A difficult but must read topic. Well written. I highly recommend this for History buffs. The horrible things that happened.

Hidden Atrocities is a very engaging, if academic narrative describing the before, during, and after stages of the Tokyo Trials. Jeanne Guillemin attempts to make the case that American military officials engaged in a campaign to obstruct justice and shield top Japanese officials from prosecution for the chemical weapons program that they used against China during the decade plus war the Japanese fought on mainland China because the Cold War dictated that a democratic Japan was more important than truth and justice.

Obstruction of justice is a hard barrier to climb over and I just don’t ultimately think that Guillemin makes a strong enough case. There is some evidence certainly, but I mean you could just as easily blame the Japanese for destroying records so that the investigators could not find it or one could argue potential errors in prosecution or the rules in which the trial was conducted, which run far deeper than any American civilian or military leadership pressure. Not saying it isn’t possible, just saying this book didn’t prove convincing.

Hidden Atrocities' strengths shine when it pulls back to show the significance of the post-WW2 Japanese war crimes trials in their contextual significance. The majority of the book tends to focus in detail on minutia to the detriment of the overall story. I finished it not really feeling like I had learned terribly much about the subject at hand. Sadly, the majority of the significance was found in the epilogue. As a part of a larger body of works on war crimes, this book contributes context, but on its on it struggles to stand alone.

Copy courtesy of Columbia University Press via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is extremely informative and eye-opening. I learned a great deal of information that was not covered in history classes.,

Well written and interesting--I highly recommend the book to any history buff.

If using biological weapons and using human guinea-pigs to test them is both illegal and immoral, how wrong is it for a state not only to exploit the knowledge thereby gained but also to obstruct the punishment of those responsible for the original crimes?

This is the central question posed by Jeanne Guillemin’s ‘Hidden Atrocities’ which is subtitled ‘Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial’.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East or Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal is far less well known that its Nuremberg counterpart. Whereas in Germany 21 high-profile defendants were tried by justices from 4 countries (the USA, the USSR, the UK and France), in Japan 25 leaders were tried by justices from 11 countries (there were actually 12 judges, with the United States represented by two).

One reason why the latter proceedings were unsatisfactory is that the Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal chose to make no real distinction between Japanese imperialism and that of the British, French, Dutch and Americans, with the result that he was willing to hand down not guilty verdicts on all those accused, making himself in the process a revered figure for Japanese militarists and revisionists down to the present day. However, the principal way in which Tokyo failed is because the United States successfully took steps to shield those responsible for Japan’s germ warfare, suppressing information which should have led to successful prosecutions in order to glean the benefits of Japanese data for its own biological warfare programme..

The nature of those crimes and the reasons for the travesty of justice regarding its perpetrators is examined in great detail in Gulliemin’s superbly researched and well-argued book. Although Gulliemin explains the political reasons why Emperor Hirohito was not indicted she surprisingly omits any discussion of the wartime roles of either the Emperor’s youngest brother, Prince Mikasa who apparently toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China or the Emperor’s cousin, Prince Takeda, who not only held executive responsibilities over Unit 731 in his role as chief financial officer of the Kwantung Army but who also allegedly attended field tests. This omission is all the more surprising because it adds to the circumstantial evidence that Hirohito was aware of what was going on and because Gulliemin’s account is otherwise as exemplary in its coverage as it is judicious in its analysis.