Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

INTERNMENT • 115
The ICU is a child of the great U.S. influence on Japan during the occupation
period.
INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL FOR THE FAR
EAST (IMTFE). The International Military Tribunal for the Far East
was a tribunal created by the Allied Powers after Japan’s defeat in
World War II to administer justice to Japanese wartime leaders indicted
as war criminals. In accordance with Article 10 of the Potsdam
Declaration of July 1945, the Supreme Commander for the
Allied Powers (SCAP) issued an ordinance on 19 January 1946 stipulating
the creation of the IMTFE. The tribunal’s first court session
was held on 3 May 1946. On 12 November 1948, sentences were
handed down for those charged with war crimes. The tribunal consisted
of one justice each from 11 countries: the United States, Great
Britain, France, China, Canada, Australia, Holland, New Zealand, the
Soviet Union, India, and the Philippines. Sir William F. Webb, the
justice from Australia, was appointed as the presiding judge. Somei
Uzawa, a prominent attorney who later became president of Meiji
University, led the defense counsel while Joseph Keenan, former
U.S. assistant attorney general, served as chief prosecutor and leader
of a team of international prosecutors. A total of 28 Japanese leaders
who served before or during the war were indicted by the IMTFE.
Out of the 28, seven, including former Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō,
were sentenced to death; 16, including Koichi Kido, Lord Keeper,
were sentenced to life in prison; and two former foreign ministers,
Shigenori Togo and Mamoru Shigemitsu, received prison sentences
of 20 years and seven years, respectively. During trial proceedings,
an extreme rightist university professor was dismissed because of a
mental disorder, and former Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka and
former full Admiral Osami Nagano died from natural causes. At the
end of the trial, Justice Radhabinod Pal of India dissented from the
sentences handed down by the tribunal. There were calls from all
over the world for Japan’s Emperor Hirohito to be prosecuted, but
General Douglas MacArthur, SCAP, rejected this idea. See also
PACIFIC WAR; WORLD WAR II.
INTERNMENT. The Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor, besides
plunging the United States into war, also gave rise to, in historian