Talk:Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal

Not clear
It is not clear whether Gunkichi Tanaka was executed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.150.234.8 (talk) 15:20, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It seems that he was actually executed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.150.234.8 (talk) 09:31, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Contradictory information
The article as it currently stands is rather confused. It says the tribunal was established in 1946 to try 4 individuals, all officers. A tribunal for 1 trial of 4 individuals is unlikely, but I don't have data on hand to check. The article then mentions some other people who mostly were not tried...but also Okamura (not in the list of 4 people to be tried) who it says was convicted of war crimes in 1948, then protected by Chiang Kai Shek. He thus seem to have been tried and convicted. The article claims that only one officer was prosecuted by the tribunal, Tani, convicted in 1947. What happened to the others is not clear, but it seems likely that they WERE prosecuted.

I suspect that the article was written by someone confused about the meaning of (1) prosecution, (2) conviction, and (3) the difference between the Nanjng massacre as a subject for criminal proceedings and the Nanjing War Crimes tribunal as an institution which tried certain cases, and then "cleaned up" by others who are not familiar with the history and didn't read the article critically. Philip R. Piccigallo's book would be a good starting source to clean this up. I have been hunting for my copy for weeks and can't find it, and pdfs are not available online at present. Dewobroto (talk) 07:28, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

13 tribunals
It was one of thirteen tribunals established by the Nationalist government.

China held 13 tribunals and executed 149 Japanese war criminals. This is of historical significance yet there is no Wikipedia article on the 12 other tribunals. Gentleman wiki (talk) 08:20, 22 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Indeed, this is an important point. The Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal was only one of ten tribunals set up in ten different cities to try Japanese war criminals. There is no reason to single this one out as exclusively being deserving of its own article. Someone ought to consider ultimately folding this article into a broader article called, maybe, Trials of Japanese war criminals in Nationalist China. Tessa Bennet (talk) 04:31, 3 November 2020 (UTC)