zhou Enlai and ordered all these people to be arrested, so Shunto touched the melon and arrested Li Andong and Ryuichi Yamaguchi. Coincidentally, Li Andong's home also searched for mortars, this time it was solid, and after half a day, you Li Andong really wanted to bomb Beijing Tiananmen Square. Now it seems that It may be that Lee Andong did not sell the inventory that year, and he left it at home to forget. This is a big deal. In August 1951, at the height of the town counter-movement, a public trial meeting was held and Lee Andong and Ryuichi Yamaguchi were shot. This is known as the U.S. espionage case.
This case seems a bit bizarre to us today, but I am not saying that Andong Lee is not guilty, but that he is mixed in China, that if he has milk, he will earn money, and if he has arms, he will sell arms, and if he does not have arms, he will sell intelligence. As a result, they were caught in the hands of the Communist Party and arrested one by one. This case reflected the tactics of the Communist Party of China, and our main goal in resisting US aggression and aiding Korea at that time was anti-American, but we did not do a good job, and none of the spies arrested were American citizens, either Italians or Japanese. My contribution is to string together and complete the case of Li Andong, which shows that the Kuomintang has also arrested you.
What do these foreign-related cases illustrate? It shows that the trial of the National Government is an independent international trial, whether you are Japanese, German, or Italian, as long as you are related to Japan's war of aggression in the war, we will still judge you in accordance with Chinese law. This also declares China's sovereignty, and it is also after the abolition of extraterritorial jurisdiction that we can conduct such independent trials.
The trials of the ten tribunals of the National Government did make a great contribution, but the situation at the trials was not ideal. That is, more than 2,300 people were arrested, more than 800 people were prosecuted, and only 139 people were sentenced to death, more than 350 people were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment and life imprisonment, and 360 people were not prosecuted. Therefore, more than 2,000 people are detained, and only more than 500 people are actually sentenced. The trial rate is quite low, for several reasons.
The first reason is the lack of evidence, which is difficult to collect. The second reason is that the trial force is limited, there are only two prosecutors in a military court, two people have to investigate, they have to write indictments, and they are busy day and night. There was also the problem that the Kuomintang's imprisonment was too sparse, allowing these Japanese war criminals to walk around the prisoner-of-war camp freely to make confessions and attack and defend the alliance, and the management of the Kuomintang in this regard was too far from that of the Communists. So today, when the Kuomintang trial left a large number of untried crimes, I wrote a special chapter in this book called "Untried Crimes", that is, some criminals who deserved to be tried for serious sins, but he escaped, such as Kawamoto Daisaku.
This person was particularly familiar when he heard it, that is, the Japanese captain who killed Zhang Zuolin in the Huanggutun Incident in 1929. At that time, he was the master himself, and he did this without asking his superiors. When Japan invaded China, many things were called lower criminals, that is, the government military department had not yet made a decision, and these extreme fascists below had first done it, kicked it out and tried it, to see if your Chinese reaction did not react, and if you did not react, I would have to make further progress. Kawamoto killed Zhang Zuolin in the great works, and he was the vanguard at the time of "918", and later he thought that he was the first hero of the invasion of China, and the cattle were so bad that he offended all the people and was driven out of the army. After that, he went to Taiyuan, and during the Japanese occupation of Taiyuan, Kawamoto Became an entrepreneur and became the president of the Japan-Shanxi Industrial Co., Ltd., which is all the Japanese enterprises in Shanxi, and he became the chairman of the head office. Why? He was in charge of coal, steel and other businesses. Daisaku Kawamoto changed his name in Taiyuan and became an entrepreneur, and then what did he do? First, earn money in Shanxi to fund the Japanese army. Second, he engaged in intelligence espionage work and served the Japanese army as a common man. Third, there was also a secret job to lure Yan Xishan, who was at that time in Shanxi's Yu County to persist in the War of Resistance, and Kawamoto Daisaku repeatedly sent people to persuade Yan Xishan, hoping that he would surrender and cooperate with the Japanese, but Yan Xishan did not take this step in the end. The Japanese army surrendered, Kawamoto Daisaku did not leave, he was also very popular with Yan Xishan, and continued to run his business. He told his colleagues that it would not be a good end to return to Japan now, and it would be better to be poor to death than to get rich in China. Until the Liberation of Taiyuan in 1949, Yan Xishan ran away, and he was still in the city. When the Nationalist government tried Japanese war criminals, the list of criminals provided at the beginning included Daisaku Kawamoto, but this person could not be found. It was not until the end of 1947 that Kawamoto had changed his name and was still living in Taiyuan. But by then the Taiyuan court had already concluded its trial, and a total of 10 Japanese were tried. The War Criminals Handling Committee discussed Kawamoto's case, saying that otherwise we would go through local procedures and let the Shanxi High Court try him, but the result would be gone.
When the People's Liberation Army liberated Taiyuan, Kawamoto Daisaku was finally arrested, and after being arrested, he was imprisoned in the Taiyuan War Criminals Management Center. Kawamoto wrote a detailed autobiography in which he confessed all his crimes of aggression against China. In 1954, Kawamoto died of illness in Taiyuan. This person was clearly on the list of war criminals of the National Government, or did he become a fish that slipped through the net.
There are also some untried crimes, that is, the crimes committed by the Japanese army against the anti-Japanese base areas led by the Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army, which have not entered the sequence of trials by the National Government at all. First, they were hostile to the Communist Party. Second, it is also impossible for them to go to the Liberated Areas to collect evidence. Therefore, so many crimes committed in the Communist Party's base areas have not been tried, which is a huge flaw, especially the crime of Japanese use of chemical warfare and poison gas warfare in China. In all the battles of the Japanese invasion of China, the Chinese army and civilians released gas gas, erosive poison gas, etc., but in the entire Trial of the Nationalist Government, there was only one case, that is, the Wuhan Court tried a brigade commander named Kajiro Ginjiro Kajiura. This person used poison gas during the Battle of Hubei, who mentioned this evidence? It was submitted by Japanese prisoners of war in Zhenyuan Heping Village. They were kajira's subordinates, so conclusive evidence was provided, and Kajiura Ginjiro could only plead guilty. But Japan used more poison gas warfare against China, the biggest of which was the use of gas gas in Beitan Village, DingXian County, Hebei Province, during the 1942 purge. At that time, the Japanese army swept away, our guerrillas ran, and the common people fled. There is an 800-meter-long tunnel in Beitan Village, and everyone has gone down the tunnel, and the cadres and captains of several nearby villages have also gone down the tunnel. The commander of the Japanese Ōe Brigade could not find the tunnel entrance, so he ordered the gas bomb to be thrown into the well. As a result, the gas bomb exploded in the well. Our tunnel was open to a well, and there was a hole in the wall of the well, and as a result, the people inside could not run out. The last 800 people were smoked to death in the tunnels. This became a bitter lesson in our War of Resistance, and later tunnel warfare was developed, which not only had to be able to Tibetans but also to be able to fight, but also to have gun holes that could shoot guns.
Now in Beitan Village, a cemetery has been built for the people who died that year. How do we find out about the crimes of the Japanese army? The Japanese themselves wrote a book called "North China Security War", which mentioned that the commander of the Dajiang Regiment used gas to eliminate the Eighth Route Army. As a result, two Japanese leftist scholars, who found Oe himself in the 1990s, asked him if he had used poison gas. Oe said vaguely, "Maybe it's used, I can't remember, soldiers are obedient to orders as their duty." "But this man has not been tried by the law either. Chinese scholars and Friendly Scholars from Japan investigated the Japanese military's special schools in Japan that taught chemical warfare, where they taught how to use various kinds of gas gas, and there were examples of battles, that is, in the Chinese battlefield, listing 19 examples. When the Japanese attacked the Kuomintang army along the Yangtze River, every battle, such as Ma'anshan, Wuhan, Zaoyang, etc., used poison gas to exterminate humanity. Chemical warfare is a direct violation of international conventions, and only one case of such a crime has been tried in the entire trial. Our scholars have investigated more than 400 cases through various investigations, and some time ago dug up a bunch of bombs in Qiqihar, which is a poison gas bomb. Therefore, during the entire period of the Japanese invasion of China, the use of chemical warfare and poison gas warfare was quite extensive, but this crime was not tried, and the secret system such as the Japanese secret service system did not get the trial it deserved.
Why was the trial of the National Government finally completely rejected? The most crucial reason was the trial of Okamura Ninji. Okamura was the supreme commander in North China during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and in November 1944 he became commander-in-chief of the Chinese Dispatch Army. Okamura Ninji was a very fierce and cunning Japanese general, he was also a Chinese master, he had served in China since he was young, and he was always a pivotal figure in the whole process of invading China. At the time of the "September 18 Incident", Okamura Ninji was a staff officer of the Kwantung Army, fighting in North China, when the generals of the Japanese army were ineffective, and as a result, after the Eighth Route Army fought a hundred regiments war, the Japanese military department sent Okamura Ninji as the commander-in-chief of the Japanese North China Dispatch Army. Okamura Ninji used a particularly vicious tactic, the Great Sweep, and the Eighth Route Army was forced to move into the mountains or disperse its operations. The Japanese army began to arrest people and arrest many men and civilians. Who is the Eighth Road and who is the common people, how can the Japanese army distinguish it? Okamura Ningji taught you a few tricks: First, when answering the question, it was the common people who were panicked, and it was the eight roads that were calm and not afraid; second, it was the eight roads that brushed their teeth, and it was the ordinary people who did not brush their teeth; third, there was a brim on the forehead, and there were cocoons on the fingers on the shoulders, which was the eight roads; it was the ordinary people who asked the date that said that the Republic of China was the eighth road, and it was the eight roads that said that the Common Era was the eighth road. Are you saying this guy is an expert? Okamura's sweep drove all the Eighth Route Army into the Taihang Mountains, and he built highways and railways in the North China Plain, forming a railway network, a road network, and a transportation network to consolidate his rule. Okamura Ningji still remembers the lesson of the Nanjing Massacre, and he went down to inspect the standards for the degree of public order: If there are no women on the street at all, it means that the public order situation is extremely poor and the military discipline of the Japanese army is corrupt; if there are women walking around on the street, public order is decent; if the Chinese people on the street are completely free to move, and if they talk and laugh, it is excellent public order. Therefore, whether Okamura Ninji fights or rules, he has a set, so Peng Dehuai said that Okamura Ninji is the most dangerous enemy.
Okamura Ninji, the commander-in-chief of the Chinese dispatch army at the time of Japan's surrender, reached a tacit agreement with the Nationalist government. After He Yingqin was surrendered, he gave Okamura Ningji two tasks, one was to repatriate all the Japanese troops, during which time to maintain good law and order, and not to let the Japanese army rebel and cause chaos; the second was to cooperate with the acceptance of the national army. Okamura Ninji was particularly cooperative and obedient to the Nationalist government, and he handed over all the materials and weapons of the Japanese army to the Kuomintang, which made the Kuomintang make a great fortune. He strictly abided by the kuomintang's regulations and resolutely refrained from handing over guns to the Communists. At that time, the Zhangjiakou Eighth Route Army also came, the Soviet Red Army also came, he was very anxious, sent a telegram to the Nanjing government, saying that the Soviet army is also coming, the communist army is also coming, what should I do? He Yingqin said that you should take your troops to temporarily close the city gates and wait for our national army to receive them. Okamura ordered his troops to hold Zhangjiakou and not surrender to the communists. Therefore, throughout the process of surrender, Chiang Kai-shek and He Yingqin were very appreciative of Okamura Ningji. When trying Japanese war criminals, Okamura Ninji was of course listed among them, and He Yingqin was anxious and immediately sent a telegram to the people of the War Crimes Committee, saying that Okamura was not suitable to be included in the war criminals, because we still had to rely on him for reception and repatriation, so Okamura Ningji was not included in the list of war criminals. Okamura Ningji cooperated with some of the follow-up tasks of the Nationalist government in Nanjing, and most importantly, Chiang Kai-shek wanted to fight the Communists, so he borrowed Okamura Ningji and made him an adviser. Okamura wrote several secret reports to Chiang Kai-shek, providing his experience and experience in fighting the Communists. The Kuomintang is even more grateful to Okamura Ningji, so how can it be judged?
In the end, under the public opinion of the people of the whole country, Okamura Ningji had to be tried, but he also told the presiding judge Shi Meiyu that you had to let him pass. These judges came to draft indictments and judgments, and tried to find a way to get Okamura Ningji through the customs and find himself acquitted. Shi Meiyu punched his teeth into his stomach, and he drafted an indictment and a verdict that severely limited Okamura's crimes to his time as commander-in-chief of China's dispatch army. From November 1944 to August 1945, a total of less than a year, it was said that there were some sporadic battles during this time, but the generals everywhere had been held responsible and sentenced, so Okamura Ninji could not be responsible, and the verdict was very infuriating. Okamura Ningji has been in China for so long, so many crimes, how can you just say that he was in the commander-in-chief's year, and the previous years are not counted? Therefore, as soon as the verdict came out, public opinion was in a big uproar, so the Nationalist government hastened to repatriate Okamura Ninji and other Japanese war criminals imprisoned in Shanghai to China by a steamship, and released them all. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was very angry, and Mao Zedong issued two statements in the name of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the first strongly demanding that Okamura Ninji be re-investigated for war crimes, and the second demanding that Okamura Ninji be extradited again, along with the trial of Kuomintang war criminals. Both of these statements are included in the fourth volume of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong.
The Nationalist government's final big failure to try Japanese war criminals led to little mention of this history later. But this period of history is history after all, and it has played a great role in exposing Japan's crime of aggression. So I declared a major project of the National Social Science Fund in 2015, which lasted 5 years, and now it is finally completed. The book title "The Great Trial" was published by the Shanghai People's Publishing House. In this book, I fully affirm the trial of the National Government on the one hand. In more than two years and three years, the judges and prosecutors of the ten tribunals have tried with all their hearts and minds to try so many war criminals, and for the first time, they have conducted an independent trial using a combination of international law and our domestic Chinese law. Liquidating some of the crimes of the Japanese army and upholding justice is a great move by our country after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and it has also achieved certain results. Second, the trial of these war criminals is also an integral part of the liquidation of the Japanese army's crimes of aggression against China. These evidences are conclusive, each judgment is factual, analytical, and based, and the judgment is written at a very high level and fully conforms to legal procedures, which shows that we are acting according to law. It is precisely because of insufficient evidence and limited working capacity that a large number of Japanese war criminals have escaped trial. But Japan's war crimes are undeniable.
After the founding of New China, more than 1,200 Japanese war criminals were held in Fushun and Taiyuan, and only 40 people appeared in court in 1954 to be tried, and none of them were sentenced to death, and finally all of them were repatriated to Japan. At the time we thought it was too cheap for japanese war criminals. A few years ago, the Central Archives published all the confessions and confession materials of these Japanese war criminals, 100 volumes, which have not yet been published. This is the point where the Communist Party is very capable, making the Japanese obedient and weeping, confessing their crimes in tears, and explaining themselves clearly. Why does the Communist Party have such a great ability? It is to ideologically reform these Japanese war criminals, to make them realize their crimes, to repent sincerely, and to thoroughly confess their crimes. Although these Japanese war criminals were not sentenced to their sentences, after the 100-volume confession came out, we studied Japan's crime of aggression against China and added very rich evidence, which exceeded the results of the Kuomintang trial. Therefore, the famous Taiwanese writer Wang Dingjun said: When I was a gendarme, I personally saw the trial of Japanese war criminals, and although the Kuomintang killed the Japanese war criminals, it did not kill their souls. The Communist Party did not kill a single of them, but killed their souls, made them completely confess their guilt, and completely accepted defeat, and this is the difference between the two trials.
What was my purpose in writing this book? First, take it as a cornerstone, when China and Japan are friendly, it is called not forgetting the past and the teacher of the future. If the Japanese rightists dare to overturn the case, this is a stone thrown at the Japanese rightists, so that you can see that the evidence is conclusive and the crime is committed, which cannot be denied. However, this book was not written to inspire national hatred, but to maintain peace, so that we can see that Japan's war of aggression against China not only caused great harm to the Chinese, but also left unforgettable scars on the Japanese people. Only by not forgetting this history can we better safeguard world peace.
With the publication of this book, I would like to commemorate the legal practitioners who participated in the trial. The War of Resistance Against Japan was not only a war, but also an important part of the post-war trial and a grand finale. I hope that when this book comes out, it will arouse everyone's interest. After reading this book, I felt valuable, so I did not do my work in vain in recent years.
Author: Liu Tong
Editor: Ren Siyun
![At the Tokyo Trial, only 7 Class A war criminals in Japan were hanged! This is a great shame[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)