Research On The National Government And Tokyo Trial

Japan formally surrendered on August15,1945and this marks the formal end of the World War Ⅱ. In order to punish Japanese war criminals, the allies established the International Military Tribunal for the Far East on January19,1946under the leadership of MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander. The tribunal appointed judges and prosecutors from11countries to carry out the prosecution and trial of Japanese Class-A war criminals. As the largest and longest trial, and with the most participating countries, the Tokyo Trial began on May3,1946and ended on November12,1948. Many issues were related to China during the trial. As one of the winning countries, China also paticipated in the trials.This thesis attempts to reveal the role of the Nationalist Government in the Tokyo Trial by presenting historical datas and other materials and making objective and fair evaluation about it. This thesis consists of the following components:The introduction discusses the origin of this topic. This paper tries to carry out an in-depth and systematic study on the weak link of the previous studies on the basis of carding domestic related information.In the main body, the first chapter discusses the background and process of the establishment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. This will include Japan’s surrender and the allied policy towards Japan and the legal basis for the establishment of the court. The second chapter discusses the attitude of the Nationalist Government for the establishment of the tribunal. This chapter also analyzes the attitude of the Nationalist Government and the Chinese main official media Central Daily News about the court in the early days. The third chapter mainly discusses the cooperation and support for the tribunal of the Nationalist Government, including actively sending relevant staff, cooperating in court investigation, collecting evidence after the establishment of the tribunal and so on. The forth chapter is the focus of this paper. It discusses the role played by the Chinese judges and prosecutors at the court and reveals the position and attitude of Chinese government about the trial. The result is achieved because of the efforts of Chinese judges and prosecutors in the court and of the attitude of the Nationalist Government to the final trial results.In the end, the summary tries to make an objective and fair evaluation of the role played by the Nationalist Government in the Tokyo Trial through comprehensive analysis of the parts above.