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HIS: This Day in History: 1946 – General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals.

HIS: This Day in History: 1946 – General Douglas MacArthur establishes the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals.


The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on April 29, 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for crimes against peace and other war crimes leading up to and during the Second World War. It was modeled after the International Military Tribunal (IMT) formed several months earlier in Nuremberg, Germany to prosecute senior officials of Nazi Germany. 

Following Japan's defeat and occupation by the Allies, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, United States General Douglas MacArthur, issued a special proclamation establishing the IMTFE. A charter was drafted to establish the court's composition, jurisdiction, procedures; the crimes were defined based on the Nuremberg Charter. The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was composed of judges, prosecutors, and staff from eleven countries that had fought against Japan: Australia, Canada, China, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States; the defense comprised Japanese and American lawyers.

Unlike its counterpart in Nuremberg, the Tokyo Trial exercised broader temporal jurisdiction, beginning from the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Twenty-eight high-ranking Japanese military and political leaders were tried by the court, including current and former prime ministers, foreign ministers, and military commanders. They were charged with fifty-five separate counts, including waging aggressive war, murder, and various war crimes and crimes against humanity (such as torture and forced labor) against prisoners-of-war, civilian internees, and the inhabitants of occupied territories; ultimately, 45 of the counts, including all the murder charges, were ruled either redundant or not authorized under the IMTFE Charter.

By the time it adjourned on November 12, 1948, two defendants had died of natural causes and one was ruled unfit to stand trial. All remaining defendants were found guilty of at least one count, of whom seven were sentenced to death and sixteen to life imprisonment. Thousands of other "lesser" war criminals were tried by domestic tribunals convened across Asia and the Pacific by Allied nations, with most concluding by 1949.

The Tokyo Trial lasted more than twice as long as the better-known Nuremberg Trial, and its impact was similarly influential in the development of international law; similar international war crimes tribunals would not be established until the 1990s.

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