Beatrice Trefalt

A Peace Worth Having: Delayed Repatriations and Domestic Debate over the San Francisco Peace Treaty

During the negotiation of the Peace Treaty that would end the Occupation in the spring and summer of 1951, its terms became a matter of great concern for the families of those Japanese still awaiting repatriation from the former wartime empire. This article recounts the little-known story of how citizen protesters lobbied for mention of the repatriation problem in the Peace Treaty and how they eventually succeeded in having repatriation mentioned in its terms. The protest and its result shed light on domestic concerns at a crucial time in Japanese history; it also highlights the importance of delayed repatriations in the social and political landscape of early post-war Japan, and the contribution of the issue to a gendered conception of the post-war nation.

Japanese War criminals: The politics of justice after the Second World War

Beginning in late 1945, the United States, Britain, China, Australia, France, the Netherlands, and later the Philippines, the Soviet Union, and the Peoples Republic of China convened national courts to prosecute Japanese military personnel for war crimes. The defendants included ethnic Koreans and Taiwanese who had served with the armed forces as Japanese subjects. In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried Japanese leaders. While the fairness of these trials has been a focus for decades, Japanese War Criminals instead argues that the most important issues arose outside the courtroom. What was the legal basis for identifying and detaining subjects, determining who should be prosecuted, collecting evidence, and granting clemency after conviction? The answers to these questions helped set the norms for transitional justice in the postwar era and today contribute to strategies for addressing problematic areas of international law. Examining the complex moral, ethical, legal, and political issues surrounding the Allied prosecution project, from the first investigations during the war to the final release of prisoners in 1958, Japanese War Criminals shows how a simple effort to punish the guilty evolved into a multidimensional struggle that muddied the assignment of criminal responsibility for war crimes. Over time, indignation in Japan over Allied military actions, particularly the deployment of the atomic bombs, eclipsed anger over Japanese atrocities, and, among the Western powers, new Cold War imperatives took hold. This book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the construction of the postwar international order in Asia and to our comprehension of the difficulties of implementing transitional justice.

Japanese war criminals in Indochina and the French pursuit of justice: Local and international constraints

After the French liberation of May 1945, General Charles de Gaulle warned the government of Japan that France would be uncompromising in its pursuit of those responsible for war crimes against the population in Indochina. However, by the time the war ended and these ideals had to be put into practice, French determination to punish war criminals had to accommodate the constraints of the French position in the postwar world generally, and Indochina in particular. This article examines how the trials, the imprisonment, the transfer to Japan and the eventual release of Japanese war criminals in and from Saigon were shaped by complex political issues, both in Indochina and in the wider international context. It argues that, as well as representing an attempt to mete out justice on behalf of the victims of Japanese atrocities in Indochina, the trials functioned symbolically to rehabilitate France in Asia: to demonstrate the legitimacy of its position amongst the victorious Allied nations after a chequered wartime history, and to validate its claims to be the rightful political authority over Indochina. However, France’s interest in maintaining the sentences for Japanese war criminals diminished together with the gradual realization that France’s grasp on the Asian part of its colonial empire was slipping.

The French Prosecution at the IMTFE: Robert Oneto, Indochina and the Rehabilitation of French Prestige

The French participation in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) is best known for the dissenting opinion of Justice Henri Bernard, who questioned some of the basic legal assumptions underpinning the trials when they came to an end. This chapter claims that the French case for the prosecution, led by Robert Oneto, also deserves some attention, and argues that the French case, described by legal scholar Yves Beigbeder as flimsy at best, aimed to justify the French recovery of colonial control in Indochina, and to remove once and for all the stain of collaboration of the representatives of the Vichy government in Indochina between September 1940 and March 1945. Using archival sources, the chapter traces how Oneto prepared his case, placing it in the context of French attempts to recover international prestige as a colonial power in the wake of the Second World War. It argues that the audience for Oneto’s case was the Allies and the world at large, not just the Japanese accused in the dock. Minimal and short-lived as it was, the French participation in the punishment of defeated Japan was a crucial moment in the attempt to recover postwar France’s image in the Far East.

Changing lives: the postwar in Japanese women’s autobiographies and memoirs

narratives such as how he and his companions are confronted by a street child who begs them for money. When they refuse he smiles nastily and yells “Bakla!” (a term associated with older queers and cross-dressers). We read of Manila’s international airport where his participants, on the way to a weekend of dancing in overseas gay clubs, travel side by side with migrant workers who treat them as equals. And then they get to the club and meet “white guys” who on learning they are Filipino automatically assume them to be nurses. It is moments such as these that make their ties to Manila and their backgrounds visible and turn “the walls [they] built through speed and wealth” transparent (p. 44). Benedicto makes it clear that one of the aims in this study is to highlight the complicity of his participants in sustaining dominant hierarchies of class, gender and race. This is often revealed when they are confronted with situations, such as those highlighted above, which expose them as indistinguishable from the others; the bakla and the domestic worker, the very figures they so wish to distance themselves from. This complicity, he explains, manifests itself in acts of erasure or “silences” as opposed to questioning or resistance. For an ethnographer this can be a risky position to take as it may appear that he is sitting in authoritative judgment of the practices he observes. However, Benedicto successfully negotiates this position by stressing the part he himself has played in sustaining these practices. He is a central figure in the narratives he presents and much of the book is made up of his memories of participation in the bright lights scene. The book therefore, and as Benedicto himself makes clear, works as a form of autoethnography. This negotiation is also achieved by the balanced and nuanced way he discusses the various aspects of his theories and conclusions about a scene that resists, like most sites of ethnographic engagement, “quick explanations and neatly ordered frames” (p. 23). All in all, Under Bright Lights is an accomplished testament to Manila’s gay scene and the city itself. It is a thoroughly immersive and creative example of ethnographic writing where theory and narrative are expertly blended to draw the reader into the world he describes. In addition, it succeeds in paving the way for other explorations of gay life at the margins, given that gay scenes continue to emerge across “third world” settings in the region that are equally classed and racialised. With respect to this, it would be interesting for further studies to examine how gay men on the other end of the class spectrum narrate their experiences and dreams as global gay citizens (or not).

After the Battle for Saipan: the Internment of Japanese Civilians at Camp Susupe, 1944–1946

Although the islands of the Northern Marianas are famous for the ferocity of the battles of June and July 1944 and their subsequent role as crucial military airbases for the defeat of Japan, they are less well known as the site of the first US occupation of a Japanese territory. During the battles and in their wake, the civilian population of Saipan was herded into internment camps, where they were kept until early 1946. This article considers Japanese civilian experiences of life in Saipan under Occupation, the tensions between the administration of the camp and the internees, and the way in which the experience reflected and reshaped the understanding of the enemy, both in Japanese and in American eyes.