CRI听力:New Evidence on Tokyo Trial Released

The Tokyo Trial, running from 1946 to 1948, charged 28 Japanese military and political leaders with Class A war crimes.

It was a collective trial implemented by 11 countries to deal with Japan's militarism, and brought several Japanese war criminals to justice.

However, mainly due to political reasons, China had almost no academic books focused on this period of history.

Meanwhile, for the past a few decades, many right-wing Japanese politicians and historians doubt the justice of the trial and thus distort the reality, and even try their best to reverse the verdicts, since they think the Tokyo Trial represents a blow to the country's national confidence.

Liu Tong, a professor of the Center for the Tokyo Trial Studies of Shanghai Jiaotong University, explains that relevant files on Tokyo Trial have been brought to light out of a sense of a historian's responsibility to uncover the truth in past events.

"Currently, the Japanese right-wing groups are making aggressive comments, while we've hardly done anything academically on the basic research of Tokyo Trial. Thus, bearing a historian's responsibility, we founded the Center for the Tokyo Trial Studies. After that, the first step is to carry out basic research, and specifically collect original documents."

Liu adds that they have gone through a series of hardships, since many Japanese military officers have tried their best to destroy the relevant documents concerning their war crimes, thus those original files are difficult to come by.

The collection of the Tokyo Trial's evidence includes 50 volumes in Japanese and 3 volumes of indexes in Chinese.

Liu says the index is just like a key for readers and historians to look for what they want in the large amount of information.

The book is the second published by Shanghai Jiaotong University after its previous work 'The Proceedings of International Military Tribunal for the Far East' was published two years ago.

Liu Tong says that the two books complement each other.

"You couldn't try and sentence without any evidence. However, most of this evidence might not be listed in the trial records, or might have mentioned just a few words after being submitted. Thus, the 80-volume of trial records and the 50-volume evidence collection are both irreplaceable historical files for research into the Tokyo Trial. "

The two books have both been regarded as precious basic files for researchers who are looking for dependable evidence of Japan's war crimes.

Liu Tong explains that to settle clear Japan's war crime is a very meticulous work that requires a high degree of specificity.

"In order to fight against Japanese right-wing groups, you have to present something more convincing to refute them. Those academic results must derive from original historical data. Only through the original, basic historical data could we write original treatises to refute the Japanese right-wing groups."

Liu adds that their next step will be translating all those contents about Japanese troops' war crimes to China into the Chinese language, thus making it more convenient for Chinese researchers to use.

For CRI, this is Sophie Williams.