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B. V. A. Roling on the Tokyo Trial: In His Own Words

In meting out justice for Crimes against Peace, the Tokyo Trial cited the Nuremberg judgment which invoked the Kellogg-Briand Pact and other interwar pronouncements renouncing war. Unpersuaded, Justice B. V. A. Röling offered an alternative way of interpreting the Charter of the Trial which, in his view, was more consistent with international law: victors in a bellum justum were entitled to neutralize threats to the newly established order and hence could incarcerate the enemy leaders posing those threats. In the end, he managed to reconcile his dissent on legal issues with his belief in restoring peace through judicial measures. He also endorsed the punishment for crimes of omission while disagreeing on their ambit. In doing so, Röling rejected outright Imperial Japan’s wartime slogans of “Asia for Asians” as a sheer hypocrisy, too. As the Cold War unfolded, however, he became dismayed at the former victor nations’ failure to honor the lofty ideals of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. All the same, he kept his faith in the validity of the two trials and in the contributions they made on the course of the evolution of international criminal law. To be sure, Röling did have serious misgivings about the Tokyo Trial and could at times seem disenchanted with it. And there happen to be tendentious elements in Japan who take advantage of his unvarnished statements which, if quoted in fragments (and they have), could misrepresent his views. When all is said and done, this essay finds, Röling’s words and writings stand as a tortuous and yet sobering voice in affirmation of the enduring legacy of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials.