Reprint: Sir Maurice Hankey's "Errors of the War Crimes Trials" – November 24, 2021 By Maurice Hankey (Author), Yoshio Ueshima (Author), Saiji Hasegawa (Translator) On April 28, 1952, the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect. Japan was finally restored to independence from GHQ. However... 1,224 Japanese and Koreans and Taiwanese who were Japanese citizens during the war still had to serve time as Class A, B, and C war criminals. The people were shocked to learn this. Why weren't the compatriots who had been judged by the enemy released even though the peace treaty had come into effect? From such questions, the public's interest in the war trials (the Tokyo Trials) increased rapidly. What ignited this was Sir Hankey's "Errors of the War Crimes Trials." This book, translated by Saiji Hasegawa, the president of Jiji Press, was published in Japanese in October 1952, immediately after independence, and caused a great sensation. In fact, during the occupation, criticism of the Tokyo Trials was completely prohibited by GHQ censorship. Therefore, from the end of the war, only books that affirmed the Tokyo Trials (that is, books that said, "Japan is unilaterally bad!") were published. However, as soon as GHQ left Japan and freedom of speech was restored, books criticizing the Tokyo Trials from the Japanese perspective gradually began to be published... On November 27 of the same year, a Diet resolution denying the Tokyo Trials was also passed, and Representative Kazumi Tako, who explained the purpose of this proposal, quoted Sir Hankey's "Errors of the War Crimes Trials" and stated: "Regarding the punishment of war crimes, Judge Pal, the Indian representative of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, made a strong objection, and if we look at the memorandum submitted to former Marshal MacArthur in the name of all the defense lawyers of the Tokyo Trials, the trial was unfair, the trial was not based on evidence, and the guilty verdict was not proven beyond the possibility of suspicion."