Isoroku Yamamoto's post war fate if he survived WW2?

[Torvald Von Mansee]

I don't know off the top of my head if he was responsible for any actual war crimes, but is it safe to say even if he wasn't guilty he would have been executed via "victor's justice" for just being too damn good a leader?

Discuss.

[CCIP]

Just for the record, real historians hate "what ifs", for good reasons :D

I suspect his fate would've been similar to Doenitz's. I don't see anything wrong with that. You can be as good a leader as you want to be, but if you're on the wrong side of the conflict, you have to take responsibility and pay the price, no excuses. It's part of the job, and Yamamoto knew as well as anyone - afaik he even acknowledged that.

[Catfish]

Why did they kill Keitel, then ? :hmm2:

[Jimbuna]

Just for the record, real historians hate "what ifs", for good reasons :D

I suspect his fate would've been similar to Doenitz's. I don't see anything wrong with that. You can be as good a leader as you want to be, but if you're on the wrong side of the conflict, you have to take responsibility and pay the price, no excuses. It's part of the job, and Yamamoto knew as well as anyone - afaik he even acknowledged that.

Agreed :yep:

[Admiral Halsey]

This just gave me an idea for my Alternate history thread.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Why did they kill Keitel, then ? :hmm2:

Well, I know that Jodl posthumously had his guilty verdict reversed.

[Cybermat47]

Well, I know that Jodl posthumously had his guilty verdict reversed.

Keitel too.

[Red October1984]

Well, I know that Jodl posthumously had his guilty verdict reversed.

That'd be just great. "When I die, make me innocent again."

:hmmm:

Why did they do this?

[Wolferz]

Were any Japanese commanders tried for war crimes?

I guess old 56 was fortunate to have died in '43.

[Admiral Halsey]

Were any Japanese commanders tried for war crimes?

I guess old 56 was fortunate to have died in '43.

I know for a fact some of the army commanders were.(Specifically those involved with the Bataan Death March) Don't know about the navy though.

[August]

Doesn't anyone know how to use the internets any more? :)
Why did they do this?
Because they deserved it. "I was just following orders" is not an excuse for participating in war crimes.
Were any Japanese commanders tried for war crimes?
Yes. Masao Baba for example.
A complete list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_people_convicted_of_war_crimes

[tater]

He's not tried with war crimes, likely. With the japanese it tended to be ground commanders with demonstrable links to the mistreatment of prisoners/civilians. Generally speaking, the IJN was better with prisoners than the IJA was (though that's a low bar to exceed).

[Aktungbby]

I know for a fact some of the army commanders were.(Specifically those involved with the Bataan Death March) Don't know about the navy though.

BIG TIME! On 5 October 1943, American naval aircraft from Yorktown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_(CV-10)) raided Wake. Two days later, fearing an imminent invasion, the Japanese Rear Admiral Shigematsu Sakaibara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigematsu_Sakaibara) ordered the execution of the 98 captured American civilian workers who had initially been kept to perform forced labor. The 98 were taken to the northern end of the island, blindfolded and executed with a machine gun. One of the prisoners (whose name has never been discovered) escaped the massacre, apparently returning to the site to carve the message 98 US PW 5-10-43 on a large coral rock near where the victims had been hastily buried in a mass grave. The unknown American was recaptured, and Sakaibara personally beheaded him with a katana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana). The inscription on the rock can still be seen and is a Wake Island landmark.
On 4 September 1945, the remaining Japanese garrison surrendered to a detachment of U.S. Marines. The handover of Wake was officially conducted in a brief ceremony aboard the destroyer escort Levy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Levy_(DE-162)). After the war, Sakaibara and his subordinate—Lieutenant-Commander Tachibana—were sentenced to death for the massacre of the 98 and for other war crimes. Several Japanese officers in American custody had committed suicide over the incident, leaving written statements that incriminated Sakaibara. Admiral Sakaibara was hanged on 18 June 1947. Eventually, Tachibana's sentence was commuted to life in prison. The murdered civilian POWs were reburied after the war in Honolulu's National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Memorial_Cemetery_of_the_Pacific), commonly known as Punchbowl Crater (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punchbowl_Crater). The full story including the decapitation of a civilian sole survivor by the admiral personally. http://bonitagilbert.com/war-crime/ (http://bonitagilbert.com/war-crime/) http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/npswapa/extContent/usmc/pcn-190-003119-00/images/fig22.jpg Civilian contractors are marched off to captivity after the Japanese captured Wake. Some, deemed important by the Japanese to finish construction projects, were retained there. Fearing a fifth column rising, the Japanese executed 98 contractors in October 1943, an atrocity for which atoll commander, RAdm Shigematsu Sakaibara, was hanged after the war.

[Jimbuna]

A link to some digitised newspaper articles reporting on Japanese being executed for war crimes:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?l-publictag=Japanese%20Executed%20for%20War%20Crimes

I have not clicked on all the links so be advised there may be explicit material.

[HunterICX]

You can be as good a leader as you want to be, but if you're on the losing side of the conflict, you have to take responsibility and pay the price, no excuses.

Fixed it for you.

Wether it's just or not the fate of the ones on the side that lost is decided by the victors.

[August]

Fixed it for you.

Wether it's just or not the faith of the ones on the side that lost is decided by the victors.

You meant to say fate right? :hmmm:

[HunterICX]

I also meant to take a morning coffee first before posting :shucks:

[CCIP]

True, but to be fair, it's pretty widely agreed that both Japan and Germany's war aims were generally pretty reprehensible and incompatible with human rights and international law. And I'm not talking about the war conduct, just aims. Whether they personally agreed with them or not, people like Yamamoto were complicit in them at a very high level. I don't think they should be painted as some sort of monsters, but they're no victims of victors' justice - if you make your bed, if you choose national interest and war aims over international law, well, you have to lie in it. Again, Yamamoto was an extremely intelligent man and I think he knew that very well himself.

[August]

When the Mongols captured Bagdhad in 1258 they wrapped the Sultan of Persia and his entire family in a large blanket then trampled them to death with their horses. I say the nazis got off easy... :yep:

[Oberon]

There have been many others just as evil and rephrensible as the Nazis and Imperial Japan, the difference is the technology they wielded.
Their goals of expansion and conquest at the expense of others, are not so dissimilar to many empires before them and some after.

Not condoning, just taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of human history. :yep:

[HunterICX]

True, but to be fair, it's pretty widely agreed that both Japan and Germany's war aims were generally pretty reprehensible and incompatible with human rights and international law. And I'm not talking about the war conduct, just aims.

It's widely agreed on because of hindsight, obviously the axis powers wheren't striving for human rights and international law and it would've been a different world today if they had gotten their way.

Human rights and International law matters little when the side defending those doesn't win.

Whether they personally agreed with them or not, people like Yamamoto were complicit in them at a very high level.

Totally agreed with you there.

I don't think they should be painted as some sort of monsters, but they're no victims of victors' justice - if you make your bed, if you choose national interest and war aims over international law, well, you have to lie in it. Again, Yamamoto was an extremely intelligent man and I think he knew that very well himself.

It would've been a good bed for him to lie in if his nation did obtain total victory.

There have been many others just as evil and rephrensible as the Nazis and Imperial Japan, the difference is the technology they wielded.
Their goals of expansion and conquest at the expense of others, are not so dissimilar to many empires before them and some after.

Not condoning, just taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of human history.

We've had some dark times and I'm sure more lie ahead.

Only reason we call ourselves civilized is that we no longer throw our feces on the street...but even that isn't true in a manner of speaking.

[Bilge_Rat]

re: Keitel and Jodl, when the Nuremberg tribunal was setup, they wanted to have a representative from each force, so you had Goering: Luftwaffe, Donitz: Navy and Keitel and Jodl representing OKW and OKH. Their sentence were based partly on the evidence, partly on internal court maneuvering (the Russian judges wanted to sentence every defendant to death) and partly, on the political climate. In hindsight, the death sentence was unjustified in their case.

[Bilge_Rat]

actually, there is an interesting controversy going on right now in Germany about war crimes trial.

Werner Christukat, 89, has been indicted for his role in the Oradour massacre.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/german-prosecutors-zero-in-on-ss-massacre-in-oradour-sur-glane-a-959577.html

It raises many interesting questions about whether it is possible to have a fair trial 70 years after the event when almost all the potential witnesses are dead.

[Jimbuna]

I tend to prescribe to the opinion below:

The Dutch criminal law expert Frits Rüter, head of an Amsterdam-based project researching justice and Nazi-era crimes, has accused Germany's Nazi hunters of activism. He says that the German judiciary initially failed in its obligation and refrained from pursuing perpetrators who were just cogs in the Nazi machinery. Now, only aged men are left and punishing them helps nobody, he says. It is too late, he adds.

[Dread Knot]

I don't know off the top of my head if he was responsible for any actual war crimes, but is it safe to say even if he wasn't guilty he would have been executed via "victor's justice" for just being too damn good a leader?

Discuss.

Yamamoto was sort of a bipolar strategist. Sometimes he was brilliant, other times he was reckless. His operational plans often broke such basic military principles as concentration of force and maintenance of the objective. In retrospect, the Midway operation seems to have been dreamed up by a desire to just grimly keep pushing the initiative Japan held and give his carriers something to do. He was so obsessed with luring the US carriers out to fight that he never devoted much thought to what to do if they're already there. He could probably could have cut off the Marines at Guadalcanal if he had been willing to commit the full might of Combined Fleet, but he failed to do so, and Guadalcanal eventually became the decisive campaign of the Pacific War.

His later survival in the war could have saved the IJN from some fairly embarrassing subsequent underestimates of USN strike capability, as in the case of the Truk raids, and he might have had enough political clout to prevent the Yamato's final suicide sortie. However, if the Yamato would have survived she likely would have ended up expended in an atomic bomb test like the Nagato and Prinz Eugen were. He may have even been able to stifle the whole kamikaze corps concept as stupid and pointless.

As the architect of the strike on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto did manage to avoid the cardinal sin and capital crime of making Douglas MacArthur look bad in the field, so it's possible he might have survived any subsequent trials. :-? But indications are that he expected to join his men who had already died in combat, and, like his chief of staff, Admiral Matome Ugaki, he seemed to have been waiting for the right time and place for his own death.

[Admiral Halsey]

But indications are that he expected to join his men who had already died in combat, and, like his chief of staff, Admiral Matome Ugaki, he seemed to have been waiting for the right time and place for his own death.

Strange as what i've heard he was one of those few that hated the idea of ritual suicide.

[Jimbuna]

Strange as what i've heard he was one of those few that hated the idea of ritual suicide.

Really? :o

Who told you? :hmmm:

:03:

[CCIP]

Expectation of death in combat isn't the same as ritual suicide :hmm2:

Yamamoto himself drew a lot of ire from Japanese nationalists for his own stance on things, even assassination threats prior to the war, and took them in his stride. I don't think he had any fantasies about "going out in a blaze of glory", unlike even many of his subordinates - he just had a sober and realistic attitude about his prospects. And was proven right, mind you.

[Dread Knot]

Previous to his shoot-down over Bougainville, Yamamoto had certainly received many dire warnings. Admiral Ozawa begged him not to go on the front line inspection, unless it was in "a cloud of carrier planes." General Imamura recounted to him how his own bomber had been bounced by US fighters in the same area a few weeks earlier and had barely escaped in a cloud bank. Rear Admiral Takatsugu noted that the itinerary of his visit had gone out over an unsecure aviation code and confided his fears to Yamamoto.

However, if he harbored a death wish or was simply motivated by bravura we'll never know,

[Oberon]

Yamamoto was a gambler, it was one of his favourite pastimes, and in this case, his gamble didn't pay off.

I wonder, if Yamamoto had survived the war, whether there would have been a scandal later in his life with Kawai Chiyoko, or whether it would have been hushed up and quietly kept under the rug, or kotatsu. :03:

[Flamebatter90]

^ Found an old article from 1954 about Yamamoto's and Chiyoko's relationship:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1798&dat=19540413&id=XgQdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=uYoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5025,4442008

...she found the admiral, then 51, "rude and unpleasant."
...
But their romance blossomed after they found a mutual liking for cheese.

Oh Japan... :)

[Jimbuna]

Yamamoto was a gambler, it was one of his favourite pastimes, and in this case, his gamble didn't pay off.

I wonder, if Yamamoto had survived the war, whether there would have been a scandal later in his life with Kawai Chiyoko, or whether it would have been hushed up and quietly kept under the rug, or kotatsu. :03:

I doubt he would of been of much interest after the tribunal hearing.

[Dread Knot]

The only possible atrocities I can see Yamamoto standing trial for would have to do with the actions of IJN sub crews machinegunning survivors of the ships they sank in the Indian Ocean. However, seeing as Dudley Morton aboard Wahoo did much the same thing, as with Donitz and unrestricted submarine warfare, I can't see Yamamoto being charged or convicted on those counts. Maybe the abysmal treatment of Allied POWs transported on "hell ships" might be thrown in as well. He'd most likely draw some "waging offensive war" charge, serve a decade or so, and emerge from prison to a radically different Japan in which he is proscribed politically and shunned officially much like the many jailed and released German officers.

Who knows? Maybe like Hirohito he would have eventually hung out with Mickey Mouse.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wh_4NXuf07I/UHQtgcuZe8I/AAAAAAAABkM/P-0uSVv0WTI/s1600/Hirohito.png