A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings including genocide or ethnic cleansing, the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military and flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity.
The Burma Railway, also known as the Siam–Burma Railway, Thai–Burma Railway and similar names, or as the Death Railway, is a 415 km (258 mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma. It was built from 1940 to 1943 by civilian laborers impressed or recruited by the Japanese and prisoners of war taken by the Japanese, to supply troops and weapons in the Burma campaign of World War II. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. The name used by the Japanese Government was Tai–Men Rensetsu Tetsudō (泰緬連接鉄道), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway.
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.
Comfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman". During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, and other countries into brothels where they were sexually enslaved and repeatedly raped. Many women died or committed suicide due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East was a military trial convened on 29 April 1946 to try leaders of the Empire of Japan for their crimes against peace, conventional war crimes, and crimes against humanity, leading up to and during the Second World War. The IMTFE was modeled after the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, which prosecuted the leaders of Nazi Germany for their war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.
Masaharu Homma was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Homma commanded the Japanese 14th Army, which invaded the Philippines and perpetrated the Bataan Death March. After the war, Homma was convicted of war crimes relating to the actions of troops under his direct command and executed by firing squad on April 3, 1946.
Sugamo Prison was a prison in Tokyo, Japan. It was located in the district of Ikebukuro, which is now part of the Toshima ward of Tokyo, Japan.
The Sixth Yamaguchi-gumi is Japan's largest yakuza organization. It is named after its founder Harukichi Yamaguchi. Its origins can be traced back to a loose labor union for dockworkers in Kobe before World War II.
The Empire of Japan committed war crimes in many Asian-Pacific countries during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents have been described as "the Asian Holocaust". Some war crimes were committed by Japanese military personnel during the late 19th century, but most were committed during the first part of the Shōwa era, the name given to the reign of Emperor Hirohito.
Shinzo Abe was a Japanese politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. He was the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, serving for almost nine years in total. Abe also served as Chief Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2006 under Junichiro Koizumi and was briefly the opposition leader in 2012.
Baron Hiroshi Ōshima was a Japanese general in the Imperial Japanese Army and diplomat. He served as the Japanese ambassador to Germany before and during World War II and was, unwittingly, a major source of communications intelligence for the Allies. His role was perhaps best summed up by General George C. Marshall, who identified Ōshima as "our main basis of information regarding Hitler's intentions in Europe". After World War II, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment, but was paroled in 1955.
Kawakita v. United States, 343 U.S. 717 (1952), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a dual U.S./Japanese citizen could be convicted of treason against the United States for acts performed in Japan during World War II. Tomoya Kawakita, born in California to Japanese parents, was in Japan when the war broke out and stayed in Japan until the war was over. After returning to the United States, he was arrested and charged with treason for having abused American prisoners of war. Kawakita claimed he could not be found guilty of treason since he had lost his U.S. citizenship while in Japan, but this argument was rejected by the courts, which ruled that he had in fact retained his U.S. citizenship during the war. Originally sentenced to death, Kawakita's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was eventually released from prison, deported to Japan, and barred from ever returning to the United States.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Japan. In practice, the death penalty applies only to aggravated murder, but the current Penal Code and several laws lists 14 crimes for which the death penalty applies, including conspiracy to commit civil war, conspiracy with a foreign power to provoke war against Japan, murder, obstruction of the operation of railroads, ships, or airplanes resulting in the death of the victim, poisoning of the water supply resulting in the death of the victim, intentional flooding, use of a bomb, and arson of a dwelling. Executions are carried out by long drop hanging, and take place at one of the seven execution chambers located in major cities across the country.
Hisao Tani was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War who was convicted of war crimes. Forces under his command committed the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Tani was tried in the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and executed.
Takuma Nishimura was a Japanese army general in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, active in the invasion and occupation of British Malaya. After the Japanese surrender, he was tried and convicted in British Singapore as a war criminal for his role in the Sook Ching massacres. After four years imprisonment he was handed to Australian authorities for trial on the Parit Sulong Massacre and executed by hanging by the then Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea.
Kōsō Abe was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Mumia Abu-Jamal was a 1982 murder trial in which Mumia Abu-Jamal was tried for the first-degree murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. A jury convicted Abu-Jamal on all counts and sentenced him to death.
Ban Song Karia, also spelled Songkalia (ซองกาเลีย) and alternatively known as Songkurai, is a village in the Sangkhla Buri District of the Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand near the border with Myanmar at the Three Pagodas Pass. It was the location of three World War II Japanese Prisoner of War Camps located about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) south of the Thai/Burma border.
The controversies surrounding Yasukuni Shrine are related to the choice of Japanese people who are honoured at this nationally significant Shinto shrine and war museum in central Tokyo. Most of the venerated dead served the Emperors of Japan during wars from 1867 to 1951 but they also include civilians in service and government officials. It is the belief of Shinto that Yasukuni enshrines the actual souls of the dead, known as kami in Japanese. The kami are honoured through liturgical texts and ritual incantations known as Norito.
The Hanaoka mine was an open-pit mine with major deposits of “black ore”, located in the Tōhoku region of northern Japan in the village of Hanaoka, Kitaakita District, Akita Prefecture. The area is now part of the city of Ōdate.
Empire of Japan 
Japan 
Imperial Japanese Army 
Japan Ground Self-Defense Force 
