Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that the Tokyo Trial holds profound legal and historical significance for humanity, as Sunday marks the 80th anniversary of its opening.
The Tokyo Trial played a pivotal role in punishing Japan -- the main Asian ally of Nazi Germany -- for its crimes against civilians across regional countries, including the former Soviet Union, Zakharova noted.
Responding to a related question, she stressed that crimes against humanity committed by Japanese militarism during World War II (WWII) are not subject to any statute of limitations, and that Russia will continue to investigate and expose these atrocities.
"Russia is doing its utmost to further reveal the crimes of Japanese militarism and will release relevant information systematically," the spokeswoman said.
Zakharova pointed out that during WWII, Japan enslaved other Asian nations and committed inhumane atrocities against civilians. She urged the Japanese government to learn from the lessons of history, abandon its current course of accelerated remilitarization, and stop attempts to whitewash and deny its wartime war crimes. From 1946 to 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, historically referred to as the Tokyo Trial, tried Japan's principal Class-A war criminals.
Nevertheless, it failed to bring all Japanese war criminals to justice. Zakharova added that many culprits from Japan's notorious Unit 731 and Unit 100, which developed biological weapons and conducted inhumane human experimentation during WWII, escaped prosecution.
To remedy this omission, the former Soviet Union launched a separate Khabarovsk Trial in 1949, charging former Japanese military personnel with developing biological agents, conducting live human experiments primarily on Soviet prisoners of war, and deploying biological weapons against Chinese civilians and in the Soviet Far East, said the spokeswoman.
Many of these war criminals, including Unit 731 leader Shiro Ishii, fled to the U.S. occupation zone in postwar Japan. At the same time, the United States was carrying out its own biological weapons research at Fort Detrick and sought exclusive access to Japan's gruesome human experiment data.
"Washington granted judicial immunity to these Japanese war criminals in exchange for their research findings," she added.
Zakharova warned that the historical lesson remains highly relevant today, stating, "Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations, and that the work to identify and punish all perpetrators will continue."
"Those who refuse to remember history are doomed to repeat its painful lessons," Zakharova said.
Tokyo Trial holds profound legal, human significance: Russian foreign ministry
