Barak Kushner. Men to Devils, Devils to Men

This book examines the war crimes trials of the Japanese Empire, including not only the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946–1948), but also the conventional war crimes trials held by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 1946–1949 and by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1956. Chapter 1 discusses the impacts of the collapse of the Japanese Empire in East Asia, particularly in China and Taiwan. Chapter 2 analyzes KMT and CCP policies on Japanese war crimes, policies that differed due to both domestic and international factors. Chapter 3 explores ethnic minorities in the Japanese Empire (Chinese, Koreans, and Taiwanese) and their fate after Japan’s defeat. Chapter 4 details the KMT trials, including the Nanjing Massacre trial (1946–1948) and the trial of Okamura Yasuji (b. 1884, d. 1966), who led more than one million men as the commander-in-chief of the China Expeditionary Army in 1945 (29). He was considered the most wanted war criminal in China, but was found not guilty in 1949. Chapter 5 primarily examines the White Group (Baituan), a group of former Japanese military servicemen who helped KMT train and supervise its military in Taiwan between 1949 and 1969 (186). Chapter 6 describes Japanese attitudes on war crimes and war criminals and highlights Japan’s so-called postwar amnesia about its wartime violence. Chapter 7 assesses the CCP trials in Taiyuan and Shenyang and the program of reeducation of Japanese servicemen that transformed these “devils” into die-hard pacifists who, after their repatriation since the 1950s, disseminated accounts of their wartime atrocities and crimes to the public as a way of educating their countrymen.

China · Comfort women · Communism · Criminology · Economic history · Empire · International law · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Repatriation · Sociology · Tribunal · War crime · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies