Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
54.
Miyoshi Tatsuji, “Heika wa sumiyaka ni gotaii ni naru ga yoroshii,” serialized in the Jan., Mar., Apr., and June 1946 issues of
Shinch
under the title “Natsukashii Nihon.” Reprinted in Tsurumi Shunsuke, Nakagawa Roppei, eds.,
Tenn
hyakuwa, ge
(Chikuma Shob
, 1989), pp. 326â27; the essay is discussed in Bix, “The Sh
wa Emperor's âMonologue'â¦,” pp. 314â15.
55.
“Kokutai goji no h
ryaku (Kinoshita no memo)” in Kinoshita,
Sokkin nisshi
, p. 225.
56.
Just before returning to the United States to work in Republican and extreme right-wing organizations, Fellers wrote Hirohito a letter on “matters of spiritual importance.” Delivered to
gane Sh
jir
at the Palace by diplomat Kasai J
ji, it was apparently read by Hirohito.
Seventeen years later, in April 1963, Kasai wrote Fellers to say:
Today is the emperor's birthday. Thanks to MacArthur and you the emperor's position was saved. I am truly grateful to youâ¦. Do you remember that you had tried to appeal to the emperor to express his imperial repentance? If he had done that, he would have obtained the love and respect not only of the Japanese people but of the whole world. Cited in Higashino Shin, pp. 192â93.
57.
MacArthur, partly following SWNCC 57/3, amended the Nuremberg Charter in significant ways. His Charter for the IMTFE deleted the article in the Nuremberg Charter denying immunity to “heads of state” in wartime (Article 74). It failed to provide for the appointment of alternate judges as at Nuremberg; and it stipulated that a majority vote of the judges present at any particular time determined decisions and judgments. An absent judge could take part in subsequent proceedings unless he declared in open court that he was unfamiliar “with the proceedings which took place in his absence.” See Wallach, “The Procedural and Evidentiary Rules of the PostâWorld War II War Crimes Trials: Did They Provide An Outline For International Legal Procedure?” pp. 864â65; Yoram Dinstein and Mala Tabory, eds.,
War Crimes in International Law
(The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996), p. 270.
58.
Dinstein and Tabory, eds.,
War Crimes in International Law
, p. 5.
59.
International lawyer Theodor Meron has pointed out that the Tokyo tribunal, “in contrast to the the IMT, did not view the entirety of the Hague Regulations as necessarily an accurate mirror of customary law.” See Theodor Meron,
Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms as Customary Law
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 39.
60.
“Opening Statement” by Joseph B. Keenan in
Trial of Japanese War Criminals: Documents
, p. 19.
61.
Cited in Brackman,
The Other Nuremberg,
p. 374; Tokyo Saiban Handobukku Hensh
Iinkai, ed.,
Tokyo saiban handobukku
, p. 63. The final judgment stated that Japan waged wars of aggression against France, the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands, but failed to include a similar statement labeling as aggression its campaigns in China.
62.
Higurashi Yoshinobu, “Tokyo saiban no sogan mondai,” in
Gunji kenky
35, no. 2 (Sept. 1999), p. 52.