@Gargantua:
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were the JAPANESE punished enough for their actions?
rape of nanking bataan death march etc.
seems the germans paid a high price but did japan?
Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Military_Tribunal_for_the_Far_East
Twenty-eight Japanese military and political leaders were charged with Class A crimes, and more than 5,700 Japanese nationals were charged with Class B and C crimes, mostly entailing prisoner abuse. China held 13 tribunals of its own, resulting in 504 convictions and 149 executions.
There is an Irony however… In 37 and 38, when the Japanese were raping, pilliaging, killing, and exploiting people in China… Only ONE other country came to the table, gave a damn, and did it’s best to end the bloodshed… That country, was NAZI GERMANY.
John Rabe for example, a member of the party, was responsible for creating a Safe Zone in the city of Nanking, and creating a psuedo international committee to try and stay civilian executions etc…
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/international/asia/15letter.html?pagewanted=all
Thanks for the links. I gleaned the following points from the article.
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The Japanese Army behaved brutally in Nanking.
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The postwar Allied tribunal consisted of those appointed by Allied governments, thereby setting the stage for victors’ justice.
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Victors’ justice actually occurred, as the prosecution’s main case was very weak.
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Very serious Allied war crimes committed against Japan or the Japanese were ignored.
Justice Radhabinod Pal, the Indian justice at the IMTFE, argued that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the use of the atom bomb by the United States from the list of crimes, and judges from the vanquished nations on the bench, signified the “failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate.” [17] In this he was not alone among Indian jurists of the time, one prominent Calcutta barrister writing that the Tribunal was little more than “a sword in a [judge’s] wig”.
Justice B. V. A. Roling stated, “of course, in Japan we were all aware of the bombings and the burnings of Tokyo and Yokohama and other big cities. It was horrible that we went there for the purpose of vindicating the laws of war, and yet saw every day how the Allies had violated them dreadfully”.
Pal’s dissenting opinion also raised substantive objections: he found that the entire prosecution case, that there was a conspiracy to commit an act of aggressive war, which would include the brutalization and subjugation of conquered nations, weak. About the Rape of Nanking in particular, he said, after acknowledging the brutality of the incident (and that the “evidence was overwhelming” that “atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population… and prisoners of war”), that there was nothing to show that it was the “product of government policy”, and thus that the officials of the Japanese government were directly responsible. Indeed, he said, there is “no evidence, testimonial or circumstantial, concomitant, prospectant, restrospectant, that would in any way lead to the inference that the government in any way permitted the commission of such offenses.” [17]
In any case, he added, conspiracy to wage aggressive war was not illegal in 1937, or at any point since.[17]
Making up laws after the fact (in this case laws against wars of aggression) and selectively applying them to vanquished nations only, seems entirely too convenient for the Allied prosecution.
