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

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.

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.

Why did they kill Keitel, then ? :hmm2:

Agreed :yep:

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

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

Keitel too.

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

:hmmm:

Why did they do this?

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.

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

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).

BIG TIME! On 5 October 1943, American naval aircraft from Yorktown raided Wake. Two days later, fearing an imminent invasion, the Japanese Rear Admiral 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. 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. 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, commonly known as Punchbowl Crater. The full story including the decapitation of a civilian sole survivor by the admiral personally. http://bonitagilbert.com/war-crime/ http://www.nps.gov/history/history/o...ages/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.

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

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/re...20War%20Crimes

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

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.

You meant to say fate right? :hmmm:

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

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.

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:

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: