Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia

°°° 

From the prizewinning author of the acclaimed The Blood Telegram, a landmark, magisterial history of the postwar trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals – & their impact on the modern history of Asia & the world.

In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage & destruction. To them, it was clear that Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried & punished for their crimes.

For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes & to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes & prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism & that the court was no more than victors’ justice.

Gary J. Bass' Judgement at Tokyo is the product of a decade of research, a magnificent, riveting story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, & the epic formative years that set the stage for the postwar era in the Asia–Pacific.

°°° 

GARY J. BASS is the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction & won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bernard Schwartz Book Award from the Asia Society, the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, & the Lionel Gelber Prize, among other awards. He is a professor of politics & international affairs at Princeton University. His previous books are Freedom’s Battle & Stay the Hand of Vengeance. A former reporter for The Economist, Bass writes often for The New York Times & has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Fore