Yokohama BC-Class War Crimes Trials

After Japan's surrender, in addition to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East at Ichigaya in Tokyo, which tried Class-A suspects, the Allied powers held military trials across Asia and the Pacific for conventional war crimes and related offences; in Japan these are known as the BC-class trials. The American trials in Japan proper were conducted by the U.S. Eighth Army, headquartered in Yokohama, in the requisitioned Yokohama District Court, using its former jury courtroom.

According to English Wikipedia, between February 1946 and October 1949 the Yokohama commissions held 319 trials of 996 defendants, of whom 854 were convicted and 124 sentenced to death; 51 executions were carried out (Japanese Wikipedia gives 53 confirmed and executed death sentences), at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. They made up the majority of the 474 American war crimes trials in the Asia-Pacific region and were the largest series of American military tribunals held in occupied Japan. Most defendants were accused of mistreating or killing Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees, including abuses at POW camps and the execution of captured B-29 crews.

Notable cases included the vivisection of captured American airmen at the Kyushu Imperial University medical school; the Ishigaki Island case, in which a naval garrison executed American airmen; and that of Lt. Gen. Okada Tasuku, commander of the Tokai Military District, who was sentenced to death for ordering the execution of 38 captured airmen and hanged in 1949. Defendants were represented by American officers and Japanese lawyers, including members of the Yokohama Bar Association such as Asukata Ichio, later mayor of Yokohama. The trials have long been criticised as 'victors' justice' on grounds of procedure, interpretation and the treatment of the superior-orders defence, while others stress their significance in establishing responsibility for the abuse of prisoners; assessments differ.

Those sentenced to imprisonment were held at Sugamo, and the last were paroled in 1958. The interior of the jury courtroom used for the trials was moved to Toin Gakuen when the court building was rebuilt and is preserved and shown to the public on the campus of Toin University of Yokohama.