Command on Trial

Between 1945 and 1951, the Allies prosecuted over 5,700 suspected Japanese war criminals across the Asia-Pacific region before one international and many national tribunals using a new legal doctrine known as command responsibility. Command responsibility holds officers criminally liable for the crimes of their subordinates even if they did not order the crimes to occur. Allied authorities believed that the structure of the Japanese military had allowed the crimes to occur and that pursuing guilt for war crimes should extend beyond enlisted soldiers who were the direct perpetrators of war crimes to those who had been in a position of command.

Command on Trial shows that the application of command responsibility in the courtroom was highly unstable and open to manipulation, especially in the trials of lower-ranking offices, resulting in outcomes that were legally, morally, and philosophically inconsistent. A clear illustration of the pitfalls of command responsibility, this book shows that the trials – and command responsibility – did not achieve comprehensive justice and left unanswered the question of who was actually responsible for many of the war crimes that were perpetrated.

Paul Taucher is lecturer at the College of Law, Arts and Social Sciences, Murdoch University, and a fellow of the Indo-Pacific Research Centre.