The Tokyo War Crimes trial, patterned after the Nuremberg trials, took place from 1946 to 1948. The judges and prosecutors for the trials came from eleven Allied nations and three Asian countries. U.S. war secretary, Henry Stimson, was the lone Republican in the Roosevelt and Truman war cabinets when he made his case for what would become the Nuremberg and then, the Tokyo trials. In this book of close to 700 pages (excluding Notes), author Gary Bass, before the major body of discussion on the trials begins, speaks to the days just before the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the sudden change in the Presidency as Harry Truman was ushered in. In the first 28 pages, you are glued to a story that will keep you thinking about the cruelties of war; how the aspect of racism factors into our laws (and pretty much everything else in our lives and in all cultures). The brutality and savagery perpetrated on people of opposing sides is brought up time and again, as well as the incendiary bombing of dozens of cities in Japan during 1944-45. Who perpetrated the most cruelty? Who was right and who was wrong? These are questions you’ll find yourself thinking as Bass’s brilliant story unfolds.

If you're a World War II buff, you're definitely going to want this book on your shelf, both to read and consult. It's a definitive look at the Tokyo Trial of war criminals. So, if you have an interest in Japan (as I do) you will also find this interesting. That said, it's almost 900 pages long so there's a level of commitment here that may not be for the average reader. It reads well, though, and it doesn't feel at all cumbersome or long-winded; it's necessarily long and the reader will come away with a good sense of this event in history.

As a librarian, I'd definitely want this in my collection. As a reader, I'd definitely give this as a holiday present to a WW2 buff. It's the perfect book to curl up with and leisurely read through. As I said, it's a time commitment, but I believe it is one that will pay off for the reader.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It's a fine piece of writing and research.

Did you ever wonder why the Nuremberg trials are well-known, but the Tokyo Trial is treated like it never happened? Well, Gary Bass is here to tell you why in Judgment at Tokyo. In a word, the trial was a mess. It was a mess for so many reasons including judges who didn't want to be there, lack of documentation because the Japanese were so effective at destroying evidence, and bad lawyering. It was a complex story which needed someone like Bass to make sense out of it.

While this topic would be interesting no matter who wrote it, Bass puts on a masterclass presenting the material. He will call out characters when they are clearly lying or in over their head. He doesn't do it often and I sometimes disagreed with him. However, his willingness to interject allows the reader to stop processing facts for a moment and ask themselves what they believe. It makes the book a conversation between the author and a reader. I don't vote for Pulitzer Prizes (because of course no one asked me to), but I know this book deserves one.

It needs to be said before you dive in that this is a very long book. No, that isn't me being squeamish. Bass says it himself in the preface. While I often find narratives can be cut down if you really try, I completely agree with Bass that the length is necessary in this case. There is so much ground to cover and complex characters ranging from dedicated defense lawyers who did not give up on lost causes to a judge who wins my vote as the biggest clown in this whole sordid episode. Most importantly, Bass answers the big question. Why don't we know more about the Tokyo Trial?

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor Books.)

What do we do when the war is over? The treaties and surrenders have been signed. The prisoners have been returned (hopefully). The armies have been demobbed. But the trauma remains, especially after wars as horrific as World War II. So many millions died that it seems wrong to just allow the surviving leaders of the German, Italian, and Japanese governments to live out their lives in peace, especially when the violence committed by Nazi and Imperial Japanese forces went well beyond the battlefield. After World War I, the victors relied on reparations, forced demilitarization, and treaties to ensure peace. After World War II, the victors turned to international law to hold (at least some) of their former enemies responsible. In Europe, Nazis were tried and sentenced at the Nuremberg Tribunals. In Asia, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, held in Tokyo, attempted to do the same to leaders of the former Japanese Empire. In Judgment at Tokyo, Gary J. Bass uses archival materials—letters, diaries, newspapers, testimonies, and court documents—to examine the thorny legal issues, judicial backbiting, realpolitik, and more to tell the story of the long fight to administer some kind of justice after long years of war.

After discussing the last years of the war in the Pacific and the decision-making process that led up to the American decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities, Bass outlines the differences between conditions in Germany and Japan in the wake of their surrenders. These differences—the necessity of keeping the post-war Japanese government cooperative with the Allies, the widespread destruction of documentary evidence of atrocities across formerly occupied territories, and irreconcilable disagreements among the judges, chief among them—caused the Japanese trials to follow a much different path than the Nuremberg trials. Defendants in both sets of trials faced roughly the same charges: the waging of aggressive war, conspiracy to wage aggressive war, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But unlike the Nuremberg trials, where most of the judges were in accord about their authority and jurisdiction, three of the judges in Tokyo ended up dissenting, wholly or in part, with the very illegality of the charges. Radhabinod Pal, the judge from India, wrote a mammoth dissent that acquitted all of the defendants. Bert Röling, the Dutch Judge, and Henri Bernard, the judge from France, dissented on the grounds that waging aggressive war was not a crime. The chief justice, Australian Sir William Webb, was unable to come up with a compelling argument justifying war as a crime to his fellow judges or to control his temper enough to cajole them along. (At one point early in the trial, Webb stated that the court has jurisdiction for “reasons to be given later” when challenged by a lawyer for the defense. These reasons were only given in the judgments at the end of the roughly two-year tribunal.)

Meanwhile, the Tokyo trials were hampered by their inability to charge Emperor Hirohito with any crimes. General Douglas MacArthur (another man with an explosive temper) was in charge of the Allied occupation of Japan which, unlike the total occupation of Germany, required the cooperation of the Japanese government. To do that, the Americans made a sweeping decision to make the emperor totally out of bounds for the tribunal—even though the emperor was ostensibly the final authority during the war and a lot of the evidence (including an accidental admission on the stand from former prime minister and army minister Tojo Hideki) implicated him in major decisions. This, coupled with the lack of documentary evidence (Japanese officials and soldiers burned a lot of material before the surrender) from across Asia made it even more difficult for the prosecution to make their case and for the judges to make a coherent ruling.

Bass does sterling work bringing the personalities of politicians, generals, judges, and lawyers to vibrant life with small details like Röling’s emphatic NOs on drafts written by Soviet justice Ivan Michyevich Zaryanov, the open court snappishness of Sir William, and the flop sweat of American chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan. Bass is also outstanding at explaining dense legal matters in easy-to-understand and deeply thoughtful language. Above all, I appreciate Bass’s thoroughness in covering the long war in Asia and international politics during and after Japan surrendered. This book feels like a master course and I have so much to think about now that I’ve finished. However, I am dinging the author for a tendency to include too many irrelevancies and tangents, especially towards the end of Judgment at Tokyo, which might have been solved with some more trimming by Bass’s editor(s).

Readers who are looking for an in-depth history of the Tokyo trials or the history of war crimes tribunals will enjoy Judgment in Tokyo for its superior documentation, often lively writing, and its ability to blend pithy details with overarching political, legal, and philosophical questions. Bass also dives into the fractured legacy of the Tokyo trials, especially as they’ve influenced right-wing Japanese. Most importantly, I think, Bass leaves his readers the freedom to draw their own conclusions about the authority of the court and whether or not justice was served (although he firmly argues that Togo Shigenori, foreign minister for much of the war, was more a victim of circumstances rather than a war criminal). This book is an amazing work of scholarship.

This was a great chronicle of the Postwar environment in the Pacific Theater. Bass does a great job of detailing the events at the trials in Japan after the war and it is a valuable read. I would highly recommend this to fellow World War 2 buffs.