Justice in Asia and the Pacific Region, 1945–1952: Allied War Crimes Prosecutions by Yuma Totani

Author:Yuma Totani [Totani, Yuma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-02-28T06:00:00+00:00

Midorikawa had his company repeat this process as fresh batches of men, women, and children were allotted until no one was left in the mosque or in the adjacent structure. The two other companies presumably followed the same procedure. The killing continued well into the night of July 8.

When the defense case began, none of the accused contradicted their pretrial statements insofar as the general sequence of events was concerned. However, they invariably disputed that they were individually or criminally liable for the killing. Each of them asserted that their acts were entirely justified on one or more of the following grounds: (1) that they were merely following superior orders; (2) that the destruction of the Kalagon village was a military necessity; (3) that killing of small children was justifiable from the standpoints of mercy killing and of military expediency; (4) that the massacre was a reprisal measure against Kalagon, which gave aid to British parachutists and guerrillas; and (5) that some of the accused did not take direct part in the actual killing.

All of the foregoing lines of defense figured prominently in the testimony of chief-accused Ichikawa. He testified that he received from regimental commander Tsukada the orders to carry out the wholesale destruction of villagers. Ichikawa was allegedly told in the wake of the failed first raid that he would have to carry out another raid and that in the next one, he “must annihilate the villagers of Kalagon.”43 At the subsequent meeting at Chaungnakwa where the order for the next raid was issued, the regimental commander is said to have reiterated that he “must kill the villagers and burn the houses of Kalagon village.”44 The accused personally had nothing to gain by carrying out the massacre, so he informed the court, but he had a bona fide belief that the killing was a necessary part of the broader operational mission in the Burma theater. Children were not spared because if they were left to survive, “they would be orphans, and as such they could not have a living.” It was also for the sake of “sav[ing] time and carry[ing] out my duties” that Ichikawa “could not help but killing them.”45 When cross-examined by the prosecution, he conceded that Japan as an occupying power might have had “some duties” in relation to the people of occupied territory. Nonetheless, he maintained that the massacre was entirely justified because “if the inhabitants [under control] of occupying power were acting in a hostile manner towards the occupying power[,] we should take retaliatory measure.”46

As regards the charge of abduction of women, Ichikawa again admitted to having taken away some ten women and turning them over to the regimental headquarters except for a few who escaped. He defended this action, asserting that “I had orders from the Regiment to bring the women so that they could be used as spies.”47 When asked by the prosecution whether it was “customary with the Japanese Army to recruit local women for serve [sic] with the Japanese

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