Disposition of the Documents
While the Japanese destroyed sensitive documents at the end of the war, during the first half of 1942 the Imperial Japanese Army relocated many of its records to an underground government storage facility in the Minami Tamagawa suburb of Tokyo. The purpose was to protect the documents from destruction by enemy air raids, but the unintended result was that the records cache of an estimated 7,000 cubic feet (18 million pages) fell intact into American hands. The bulk of these materials, however, predate the 1931–1945 period specified in IWG guidelines.
Elsewhere in the operational areas of the Pacific and Southwest Pacific Theaters, U.S. forces captured hundreds of thousands more pages of Japanese military materials. The U.S. government returned all of these documents to Japan beginning in the late 1950s. Once back in Japanese hands, the Japanese government returned the records to their respective ministries of origin; that is, the Defense Agency received confiscated Imperial Army and Navy documents, the Foreign Ministry diplomatic records, and so forth. Before returning the confiscated documents, 5–15 percent were microfilmed, at the expense of either the U.S. government or private foundations. At least six major collections of Japanese-language materials were microfilmed:
(1) The Archives of the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy, and other government
agencies. This collection from the Tamagawa storage complex comprises
163 reels of microfilm, roughly 400,000 pages. Many of the records (57 reels) predate 1931; the material runs to mid-1942. Materials from “other government agencies” are mainly police records of the Interior Ministry. The original military records form the basis of the Defense Agency’s military archives in Tokyo, and are today open to public researchers, although this was not always the case. Microfilm sets are available at the U.S. Library of Congress and the Japan National Diet Library, among other institutions. Non-readers of Japanese may obtain a sense of the collection from James W. Morley, “Check List of Seized Japanese Records in the National Archives,” Far Eastern Quarterly, IX:3 (May 1950). There is an English-language finding aid to the collection, John Young, comp., Checklist of Microfilm Reproductions of Selected Archives of the Japanese Army, Navy, and Other Government Agencies, 1868–1945 (Georgetown University Press, 1959).On behalf of the IWG, researchers with Japanese language proficiency
examined documents in this collection with titles suggestive of possible war crimes. Among those investigated were archives relating to Jewish activity in Manchuria and to maintaining internal security in occupied zones, and a technical report on Soviet chemical warfare. One collection contains Japanese rules and regulations pertaining to prisoners of war captured in the Philippines, but it consists mainly of administrative instructions and has no evidence of war crimes.(2) The Japan Foreign Ministry Archives are more than 2 million pages on 2,116 reels of microfilm. Included in this set is the complete file of documentary evidence produced for the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. The originals are available to the public at the Japan Foreign Ministry Archives in Tokyo. A microfilm edition is available at the U.S. Library of Congress and at the Japan National Diet Library.
(3) Another collection is comprised of documents used to support the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), documents related to the Pacific War (1941–1945), and records pertaining to the so-called Fifteen Years War (1931–1945) that U.S. government historians used to write the official account of the war in the Pacific. These Japanese-language documents were discovered in a warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia, in the early 1960s. The originals form the basis of the Japan National Archives in Tokyo and are available to researchers, subject to privacy restrictions. Microfilm copies of the USSBS (46 reels) and the Pacific War (34 reels) are available at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, while the Fifteen Years War materials (138 reels) are available at the U.S. Library of Congress. The entire microfilm collection is also available in unexpurgated form at Waseda University in Tokyo.
(4) The South Manchurian Railway Company (SMRC) original documents were not returned to Japan, and about 70 percent of all SMRC records remain at the Library of Congress. Others are scattered among six American and forty-four Japanese institutions.17 The Japan National Diet Library has microfilmed the Library of Congress holdings. These materials include Japanese studies of Manchurian terrain, natural resources, geography, geology, and so forth, as well as analytical papers on political and economic affairs.
17. Sadao Asada, ed., Japan & The World, 1853–1952: A Bibliographic Guide to Japanese Scholarship in Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 41–42.
(5) International [Military] Tribunal for the Far East (The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) exhibits are indexed. The Library of Congress Law Library has a microfilm copy of “Prosecution documents which were either not offered or were rejected” (1952) and “Rejected defense documents,” produced by Harvard University. In 1975, the National Archives and Records Service (predecessor of NARA) compiled “Preliminary inventory of the records of the International Military Tribunal Far East: record group 230,” a copy of which is available at the Library of Congress as well as at College Park. The documents themselves are found on microfilm in Record Group 331 at College Park.
(6) Japanese documents seized by the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) amounted to 350,000 captured documents of which 18,000 were fully translated. ATIS relied on Japanese-language documentation to produce Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s official report of his wartime operations in the Southwest Pacific. Some 13,800 files of original documents were returned to Japan by MacArthur’s headquarters via the Japanese Demobilization Bureaus, but the disposition of others, such as the original Japanese-language Unit 731 reports of human experimentation that were translated into English, remains unknown. In addition, Japanese-language documents held by the Pacific Military Intelligence Research Service (PACMIRS) were returned to the Japanese government. For the most part, these were operational and technical reports. English-language translations of the originals are available in record group 165 (P-File) at College Park. The U.S. Navy also confiscated thousands of Japanese naval operational documents and reports. These are available on microfilm (about 230 reels) at the Naval Historical Center. The originals of all of the above military documents repose in the Defense Agency archives in Tokyo, Japan.
Topics of Special Interest
特別な関心を呼ぶ問題
In addition to adhering to the IWG’s guidelines when conducting their searches for classified records pertinent to the Disclosure Acts, agencies also paid particular attention to records that might contain information about Japanese atrocities perpetrated on civilians, such as the Rape of Nanking, “comfort women,” the mistreatment of POWs and civilian internees, medical experimentation on humans, Unit 731, and records related to the U.S. decision not to prosecute Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal. It is important to note, however, that during World War II and its immediate aftermath, not all areas of Japanese war criminality were explored in depth. For example, while the “comfort women” issue is of great current importance, the U.S. government did not systematically collect or create records related to the topic during or after the war.18 As a consequence, there are very few documents pertaining to the topic in the archives. The same is true for records related to the Rape of Nanking.
18. In February 1948, the Dutch tried twelve Japanese for the forced prostitution of Dutch women held in internment camps in the Dutch East Indies. Narrelle Morris, review of Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the U.S. Occupation (New York: Routledge, 2002), http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue9/morris_review.html/.
情報公開法に関連する機密記録の検索を行う際に作業部会のガイドラインを遵守することに加え、各機関は、南京大虐殺、「慰安婦」、捕虜や民間人抑留者の虐待、人体実験、七三一部隊など、民間人に行われた日本の残虐行為に関する情報を含む可能性のある記録や、天皇を戦争犯罪人として訴追しないという米国の決定に関連する記録にも特に注意を払った。 しかし、第二次世界大戦とその直後、日本の戦争犯罪のすべての分野が深く調査されたわけではないことに注意することは重要である。 例えば、「慰安婦」問題は現在非常に重要な問題であるが、米国政府は戦時中も戦後も、このテーマに関連する記録を体系的に収集したり作成することをしなかった。その帰結として、この件に関係する文書はごくわずかしかない。南京陵辱に関する記録についても同じことが言える。
18. 1948 年 2 月にオランダ軍は、オランダ領東インド諸島の抑留地におけるオランダ人女性の強制売春で、12 人の日本人を軍法会議にかけた。ユキ·タナカ著『日本の慰安婦－第二次世界大戦中および米軍占領期の性奴隷と娼婦』(ニュー·ヨーク、ルートレッジ社、2002 年) のナレル·モーリスによる書評。http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue9/morris_review.html/
The atrocities at Nanjing occurred four years before the United States entered the war. At that time, the U.S. government did not have a large military or diplomatic intelligence network in China. A handful of trained military or embassy personnel reported on events, sometimes second-hand; compared with the sensational press coverage, the official U.S. documentation was scant. As a result, with the exception of the records produced during the postwar Class A war crimes trial of the commanding general of Japanese forces deemed responsible for the Rape of Nanking, there are few materials on this subject at the National Archives.
南京暴虐事件は、米国が参戦する四年前に起こった。 当時、アメリカ政府は中国に大規模な軍事·外交情報網を持っていなかった。 訓練された一握りの軍人や大使館員が、時には又聞きで出来事を報告した。センセーショナルな報道と比べると、米国の公式文書は乏しかった。 その結果、南京大虐殺に責任があるとみなされた日本軍司令官の戦後のＡ級戦裁戦争犯罪裁判の審理の間に作成された記録を除けば、この主題に関する資料は国立公文書館にはほとんどない。
Immediately after the war, American attention focused on the Japanese responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack, those involved in mistreatment of U.S. prisoners of war, and Japanese military and civilian officials implicated in war crimes, including rape (especially of Filipina women) or forced prostitution of Caucasian women. There was also knowledge of the Imperial Japanese Army’s field brothel system, as shown in scattered reports declassified during the 1960s. However, the scope of the brothel network (particularly in China) and the Japanese Army’s official sponsorship of the system were not well understood. Licensed prostitution was legal in prewar Japan, and Allied officials viewed the small part of the overseas system they uncovered as an extension of homeland practices. Prosecuting Japanese soldiers for rape, a notorious crime everywhere the army set foot, took precedence over investigating the circumstances of “comfort women,” who were seen as professional prostitutes, not as unwilling victims coerced into brothels by employees of the Japanese military. For instance, a significant document that linked the Japanese government with the military field brothel system, “Amenities in the Japanese Armed Forces,” was translated in November 1945 by ATIS and declassified in the 1960s.19
Although available to the public for years, it received little attention until the “comfort
women” issue focused attention on these wrongdoings in the 1990s.
19. Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, Supreme Command for the Allied Powers, “Amenities in the Japanese Armed Forces,” Research Report 120, 15 Nov. 1945, 9–20, Formerly Security-Classified Intelligence Reference Publications (“P” File) Received from U.S. Military Attachés, Military and Civilian Agencies of the United States, Foreign Governments and Other Sources, 1940–1945, NA, RG 165, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, entry 79, box 342.
終戦直後のアメリカ人の関心は、真珠湾攻撃に責任のある日本人、米軍捕虜の虐待に関与した人々、そして強姦（特にフィリピン人女性）や白人女性への売春強要をはじめとする戦争犯罪に関与した日本の軍人·軍属に集中した。 また、1960 年代、散発的に機密解除された報告書に見られる様な、日本帝国陸軍の野戦売春宿の制度に関する知識も得られていた。 しかし、網の目の様に売春宿が配置された（特に中国において）範囲や、日本陸軍がこの制度の公式な資金提供者だったことはよく理解されていなかった。 戦前の日本では許可を受けた売春は合法であり、連合国当局は、ほんの一部だけ摘発された海外のこの制度を本国の慣行の延長とみなしていた。 軍隊が足を踏み入れたあらゆる場所で悪名を轟かせた犯罪である強姦罪で日本兵を起訴することが、「慰安婦」の状況を調査することよりも優先された。彼女たちは、日本軍に雇われた使用人によって売春宿に強制連行された不本意な被害者ではなく、職業的売春婦とみなされた。例えば、日本政府を軍の野戦売春宿制度に結びつける重要な文書である「日本軍における福利厚生」は、1945 年 11 月に ATIS によって翻訳され、1960 年代に機密指定が解除された。長年にわたり公開されていたけれども、1990 年代に「慰安婦」問題の非道性が注目を集める前は、この文書はほとんど注目されなかった。
19. 連合国最高司令官直属、連合国軍翻訳·通訳部の研究報告書 第120 号、1945 年 11 月 9 ~ 20 日付､『日本軍内の福利厚生』は、以前は安全保障機密の情報参考出版物 (Ｐファイル) とされていたが､「合州国大使館駐在武官、合州国軍事·文民政府機関、外国政府その他の情報源 1940–1945 年」から移管されて、NA [国立公文書館] ､RG 165 ､「陸軍省一般および特別職員の記録」の第 79 番入口の第 342 番の箱に入っている。
As for Unit 731, researchers found no new classified evidence related to Gen. Ishii’s experiments or the unit’s treatment of POWs. The small amount of newly released material adds more evidence to the already well-documented facts about Japanese abuse of prisoners. As for the primary question of Unit 731’s alleged experimentation on captured American servicemen, multiple government agencies conducted exhaustive searches in intelligence, military, and diplomatic records but found no definitive evidence. This was not surprising, because repeated Congressional inquiries about Japan’s alleged use of American prisoners in experiments resulted in extensive examination of U.S. Army and other government agency records in the 1970s, 1980s, and again in early 1990s. In other words, Congressional interest in Japanese war crimes, especially those perpetrated against American POWs, had already opened the existing Unit 731 documents in the possession of the U.S. government and made them available to the public.
七三一部隊については、石井元教授の実験や捕虜の扱いに関する新たな機密証拠は見つからなかった。 新たに公開された少量の資料は、日本軍による捕虜虐待に関するすでに十分に文書化された事実に、さらに証拠を加えるものである。 捕虜となったアメリカ兵に対する七三一部隊の実験の疑惑については、複数の政府機関が情報、軍事、外交記録を徹底的に調査したが、決定的な証拠は見つからなかった。 というのも、日本がアメリカ人捕虜を実験に使ったという疑惑について議会が繰り返し尋問した結果、1970 年代、1980 年代、そして1990年代初頭にも、米陸軍やその他の政府機関の記録が広範囲にわたって調査されたからである。 言い換えれば、日本の戦争犯罪、特にアメリカ人捕虜に対して行われた戦争犯罪に対する議会の関心は、アメリカ政府が保有していた既存の七三一部隊の文書をすでに公開させ、公衆が利用できるようにしていたのである。
Finally, allegations arose that the U.S. government engaged in a cover-up to conceal incriminating documents pertaining to war crimes in order not to embarrass the Japanese government. Exhaustive searches by several agencies for classified materials, conducted independently of outside political interference of any sort, followed the guidelines imposed by the IWG. They found no evidence to support such assertions. There were miscarriages of justice—Ishii’s case being the most obvious and disturbing—and the question of Emperor Hirohito’s war responsibility remains a source of controversy in the United States and elsewhere. U.S. government archives, however, yielded no new information on these controversial topics. This result may not satisfy those who insist incriminating or embarrassing documents remain hidden, but disinterested parties will appreciate that the IWG has managed to open the remaining classified files pertinent to Japanese war crimes and to make that evidence available to the public. Archival holdings in Japan, China, and the former Soviet Union also offer the possibility of files that may clarify or lead to reinterpretation of our understanding of Japanese atrocities.
最後に、米国政府は日本政府を困惑させないために戦争犯罪に関する機密文書を隠蔽したのではないかという疑惑が生じていた。当作業部会が課したガイドラインに従い、外部からの政治的干渉を一切受けずに、複数の機関が機密資料を徹底的に調査した。その結果、そのような主張を裏付ける証拠は見つからなかった。 石井の件が最も明白かつ不愉快な例であるが、そうした不当な裁定は多々あり、天皇裕仁の戦争責任に関する問題は、米国内外で論争の種となっている。しかし、米国政府の公文書館からは、これらの論争の的となっているテーマに関する新しい情報は得られなかった。この結果は、不利な文書や恥ずべき文書がまだ隠されていると主張する人々を満足させるものではないかもしれないが、利害関係を有しない部類の人たちは、ＩＷＧが日本の戦争犯罪に関連する残された機密ファイルを公開し、公衆によるその証拠の利用を可能にすることに成功したと見て歓迎するだろう。 日本、中国、旧ソ連が所蔵する古文書の中にも、日本の残虐行為に対する我々の理解を明確にし、あるいは再解釈に導てくれる文書綴りが存在する可能性がある。
Exploiting the Records
During the search for classified records, it soon became apparent that historians, researchers, and concerned parties have not fully exploited the many records about Japanese war crimes previously declassified and made available at the National Archives. The fault lies less with the public, however, than with the organization of the massive collection. Records came from more than a dozen U.S. government agencies, each of which employed diverse filing systems and exercised multiple functions between 1931 and 2005. This led to a divestiture of central records into smaller agency collections, a standard archival practice that unintentionally complicated the researcher’s task. Captured or seized Imperial Japanese military and naval records are found in at least twelve separate record groups at NARA and fill thousands of boxes. Furthermore, except for the records pertaining to war crimes trials (none of which remains classified), there was no one central finding aid to help researchers navigate
the Japanese collection.
Moreover, for whatever reasons, records reasonably expected to be at NARA are not there and turn up in unlikely places. Three important documents, translated from Japanese to English and each more than 100 pages long, detail Unit 731’s clinical observations of the day-by-day spread of various pathogens through the bodies of helpless prisoners whom Japanese doctors subjected to experiments. The U.S. government declassified these key documents, titled “The Report of A” (anthrax), “The Report of G” (glanders), and “The Report of Q” (bubonic plague) in 1960. They are available to the public at the U.S. Library of Congress. With relevant documents interfiled among a dozen record groups and others available—but not at the National Archives—the researcher’s task is a formidable one.
Greg Bradsher’s 1700-page finding aid on the CD that accompanies this volume remedies this problem. His searchable finding aid brings coherence to the collections, enables researchers to consult a single reference to begin their search, and introduces first-time users to the variety of materials available at NARA on Japanese war crimes. The hope of all those involved in this project is that introducing the available material and making it accessible will stimulate new interest in these underused collections and encourage historians, advocates, writers, researchers, and citizens with an interest in these important issues to make use of the collections. Study of the mass of unclassified material will undoubtedly turn up documents relevant to Japanese war crimes and perhaps resolve some outstanding issues.
The huge number of documents declassified under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act allowed the IWG’s first book on the records, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, to take the form of historical case studies based on the newly released documentary material. But the comparatively small number of Japanese documents declassified, coupled with the larger problem of open Japanese records being underused, mandated a different format. Contributors to this volume adopted an approach to make the enormous number of heretofore underused Japanese wartime documents more user friendly. Their purpose throughout the volume is to make us aware of how much is available by introducing these records to readers and explaining where the records are located. Their goal is to stimulate interest in these records in the hope that researchers will be encouraged to exploit them efficiently and produce a fuller record of the Asia-Pacific War.
Daqing Yang’s interim assessment of documentary evidence and Japanese war crimes discusses the destruction of wartime Japanese documents and surveys the changing treatment of Japan’s war crimes in Chinese, English, and Japanese literature. He explains reasons for the heightened interest in crimes committed against POWs, the forced prostitution of “comfort women,” and Unit 731’s nefarious activities. Yang concludes with a plea for sustained and intense international collaboration to improve the level of research on Japanese war crimes.
James Lide summarizes the war-crimes–related materials located in the recently declassified records at NARA. His focus is on the limited number of documents pertinent to war crimes and their often vague or incomplete information. No large corpus of documentation remained classified on the Nanjing massacre, the “comfort women” issue, or Unit 731, although scattered references to bacteriological/chemical warfare and the kidnapping of women and girls by Japanese troops were noted.
NARA staff writers offer starting points for future research. The authors describe
in general terms the availability of archival material spanning twelve record groups on the subject of Japanese war crimes, and then illustrate the scope of the collections by highlighting documents pertinent to their three case studies: Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners of war in Manchuria, Unit 731 activities, and Japanese atrocities committed against U.S. airmen on Chichi-Jima in 1945.
Robert Hanyok’s illuminating essay explains the U.S. military communications intelligence system during World War II, noting its successes and limitations. He devotes most of his essay to National Security Agency materials available to the public at NARA and offers an explanation for their organization, detailing different types of records: army, navy, diplomatic, military attaché, and so forth. He pays special attention to communication intelligence attempts to discover the fate of American POWs held by the Japanese. He also describes how eavesdropping on Japanese military and naval radio communications unintentionally produced evidence of Japanese war crimes and hints of the biological and chemical warfare programs.
Greg Bradsher’s two chapters are part of his larger study to be published separately. His first essay explains the wartime system for gathering documentation concerning alleged Japanese war crimes. Through the experience of the Southwest Pacific Area’s ATIS, he shows how the system developed and expanded, how it exploited captured Japanese documents, and how this material was employed during war crimes trials. His second essay examines the disposition of Japanese-language records in U.S. control. He describes the process for returning the confiscated or captured records, the extensive interagency cooperation to establish a policy for the return of records to Japan, and Congressional approval for the restitution of documents. Together with his finding aid on the enclosed CD, Bradsher has given unparalleled ease of access to those interested in serious historical research of U.S. records on Japan.
The book concludes with a chapter by Michael Petersen on the topic of U.S. use of former Japanese enemies for intelligence purposes. Petersen’s chapter, based on recently declassified CIA material, provides an example of the kind of historical interpretation that can arise from a study of the new and previously released materials. The work of the IWG has made it possible for the public to access a wide variety of documents related to Japanese war crimes committed in Asia and the Pacific. Subsequent investigation and study of these materials will provide a clearer appreciation of the claims and allegations surrounding Japanese war crimes. Noteworthy is the fact that the previously declassified documents corroborate much that is already known about Japan’s wartime record. Furthermore, the material goes beyond the subject of war crimes and provides a wealth of historical information about the Axis nations. The range of Japanese-related documents, U.S. government as well as translated and original Japanese documents, merits extensive exploitation by academics, researchers, writers, veterans, and others interested in history. The files are filled with stories waiting to be told.
About the Contributor
Edward Drea graduated from Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. After military service in Japan and Vietnam, he received his M.A. in international relations from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, and his Ph.D. in Modern Japanese History from the University of Kansas. He taught at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College and the U.S. Army War College and was Chief, Research and Analysis Division, at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. His published works include MacArthur's ULTRA: Codebreaking and the War Against Japan, 1942-1945 and In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army.
エドワード·ドリーはニューヨーク州バッファロー市のカニシアス大学を卒業。日本とヴィエトナムでの兵役の後、日本、東京都の上智大学から国際関係論で修士号を受け、カンサス大学から日本現代史で博士号を受けた。合州国陸軍指揮·参謀大学と合州国戦争大学で教え、ワシントン首都区の合州国陸軍軍事史センター研究·分析部長を努めた。出版された著作のなかには『マッカーサーのウルトラ：1942 年から 1945 年の暗号解読と対日戦』と『天皇に仕える軍：帝国日本軍に関する試論集』がある。
↑Researching Japanese war crimes records : introductory essays https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf
