In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed.
Of the 5,700 Japanese individuals indicted for Class B war crimes, 984 were sentenced to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced.
Tojo and the six others who were hanged were among 28 Japanese wartime leaders tried for war crimes at the 1946-1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
Still, the United States initiated the arrests of 28 Japanese leaders and led the subsequent trials from May 3, 1946, to November 12, 1948. Arrested Japanese leaders faced charges of war crimes, crimes committed against prisoners of war, and crimes against humanity.
Along with war crimes and crimes against humanity (charges 53 to 55), Tojo was among the seven Japanese leaders sentenced to death and executed by hanging in 1948, Shigenori Tōgō received a 20-year sentence, Shimada received a life sentence, and Nagano died of natural causes during the Trial in 1947.
The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect. The IJA also relied on physical punishment to discipline its own troops.
Tojo was convicted of war crimes at an international military tribunal in 1948, including waging wars of aggression and ordering inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. He was sentenced to death that November and executed by hanging the following month.
Recognizing that some prisoners had escaped the last inferno, Japanese soldiers were ordered to pursue. The POWs they found among the rocks were cruelly killed. Some were shot or bayonetted in the stomach and left to slowly die. Wounded men were buried alive or set on fire as the guards laughed and cheered.
The Japanese school curriculum largely glosses over the occupations of Taiwan, China, Korea and various Russian islands before the attack on Pearl Harbor; it essentially doesn't teach the detail of the war in the Pacific and South East Asia until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Allies punished Japan for its past militarism and expansion by convening war crimes trials in Tokyo. At the same time, SCAP dismantled the Japanese Army and banned former military officers from taking roles of political leadership in the new government.
Since 2000, 118 inmates have been executed in Japan, with the most recent being the execution of Tomohiro Katō, the perpetrator of the Akihabara massacre in 2008, who was executed on 26 July 2022. There are currently 106 death row inmates awaiting execution.
Executions in Japan are carried out by hanging, and the country has seven execution chambers, all located in major cities. After a four-year moratorium, executions resumed in 1993 and up to 15 have taken place almost each year since then.
Miraculously, the nurses all survived the long imprisonment from May 1942 to February 1945, but after liberation, received little recognition as military prisoners of war. But most of the nurses said that they didn't do anything extraordinary, they were just doing their jobs.
The majority of crimes recorded in Japan are theft offenses. Among violent crimes, the most reported offenses are assaults and bodily injuries followed by rapes and homicides. Approximately 21.9 cases of assault and 0.7 cases of murder were recorded per 100,000 Japanese inhabitants in 2020.
At least 15,000 German soldiers were executed for desertion alone, and up to 50,000 were killed for often minor acts of insubordination. An unknown number were summarily executed, often in the moment, by their officers or comrades when they refused to follow commands.
An estimated 14 million to 20 million Chinese died during this epic struggle of resistance against Japanese aggression in a war that produced a staggering 80 million to 100 million refugees.
Abe's Pearl Harbor speech has been well received in Japan, where most people expressed the opinion that it struck the right balance of regret that the Pacific war occurred, but offered no apologies. Julian Ryall reports.
Unprepared for coping with so many captured European prisoners, the Japanese held those who surrendered to them in contempt, especially the women. The men at least could be put to work as common laborers, but women and children were "useless mouths." This attitude would dictate Japanese policy until the end of the war.
Crucifixion was a form of punishment, torture and/or execution that the Japanese military sometimes used against prisoners during the war.
Over 200 Australians were massacred at Laha, Ambon, on 6 February and between 15 and 20 February 1942 . By February 1942, Gull Force was in captivity at Tantui (on Ambon). In October 1942 the prisoners were divided into two groups.
Eichelberger said to the interpreter, "Ask if he means the trouble tonight, or the last four years?" Two Japanese reporters recorded Tojo's words: "I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die. The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous.
Tōjō shot himself in a failed suicide attempt after Japan surrendered on September 11, 1945, but the Allies treated his wounds so he could stand trial for war crimes. A military tribunal found him guilty, and he was executed by hanging on December 23, 1948.
The U.S. pilots claimed to have shot down three twin-engine bombers and two fighters during the mission, but Japanese records show only two bombers were shot down. There is a controversy over which pilot shot down Yamamoto's plane, but most modern historians credit Rex T. Barber.
Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet wartime economy and post-war reconstruction.
Large numbers of the Russian prisoners ended up in special sections of German POW camps. Held by the Nazis to be racially and politically inferior, they were starved and brutalised. The appalling suffering of these POWs was witnessed by British and Commonwealth prisoners held in separate compounds.