Chapter ID: CBB463461296

The 1925 Geneva Protocol: China’s CBW Charges Against Japan at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (2017)

unapi

Guillemin, Jeanne (Author)


Springer International
Pages: 273-286
Publication date: 2017
Language: English


The 1925 Geneva Protocol, which bans the wartime use of chemical and also biological weapons, was an emphatic reaction to the use of chemical weapons in World War I, but legal institutions that would sanction violations of the treaty have evolved only with difficulty. An important example of a legal failure to support the protocol occurred at the 1946–1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), just when it might be expected that Imperial Japan would be charged for its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) waged against China from the late 1930s into World War II. In 1937, the Chinese officially presented its first complaints to the League of Nations about Japan’s battlefield use of chemical weapons (mustard gas, phosgene and tear gases) against defenseless Chinese troops and civilians. In addition, in early 1941 and after, China accused Japan of launching plague attacks against key Chinese cities, killing hundreds and terrorizing thousands. None of these accusations, although supported by evidence, brought about serious international recriminations for Japan. Once World War II ended, China expected to revive these charges at the IMTFE in Tokyo. Instead, under the influence of a few key figures in US military intelligence, the trial’s International Prosecution Section (IPS) deleted the Chinese charges and for decades Japan’s infraction were lost to history. Analysis of this legal failure points to the obstacles posed by growing Cold War antagonisms between the United States and the Soviet Union, which prompted a general American retreat from prosecuting Japan, its new democratic ally in East Asia, as well as the internal processes at the IPS that favored more blatant incidents of Japanese wartime aggression—such as the well-documented 1937 “Rape of Nanjing” and abuses of Allied prisoners of war. After the silence imposed at the IMTFE, chemical and biological weapons proliferated with few restraints until the Cold War ended in 1992. At the same time, the international framework for war crimes prosecution greatly changed with greater attention put on crimes against civilians. Yet, lacking precedent, international readiness to legally sanction violations of the Geneva Protocol—as with the 2013 and 2017 murders of Syrian civilians with nerve gas—remains nearly as ambiguous as it was in 1946.

...More
Included in

Book Bretislav Friedrich; Dieter Hoffmann; Jürgen Renn; Florian Schmaltz; Martin Wolf (2017) One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences. unapi

Citation URI
data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB463461296

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Similar Citations

Book Harris, Sheldon H.; (2002)
Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932--1945, and the American Cover-Up unapi

Article Yudin, B. G.; (2009)
From the History of Biomedical Experimentation on Humans: The 1949 Khabarovsk Trial unapi

Book Grunden, Walter E.; (2005)
Secret Weapons and World War II: Japan in the Shadow of Big Science unapi

Chapter Walter E. Grunden; (2017)
No Retaliation in Kind: Japanese Chemical Warfare Policy in World War II unapi

Article Reinhardt, Klaus; (2013)
The Entomological Institute of the Waffen-SS: Evidence for Offensive Biological Warfare Research in the Third Reich unapi

Book Spiers, Edward M.; (2010)
A History of Chemical and Biological Weapons unapi

Chapter Jürgen Renn; (2017)
Introduction unapi

Book Steven K. Bailey; (2019)
Bold Venture: The American Bombing of Japanese-Occupied Hong Kong, 1942–1945 unapi

Article Takeda, Junko Thérèse; (2014)
Global Insects: Silkworms, Sericulture, and Statecraft in Napoleonic France and Tokugawa Japan unapi

Book Melanie Armstrong; (2017)
Germ Wars: The Politics of Microbes and America's Landscape of Fear unapi

Book National Research Council (U.S.), ; Committee on Confronting Terrorism in Russia, ; Rossiiskaia akademiia nauk, ; National Academy of Sciences (U.S.), ; Carnegie Corporation of New York, ; NetLibrary, Inc., ; (2002)
High-Impact Terrorism unapi

Book J. Megan Greene; (2022)
Building a Nation at War: Transnational Knowledge Networks and the Development of China during and after World War II unapi

Book Bretislav Friedrich; Dieter Hoffmann; Jürgen Renn; Florian Schmaltz; Martin Wolf; (2017)
One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences unapi

Book Susan L. Smith; (2017)
Toxic Exposures: Mustard Gas and the Health Consequences of World War II in the United States unapi

Book Remers, William A.; (2000)
Chemists at War: Accounts of Chemical Research in the United States During World War II unapi

Article Rowlinson, J. S.; (2004)
The Wartime Work of Hinshelwood and his Colleagues unapi

Article Doel, Ronald E.; Friedman, Robert Marc; Lajus, Julia; Sörline, Sverker; Wråkberg, Urban; (2014)
Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge---Interwar Era through the Cold War unapi

Article Mcleish, Caitríona A.; (2006)
Science and Censorship in an Age of Bio-Weapons Threat unapi

Article Hiroshi 浩 Ichikawa 市川; (2006)
Introduction: A Perspective on the Historical Study of Science and Technology during the Second World War and the Cold War in Japan unapi

Article Ryan Moore; (2020)
Taming the Tiger—Japanese Air Commander Mitsuo Fuchida's Map of the 7 December 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor unapi

Authors & Contributors
Grunden, Walter E.
Renn, Jürgen
Committee on Confronting Terrorism in Russia
Doel, Ronald E.
Friedman, Robert Marc
Friedrich, Bretislav
Journals
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
French History
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
Imago Mundi: A Review of Early Cartography
Journal of Historical Geography
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Publishers
Springer International
Clarice Publications
National Academies Press
Potomac Books
Reaktion Books
Routledge
Concepts
Science and war; science and the military
World War II
Biological weapons
Chemical warfare
Chemical weapons
Science and politics
People
Hinshelwood, Cyril Norman
Fuchida, Mitsuo
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
21st century
18th century
19th century
Places
Japan
United States
China
Soviet Union
Canada
France
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment