
“As law, the Tokyo trial had grand ambitions to establish international principles for a safer postwar world – a revived international law that outlawed aggression and atrocity. It sought to reestablish the battered authority of the old international laws of armed combat, such as the illegality of killing innocent civilians or abusing prisoners of war. It insisted that powerful persons had to face individual judgement for war crimes committed under their commands, rather than claiming immunity as generals and cabinet ministers. And like Nuremberg, it made a revolutionary attempt to enshrine aggressive war as the cardinal international crime, the one war crime that led to all the others.”
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