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Justice in the Time of Cholera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Barak Kushner
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Abstract

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Numerous complex issues concerning the history of Japanese war crimes cloud the trials that adjudicated justice in postwar East Asia. Discrepancies between fact and fiction, or facts that can be proven in a court of law, result in a situation that even today renders what actually happened during the creation of empire and the ensuing war in Asia open to interpretation. More than seven decades after the war, disagreements about the justice or injustice of these processes continue to feed political friction in the region.

Keywords

justicewar crimestrialslegacymemory
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , March 2024 , e3
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2024

References

1 Some material adapted from Barak Kushner, The Geography of Injustice: East Asia's Battle between Memory and History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2024). Used by permission of the publisher. The spread of disease during the chaos of the postwar across borders in East Asia was a well-known story at the time and borrows from the title of Gabriel García Márquez's famous novel Love in the Time of Cholera. This analogy also works for the time during which I wrote up this research, which coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. The author would like to thank Mark Selden for his assistance in bringing this article to publication.

2 The documentary was broadcast in China in September 2020, but it is also available on DVD: Yatai zhanzheng shenpan (Asia Pacific War Crimes Trials), an eight-episode series, Shanghai jiaotong daxue dianzi yinxiang chubanshe, 2021. A book was later produced: Shanghai guangbo dianshitai jilupian zhongxin Chen Yinan gongzuoshi, ed., Yatai zhanzheng shenpan (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaotong daxue chubanshe, 2021).

3 Li Xinyou interview, May 30, 2019.

4 “Yuandong guoji fatingshang de guaiju,” Jiefang ribao, July 30, 1946.

5 Xiaoqun Xu, Trial of Modernity: Judicial Reform in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1901–1937 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 91.

6 Fan Zhongxin, You Chenjun, and Gong Xianzhai, ed., Wei shenme yao chongjian zhongguo faxi: Ju Zheng fazheng wenxuan (Beijing: Zhongguo zhengfa daxue chubanshe, 2009), 24–26; Terada Hiroaki, “The Crowded Train Model: The Concept of Society and the Maintenance of Order in Ming and Qing Dynasty China,” in Law in a Changing World: Asian Alternatives, ed. Morigawa Yasumoto (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), 100–109.

7 Fan et al., Wei shenme, 26.

8 Fan et al., Wei shenme, 27-29.

9 Fan et al., Wei shenme, 47.

10 Yang Zhaolong, “Zhongguo falu jiaoyu zhi ruodian ji qi bujiu zhi fanglue,” in Yang Zhaolong faxue wenji, ed. Yang Zhaolong, Ai Yongming, and Lu Jinbi (Beijing: Falu chubanshe, 2005), 229–243. Glenn Douglas Tiffert, “Judging Revolution: Beijing and the Birth of the PRC Judicial System (1906–1958)” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2015).

11 Tahirih Lee, “Orienting Lawyers in China's Tribunals before 1949,” Maryland Journal of International Law 27, no. 129 (2012): 182. See also Pasha L. Hsieh, “The Discipline of International Law in Republican China and Contemporary Taiwan,” Washington University Global Studies Law Review 14, no. 1 (2015): 87–129. Dongwu University was referred to in English as Soochow University, or Suzhou University in modern Chinese pinyin.

12 Li Xiuqing, “John C. H. Wu at the University of Michigan School of Law,” Journal of Legal Education 58, no. 4 (December 2008): 549; John C. H. Wu, Beyond East and West (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951), 66–67; Sei Jeong Chin, “Autonomy through Social Networks: Law, Politics, and the News Media in Modern China, 1931–1957” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008), 52.

13 I am grateful to Isaac Gagné for suggesting this idea. The language of thinking of justice as a commodity and a transaction is his.

14 Renmin fayuan baoshe, ed., Zhengyi de shenpan: jinian zhongguo renmin kangri zhanzheng shengli qishi zhounian (Beijing: Renmin fayuan chubanshe, 2016), 422. See Review of the Records of Trials before United States of American Military Commissions, Shanghai, China. ICC Legal Tools Database: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/282e93/pdf/. Chaen Yoshio, ed., Bishikyū senpan beigun shanhai nado saiban shiryō (Fuji shuppansha, 1989), 132-135 (Unless otherwise noted, all Japanese books are published in Tokyo.); Timothy Brook, “The Shanghai Trials, 1946: Conjuring Postwar Justice,” in Zhanhou bianju yu zhangzheng jiyi, ed. Lyu Fangshang (Taipei: Academia Historica, 2015), 127-155.

15 “Tilanqiao jianyu—jingneishouci qiaoxiang shenpan riben zhanfan fachui,” September 3, 2015, in series Zhengyi de shenpan zhi meiguo shenpan shanghai, in the Renmin fayuanbao, tekan, from 2015 (available for download or online reading at the People's Court Daily [Renmin fayuanbao] website, http://rmfyb.chinacourt.org/).

16 RG 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), War Crimes Branch, China War Crimes File, 1945-1948, XIV-A thru XIV-F, box 12, War Crimes Files, Nanking, China, Master Index XIV-A Folder “War Crimes Summary,” National Archives, College Park, USA.

17 Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, General Wainwright's Story: The Account of Four Years of Humiliating Defeat, Surrender, and Captivity (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970; originally published in 1945), 245–246; Prisoner of the Rising Sun: The Lost Diary of Brig. Gen. Lewis Beebe, ed. John M. Beebe (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006).

18 Katō Tetsurō, Hōshoku shita akuma no sengo—731 butai to Futaki Hideo seikai jīpu (Kadensha, 2017), 23.

19 William S. Hamilton, Notes from Old Nanking, 1947–1949: The Great Transition (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004), 30.

20 WO 32/15509, Confidential Memo, subj: War Crimes against British Subjects in the Far East, June 14, 1946, Kew Garden, National Archives, UK.

21 I thank Kerstin von Lingen for pointing out the importance of this notion of flows of ideas and people.

22 Jeanne Guillemin, Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 116.

23 Kamo Michiko, Woa giruto puroguramu: GHQ jōhō kyōiku seisaku no jitsuzō (Hōsei daigaku shuppan, 2018), and Takahashi Shirō, WGIP Woa giruto infomamēshon puroguramu to rekishisen, nihonjin no dōtoku o torimodosu (Morarojī kenkyūjo, 2018). Kent Gilbert added his own voice to the parade in Mada GHQ no sennō ni shibarareta nihonjin (PHP kenkyūjo, 2017).

24 “WGIP to rekishisen, GHQ ga sennō? Jittai wa, Kamo Michikosan ga kenkyūsho hoshurontan jigyakushikan uetsuketa setsu, shiryō de saguru,” December 5, 2018, Asahi shimbun, evening edition, Tokyo; “Kaiko 2018 rontan unomi ni shinaide ga imi suru mono,” December 26, 2018, Asahi shimbun, evening edition, Tokyo.

25 Tobe Ryōichi, et al, eds., Shippai no honshitsu: nihongun no soshikironteki kenkyū (Nikkō bunko, revised edition 2021 [originally published 1991]), p. 343.

26 Sato Takumi, Zōho hachigatsu jūgonichi no shinwa: shūsen kinenbi no mediagaku (Chikuma gakugei bunko, 2014). See also Deokhyo Choi, “The Empire Strikes Back from Within: Colonial Liberation and the Korean Minority Question at the Birth of Postwar Japan, 1945-47,” The American Historical Review, Volume 126, Issue 2, (June 2021): 555-584.

27 In fact, the Republic of China's Ministry of Justice at one point wanted to clarify if it could pursue Taiwanese pushing for independence with “war crimes charges.” “Guofangbu wei taiwanrenmin qianyou yinmou duli xingwei shifou goucheng neiluanzai huo yinggou liewei zhanfan ji qi shenpan guanxia yiyi,” diancanghao, 015-010302-0080, Guoshiguan Archives, Taiwan

28 These generals included: Kim Paik-il, Paik Sun Yap, and Song Seok-ha.

29 George Katsiaficas, Asia's Unknown Uprisings, vol 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century (PM Press, 2012), p. 97.

30 George Katsiaficas, Asia's Unknown Uprisings, p. 101. Iikura Erii, “Korosaneba narananu 'kyōhi'no kioku to manshūkokugun shusshin Kin Tokuchū, aka no tanjō o yomu,” Quadrante, dai16gō, 2014, p. 255–264. Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol II, The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–1950 (Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 263.

31 Iikura Erii, Manshūkokugun chōsenjin no shokuminchi kaihō zengoshi: nihon shokuminchika no gunji keiken to kankokugun e no renzokusei (Yūshisha, 2021).

32 Iikura Erii, “Manshūkokugun shusshin nihonjin no onkyū seigan undō to manshūkoku manshūkokugunzō, in Satō Ryō, Tomohiro Kanno, and Makie Yukawa, eds., Sengo Nihon no manshū kioku (Tohō shoten, 2020), p. 75-99.

33 Renmin fayuanbaoshe, ed., Zhengyi shenpan: jinian zhongguo renmin kangri zhanzheng shengli 70 zhounian (Beijing: Renmin fayuan chubanshe, 2016), p. 988.

34 Kumagai Shinichirō, “Kangoku kara senpan kanrijo e – Kodama Hanakosan no taiken,” Chūkiren (35), 2006, p. 20-23.

35 Ōsawa Takeshi, “The People's Republic of China's ‘lenient treatment’ policy towards Japanese war criminals,” in Kirsten Sellars, ed., Trials for International Crimes in Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 166.

36 Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, General Wainwright's Story: The Account of Four Years of Humiliating Defeat, Surrender, and Captivity (Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1970 [originally published in 1945]), p. 193–194.

37 Ichirō Kiyose, Hiroku tōkyō saiban (Chūō kōron shinsha, 2002), p. 152–155.

38 Shen Zui, Zhanfan gaizao suojianwen (shang), Beijing: Qunzhong chubanshe, 1990, p. 39–40; Yinghong Cheng, Creating the “New Man”: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008), p. 66; Philip F. Williams and Yenna Wu, The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 161.