Plan to demolish Tokyo Trials courtroom sparks row
Plan to demolish Tokyo Trials courtroom sparks row
By Eugene Moosa
TOKYO (Reuter): Rays from the afternoon sun hit the scratched wooden floor of the musty auditorium, just as the sun set on Japan's war leaders standing trial at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal 46 years ago on the same spot.
On the balcony of the building in central Tokyo, writer- activist Yukio Mishima committed ritual suicide in 1970 after haranguing cadet officers of Japan's modern army to revive the spirit of militarism.
Now the government plans to tear down the former Imperial Army Headquarters, inherited by the modern-day Self-Defense Force (SDF). The proposal has triggered controversy that brings back painful memories of World War II.
Pacifist and leftist groups see it as another attempt to whitewash Japan's wartime record while the noisy ultra- nationalist camp says the government wants to desecrate a holy war monument.
Tired of all this, senior SDF officers just want to raze the building to sever symbolic ties with their notorious predecessors of half a century ago.
"Many retired generals just say 'bulldoze the building. We are no longer the pre-war army,'" said Major Masatomi Utsumi, spokesman for the SDF's Tokyo regional headquarters housed in Ichigo-kan (No 1 Building).
In Japan, however, any government attempt to destroy war relics or records immediately sparks a row.
Faced with stern opposition from both left and right, the defense ministry recently grudgingly agreed to preserve the building's facade and the auditorium, moving them to a nearby location.
The huge, three-story structure perched on Ichigaya hill overlooking the northern moat of the imperial palace is also home to the staff colleges of the army, navy and air force.
It is being torn down to make room for a new defense ministry and a new, centralized defense command, communications and intelligence complex.
During World War II, the Ichigo-kan housed the Imperial General Army Headquarters, the War Ministry and the General Staff -- in other words the entire army leadership.
After the war the victorious Allies immediately picked it as the ideal stage for the showcase Tokyo Trial, formally known as the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
Throughout the 1946-1948 trial, wartime Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo and the 24 other "Class-A" defendants were seated with their backs to the hall's western windows.
It was an attempt by the victorious Allies to remind Tojo and the other defendants that the sun was now setting on their "Rising Sun" empire.
Most historians, in Japan and abroad, now agree that the Tokyo Trial, counterpart of the Nuremberg Trials that condemned Nazi leaders, was held more for political effect than on sound legal foundations.
Tojo and six co-defendants were sentenced to death in November 1948 inside the courtroom. The rest were jailed for terms ranging from seven years to life.
Later, the dubious legality of the trial led the Allies to commute prison sentences. The last Class-A defendant walked free in 1955.
Moving the auditorium is part of an elaborate eight-year, 256 billion yen (US$2.4 billion) move of the entire 7,000-staff defense ministry complex from its present location near Roppongi, one of Tokyo's prime entertainment districts, to Ichigaya. It is to be completed within two years.
"We have no political or historical motives," said Fumihiro Yokoyama, the defense ministry's top facilities official. "We just need the space for our organization."
While the courtroom/auditorium looks like being preserved in some form, ministry planners are at a loss over what to do with Tojo's bunker beneath the front yard of Ichigo-kan.
It was constructed in 1941 as war with America loomed. Inside the cool, dark tunnels protected by four metres (13 feet) of concrete, there is today almost nothing to recreate the atmosphere of 50 years ago.
One air duct still contains a Hitachi electric fan. The pull of a rusty lever brings a low hum and stirs the dank air.
The only other sound is the tap-tap of water seeping through the lime above.
Over the years it has formed a stumpy stalagmite like an inverted icicle on the floor, mutely attesting to the passage of time since Japan's leaders sat here dreaming of their conquest of Asia and the Pacific.
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