Main Cases

The trials lasted for two and a half years until 4 November 1948. They concluded with only 28 of the 80 Class A war criminals held by the Allies being tried. In other words judgement was passed on only the first group of Class A war criminals. Those of the two other groups, essentially businessmen and important industrialists were set free. Those accused included four former Prime Ministers, three former Foreign Affairs Ministers, four former War Ministers, two former Navy Ministers, two former Ambassadors, three important former businessmen, an Imperial Advisor, a radical propagandist, six former Generals, a former Admiral and a former Colonel. The Indictment accused them of having been at the origin of a policy of conquest which by implication involved: murder, submission of prisoners of war and interned civilians to medical experimentation, forced labour in inhumane conditions, pillage of public and private property, deliberate destruction of towns and villages without any military necessity and, in a general manner, led to killings, rapes and mass cruelty throughout the territories which they invaded.

Of the 28 criminals who were tried, only 25 were condemned with two dying of natural causes during the trial and a third being freed following hospitalisation for a serious mental health problem. There were no acquittals. Seven Japanese prisoners were sentenced to death. Prison sentences handed down to the other defendants ranged from 7 years to life. However, from 1954, those condemned and still alive in prison were freed on parole with the return to power of the Liberal Democratic Party. Those who had been sentenced to death were hanged on 23 December 1948.