This book documents the legal proceedings of the December 1949 Khabarovsk trial in which twelve members of the Japanese Army's covert biological warfare Unit 731 were prosecuted for their war crimes. The trial sought to hold key leaders in Japan's bio-weapons program accountable for atrocities after WWII.
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Here is a suggested addition to provide more context about the collaborative nature and contents of the digital archive:
This collaborative archive includes digitized IMTFE materials from collections at the University of Virginia Law Library and the Virginia Historical Society. These materials offer rare insights into the prosecution and defense strategies, evidentiary processes, and judicial workings of the historic proceedings reckoning with Japan's conduct during WWII.
Roughly 7,000 documents across 8 different collections spotlight various perspectives of the IMFTE trial through papers accumulated by lawyers on both sides. Examples include personal correspondence of lead prosecutors Joseph Keenan and Frank Tavenner, affidavits gathered by associate counsel David Nelson Sutton proving atrocities like the Nanking Massacre, defense lawyer George Carrington Williams' case files for Imperial Cabinet Secretary Naoki Hoshino, and trial ephemera collected by documents division chief C.W.J. Phelps.
In addition to these personal archives, the digital collection presents complete sets of official IMFTE records. Combined with photographs, newspapers clippings, collected artifacts, and memoir drafts, the collaborative archive allows unprecedented access into the judicial aftermath of WWII's Pacific theater from diverse vantage points.