With the hope of exposing students and faculty to voices from a variety of disciplines, the Joint Center for East Asian Studies hosted a symposium on the Tokyo Trial last Friday.

The Joint Center for East Asian Studies was established in 1991 by Washington University and University of Missouri-St Louis as part of an effort to combine the resources at both schools to focuses on the study of Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages and cultures.

The International Military tribunal for the Far East, or the “Tokyo Trial,” was held by the Allied Powers in 1945 after their victory in World War

II in order to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for war crimes.

The symposium, according to Lori Watt, an assistant professor of history who moderated the event, had three goals. The first goal was to present new research in the field of East Asian studies. Second was to “showcase” University Professors John Haley and Elizabeth Borgwardt. As its third goal, the University wanted the symposium’s speakers to contribute to teaching at the University.

“This third goal was already accomplished when the speakers were very willing to talk to our students about their books,” Watt said.

During the symposium, the presenters, Yuma Totani and Franziska Seraphim, spoke for 25 minutes about their books and current research projects.

For Totani, author of the book “The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II,” the Tokyo Trial was not merely a victor’s justice.

“The United States, under the Roosevelt administration, focused the trial on the crimes against aggression rather than crimes against humanity. The tribunal spent more than 70 percent of the court days presenting evidence for aggressive war charges,” said Totani, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii, during her presentation.

“An officer who committed crimes against humanity was not charged unless he also committed crimes against peace. Joseph Keenan, the U.S.-appointed chief prosecutor of the Tokyo Trial, spent much of the time and talent to gather evidence for crimes against aggression and peace,” Totani said. “The Tokyo Trial was an effort by the Allies led by the United States to prove the war conducted by Japan was unjust.”

Seraphim, the other presenter at the symposium and the author of the book “War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005,” focused her current research project on the aftermath of the trial. In particular, she examined the lives of the Japanese prisoners of war—prisoners at prisons such as the American-controlled Landsberg and Sugamo prison.

“The prisoners led nice lives in the prisons. Many of the prisons had daily circulating newspapers, and shows put up for the prisoners to enjoy,” said Seraphim, an associate professor at Boston College.

All of the prisoners were released in 1958. But Seraphim said that those who returned from the Fushun Prison in China had different attitudes on the war compared to prisoners from other prisons.

“These prisoners from Fushun felt remorseful for what they did during the war and many of them spoke out about the atrocities that they had committed during the war in hope of preventing history from repeating itself,” Seraphim said. “This type of remorseful attitude was extraordinary and unexpected from the Japanese war prisoners.”

Following the presentations by Totani and Seraphim, Haley and Borgwardt each offered their opinions on the topic.

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