Wolfowitz Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation
Thursday 14 October 2010 by: Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
In 2002, as the Bush administration was turning to torture and other brutal techniques for interrogating "war on terror" detainees, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz loosened rules against human experimentation, an apparent recognition of legal problems regarding the novel strategies for extracting and evaluating information from the prisoners.
Wolfowitz issued his little-known directive on March 25, 2002, about a month after President George W. Bush stripped the detainees of traditional prisoner-of-war protections under the Geneva Conventions. Bush labeled them "unlawful enemy combatants" and authorized the CIA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to undertake brutal interrogations.
Despite its title - "Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research" - the Wolfowitz directive weakened protections that had been in place for decades by limiting the safeguards to "prisoners of war."
"We're dealing with a special breed of person here," Wolfowitz said about the war on terror detainees only four days before signing the new directive.
The Japanese government takes the position that as Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, it violated no international law. For the same reason, the Japanese government also takes the view that Allied forces did not violate the Geneva Convention in acts committed against Japanese personnel and civilians.
The Japanese government did sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1929, thereby rendering its actions in 1937-45 liable to charges of crimes against peace, a charge which was introduced at the Tokyo Trials to prosecute Class-A War Criminals. (Class-B War Criminals are those found guilty of war crimes per se, and Class-C War Criminals are those guilty of crimes against humanity.) However, any convictions for such crimes are not recognised by the Japanese government, as the Kellogg-Briand Pact did not have any enforcement clause stipulating penalties in the event of violation.
The Japanese government accepted the terms set by the Potsdam Declaration (1945) after the end of the war. The declaration alluded, in Article 10, to two kinds of war crime: one was the violation of international laws, such as the abuse of prisoners of war (POWs); the other was obstructing "democratic tendencies among the Japanese people", and civil liberties within Japan.
Japanese law does not recognise those convicted in the Tokyo Trials and other trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan governments have accepted the judgments made in the trials, in the Treaty of San Francisco (1952). This is because the treaty does not mention the legal validity of the tribunal. In the Japanese text, the word used for "accept" is judaku (which may also be translated as "to receive"), as opposed to the stronger shounin ("to certify"). Therefore the position of the Japanese government is that it accepts the judgment and sentences set by the trials as demands, but it does not accept the legal validity of the tribunal. This means, among other things that those convicted have had no ability, under Japanese law, to appeal, as the Tokyo Tribunal and other war crimes courts have no standing in Japanese law. Under normal circumstances it violates a number of fundamental principles of modern legal procedure to punish someone whose crime and penalty were defined only after the fact. Had Japan certified the legal validity of the war crimes tribunals in the San Francisco Treaty, this might have resulted in Japanese courts reversing such verdicts. Any such outcomes would have created domestic political crises and would have been unacceptable in international diplomatic circles.
The current Japanese jurists' consensus regarding the legal standing of the Tokyo tribunal is that, as a condition of ending the war, the Allies demanded a number of conditions including the execution and/or incarceration of those whom they deemed to be responsible for the war. These people were defined as guilty by a tribunal organized by the Allies. The Japanese government accepted these demands in the Potsdam Declaration and then accepted the actual sentencing in the San Francisco Treaty, which officially ended the state of war between Japan and the Allies. Although the penalties for the convicted, including execution, can be regarded as a violation of their technical legal rights, the constitution allowed such violations if proper legal procedure was followed, in the general public interest. Therefore, any such execution and/or incarceration is constitutionally valid, but has no relationship to Japanese criminal law. Hence those convicted as war criminals are not defined as criminals in Japan, although their execution and incarceration is regarded as legally valid.
The term Japanese war crimes refers to events which occurred during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Other names, such as "Asian Holocaust", are sometimes used for many of these crimes and/or alleged crimes. Many of these events are subject to controversy among historians and/or people of different nationalities.
Historians and the governments of many countries officially hold the military of the Empire of Japan, namely the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy, responsible for the deaths and/or forced labour of many millions of civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) during the early 20th century.
Contents
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1 Definitions
1.1 Japanese definitions
1.1.1 Japanese government position
1.2 International definitions
2 Background
2.1 Japanese military culture and imperialism
2.2 The events of the 1930s and 1940s
3 War crimes
3.1 Mass killings
3.2 Preventable famine
3.3 Experiments
3.4 Comfort women
3.5 Looting
3.6 The treatment of prisoners of war
4 Post-1945 reactions
4.1 The Tokyo Trials
4.2 Other trials
4.3 Official apologies
4.4 Compensation
4.4.1 Intermediate compensation
4.4.2 Compensation under the San Francisco Treaty
4.4.2.1 Compensation from Japanese overseas assets
4.4.2.2 Compensation to Allied POWs
4.4.2.3 Allied territories occupied by Japan
4.4.3 Other compensation
4.5 Debate in Japan
4.6 Controversial reinterpretations outside Japan
4.7 Later investigations
5 Major incidents
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Definitions
New Guinea, 1943. An Australian soldier, Sgt Leonard Siffleet, about to be beheaded with a sword. Many Allied prisoners of war were summarily executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.
There are differences from one country to another regarding the definition of Japanese war crimes.
The Japanese military's use of forced labour, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths more than 100,000 in the case of the Burma Railway alone. The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. During World War II such rules were largely respected in German POW camps, except in the case of Soviet POWs. However, Japan was not a signatory at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention.
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References--Wiki
References
Barnaby, Wendy. The Plague Makers: The Secret World of Biological Warfare, Frog Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1883319854 ISBN 0756756987 ISBN 0826412580 ISBN 082641415X
Endicott, Stephen and Edward Hagerman. The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 0253334721
Gold, Hal. Unit 731 Testimony, Charles E Tuttle Co., 1996. ISBN 4900737399
Handelman, Stephen and Ken Alibek. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It, Random House, 1999. ISBN 0375502319 ISBN 0385334966
Harris, Robert and Jeremy Paxman. A Higher Form of Killing : The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Random House, 2002. ISBN 0812966538
Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up, Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0415091055 ISBN 0415932149
Rees, Laurence. Horror in the East, published 2001 by the British Broadcasting Company
Seagrave, Peggy & Seagrave, Sterling. Gold Warriors: The Covert History of Yamashita's Treasure, Verso Books, 2003. ISBN 1859845428
Williams, Peter. Unit 731: Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II, Free Press, 1989. ISBN 0029353017
The History Channel. Japanese War Crimes: Murder Under The Sun, 50 Minutes, DVD & VHS
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External links
"Biochemical Warfare - Unit 731". Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War. No date.
Battling_Bastards_of_Bataan
Chalmers Johnson, "The Looting of Asia" in London Review of Books, 2003-11-20
"History of Japan's biological weapons program" Federation of American Scientists, 2000-04-16
Ji Man-Won's website (in Korean) Various dates.
Justin McCurry, "Japan's sins of the past" in The Guardian, 2004-10-28
"Nanking 1937" , Princeton University, 1997-11-09
Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). No date.
"No Riot Apology" Sky News (UK), 2005-04-17
"The Other Holocaust" No date.
"Rape of Queen MIN" 2002
R.J. Rummel, "Statistics Of Japanese Democide: Estimates, Calculations, And Sources" University of Hawaii, 2002
Shane Green. "The Asian Auschwitz of Unit 731" in The Age, 2002-08-29
"Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama" 1995-08-15
Steven Butler, "A half century of denial: the hidden truth about Japan's unit 731" in US News & World Report 1995-07-31
Categories: Articles with sections needing expansion | Japanese war crimes |
Compensation to Allied POWs
Clause 16 of the San Francisco Treaty stated that Japan would transfer its assets and those of its citzens in countries which were at war with any of the Allied Powers or which were neutral, or equivalents, to the Red Cross, which would sell them and distribute the funds to former prisoners of war and their families. Accordingly, the Japanese government and private citizens paid out 4,500,000 to the Red Cross.
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Allied territories occupied by Japan
Clause 14 of the treaty stated that Japan would enter into negotiations with Allied powers whose territories were occupied by Japan and suffered damage by Japanese forces, with a view to Japan compensating those countries for the damage.
Accordingly, the Philippines and South Vietnam received compensation in 1956 and 1959 respectively. Burma and Indonesia were not original signatories, but they later signed bilateral treaties in accordance with clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty.
Japanese compensation to countries occupied during 1941-45
Country Amount in Yen Amount in US$ Date of treaty
Burma 72,000,000,000 200,000,000 November 5, 1955
Philippines 198,000,000,000 550,000,000 May 9, 1956
Indonesia 80,388,000,000 223,080,000 January 20, 1958
Vietnam 14,400,000,000 38,000,000 May 13, 1959
Total 364,348,800,000 US$1,012,080,000
The last payment was made to the Philippines
on July 22, 1976.
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Anti-Japanese sentiment
Excerpts from government-approved Japanese history textbooks
Japan-China Joint Declaration On Building a Partnership of Friendship and Cooperation for Peace and Development
Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China
Japanese history textbooks controversy
Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform
Japan-Republic of Korea Joint Declaration A New Japan-Republic of Korea Partnership towards the Twenty-first Century
Korean-Japanese disputes
List of war apology statements issued by Japan
Chinese civilians burying some of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, carried out by the Imperial Japanese military in 1937-38. Some estimates maintain that 8.4 million Chinese civilians were killed by Japanese forces during 1937-45.
War crimes may be broadly defined as unconscionable behavior by a government or military personnel against either enemy civilians or enemy combatants. Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been accused and/or convicted of committing many such acts during the period of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. They have been accused of conducting a series of human rights abuses against civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) throughout east Asia and the western Pacific region. These events reached their height during the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 and the Asian and Pacific campaigns of World War II (1941-45).
Different societies use widely different time frames in defining Japanese war crimes. For example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 was followed by the widespread use of violence and deprivation of civil liberties against the Korean people. Millions of Koreans may have been killed during the occupation. Thus, some Koreans refer to "Japanese war crimes" as events occurring during a period from 1910 to 1945. By comparison, the United States did not come into military conflict with Japan until 1941, and thus Americans may consider "Japanese war crimes" as encompassing only those events that occurred from 1941 to 1945.
A complicating factor is that a small minority of people in every Asian and Pacific country conquered by Japan collaborated with the Japanese military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other imperialist powers. The Indian National Army is perhaps the best-known example of a movement opposed to European imperialism which served as part of the Japanese military. Prominent individual nationalists in other countries, such as the later Indonesian president, Suharto, also served with Japanese forces. In some cases such non-Japanese personnel were also responsible for war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan. For political reasons, many of these people were never investigated or tried and brought to justice after 1945. In South Korea especially, it is alleged that such people were often able to acquire wealth by serving Japan. It is further alleged in South Korea that some former collaborators have covered up "Japanese" war crimes in order to avoid their own prosecution and/or exposure.
The issue of Japan's de jure sovereignty over countries such as Taiwan and Korea, prior to 1945, is a matter of controversy. Japanese control was accepted and recognised internationally, and was justified by instruments such as the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895, which included China's ceding of Taiwan) and the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty (1910). It has been argued that acts committed against people subject to Japanese sovereignty cannot be considered "war crimes". However, the native populations were not consulted on the changes in sovereignty, nor was there universal acceptance of such annexations. There was ongoing resistance to Japanese rule and in any case war crimes may also be committed during civil wars. (See Japanese rule in Taiwan and Korea under Japanese rule for further details.)
Japanese military culture and imperialism
Military culture, especially during Japan's imperialist phase had great bearing on the conduct of the Japanese military before and during World War II.
Seven centuries of Bushido (the militaristic samurai warrior code) taught unquestioning obedience to the Emperor, and fearlessness in battle. During the so-called "Age of Empire" in the late 19th century, Japan followed the lead of other world powers in aggressively seeking an overseas empire.
As in other imperial powers, Japanese popular culture is said to have become increasingly racist, or at least ethnocentric, at around this time. The rise of Japanese nationalism was seen partly in the adoption of Shinto as a state religion from 1890, including its entrenchment in the education system. Shinto held the Emperor to be divine because he was deemed to be a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. This provided justification for the requirement that the emperor and his representatives to be obeyed without question. In addition, many Japanese believed that Japan was a special place created by gods, rather than part of the ordinary world, and that the Japanese people had a divine mission to expand their culture, including by the conquest of other countries. This was similar to other contemporaneous philosophies and ideologies, such as the U.S. "Manifest Destiny", or the European idea of la mission civilatrice ("the civilising mission"), that supported the imperialism of other countries.
Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) signified Japan's rise to the status of a world power.
From the point of view of Bushido, POWs taken by Japanese forces were not worthy of treatment as soldiers. Compassion for defeated enemies was considered a sign of weakness. Some Japanese personnel considered the execution of prisoners as honourable, since it released the POWs from the dishonour of surrender. Perhaps as a consequence, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Conventionwhich stipulates the humane treatment of POWs until after World War II. Nevertheless, the treatment of prisoners by the Japanese military in earlier wars, such as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), had been at least as humane as that of other militaries.
eaths caused by the diversion of resources to the Japanese military in occupied countries are also regarded as war crimes by many people. Millions of civilians in southern Asia especially Vietnam and the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), both of which were major rice-growing countries died during a preventable famine in 1944-45. (See, for example, the article on the Vietnamese Famine of 1945.)By the late 1930s, the practices of Japan's military dictatorship created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese military culture and that of Nazi Germany's elite military personnel, such as those in the Waffen-SS. Japan also had a military secret police force, known as the Kempeitai, its equivalent of the Gestapo. The Kempeitai operated throughout the empire and in occupied countries. As in other dictatorships, irrational brutality, hatred and fear became commonplace. Perceived failure, or insufficient devotion to the Emperor would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who would pass the beating on to lower ranks, all the way down. In POW camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all.
The traditional severity of bushido, and the ethnocentrism of Japan's modern imperial phase, often coalesced into brutality towards civilians and POWs. After the launching of a full-scale military campaign against China in 1937, instances of murder, torture and rape committed by Japanese soldiers seemed to be overlooked by their commanding officers, and generally went unpunished. Such acts were repeated throughout the Pacific War.
Alexandra Hospital massacre
Assassination of Empress Myeongseong of Korea
Bataan Death March
Changteh Chemical Weapon Attack
Comfort Women
Death Railway (Construction of the Burma-Siam Railway)
Kaimingye germ weapon attack
Laha Massacre
Nanjing Massacre
Manila Massacre
March 1st Movement
Parit Sulong Massacre
Sandakan Death Marches
Sanko sakusen
Shantung Incident
Sook Ching Massacre
Tol Plantation Massacre
Unit 731
Unit 516
Unit 100
Unit 1855
Unit 2646
Unit 8604
Unit 9420
Unit Ei 1644
War Crimes in Asia Mainland
War Crimes in Manchukuo
War Crimes in the Pacific
Citation--I was given this material from an Air Force officer working on the textbook issue in Japan.
He gave me an outline of the Air War in China.
