Published on: 2026-05-02
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Moscow, May 2 /Xinhua/ — The Tokyo Tribunal on Japanese war criminals and the Nuremberg Trials to a certain extent satisfied the sense of justice of the peoples subjected to the aggression of Japanese militarism and German Nazism, and laid the foundations of the post-war world order. Russian experts stated this upon the request of Xinhua, commenting on the 80th anniversary of the start of the Tokyo Tribunal.
“The Tokyo Tribunal, along with the Nuremberg Trial, laid the foundations of modern international criminal law. Large-scale atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Asia were documented — the deaths of up to 35 million Chinese, the Nanking Massacre, mass executions, and so on. It became a key judicial proceeding against Japanese military and political leaders accused of crimes during World War II,” said one of the leaders of the Russian Association of World War II Historians, Anatoly Koshkin.
“Unfortunately, the deserved punishment was not borne by all war criminals. A whole number of criminals, thanks to the protection of the USA, managed to escape responsibility,” he added.
“The Tokyo International Tribunal was an important event because it revealed the depth of the moral decline of the Japanese leadership, the scale of the monstrous crimes of Japanese militarism against the peoples of Asia. To some extent, it satisfied the sense of justice of the peoples subjected to Japanese aggression,” noted Dmitry Streltsov, chief researcher at the Center for Japanese Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences / ICSA RAS.
“The post-war international order was to a significant extent based precisely on this sense of historical justice. This applies both to Nazi Germany and militarist Japan. This strengthened the moral and legal foundations of the post-war world order,” he believes.
Unfortunately, the Tokyo tribunal did not convict Japanese war criminals who used chemical and biological weapons. “The Americans struck a deal with Japanese war criminals. In exchange for the results of monstrous experiments conducted on prisoners of war in the so-called Japanese ‘Unit 731,’ which the Japanese themselves called the ‘devil’s own,’ the Americans removed the unit’s leadership from among the defendants at the Tokyo tribunal,” A. Koshkin recalled.
“The beginning of the Cold War, which had been gaining momentum since 1946, was already being felt. The Americans sought to use the experience of militaristic Japan, in particular, its achievements in developing new types of weapons, within the framework of rivalry with the USSR,” explained D. Streltsov.
The countries of the anti-Hitler coalition at that time believed that the sentence for the perpetrators of the Second World War would become an important barrier to the revival of fascism, Nazism, and militarism in the future. But, unfortunately, decades have passed, and today we see that all these vile phenomena continue to live, and in some countries they are actively raising their heads.
“In the same Japan, today we see these tendencies. Japan is once again moving towards militarization, certain forces in this country are trying to revise the results of the Second World War, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Tokyo tribunal, declaring it a ‘court of winners over the defeated.’ These are very dangerous tendencies that must be resolutely opposed,” emphasized A. Koshkin.
Please note; this information is raw content received directly from the source. It represents an exact report of what the source claims and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.