Power over Life and Death: Japanese Military Justice and Violence in Wartime Southeast Asia, 1942-45

Japanese forces invaded Southeast Asia in 1941 as a means of acquiring vital resources and in anticipation of gaining a strategic advantage in the prolonged war of attrition ongoing since 1937 on the Chinese mainland. As in China, this meant that large swathes of the civilian populations of the region came under military control and the maintenance of peace and order became one of three major tenets of military occupation policy. The other two – self-sufficiency for Japanese forces and acquisition of vital resources – were understood to be largely dependent on the military’s success in this endeavour. Unrest endangered occupying forces and military goals, while suppression of such diverted attention, manpower and supplies from the main war effort. The military justice system, modelled on that developed (and adapted as war progressed) in China between 1937 and 1941, quickly became one of the primary mechanisms through which public order was to be preserved. Commanders of occupying armies, with authority to do so under the ‘right of supreme command’ (tōsuiken) in Article 11 of the Meiji Constitution, imposed martial law (gunritsu), and other regulations under this rubric, in all occupied territories. This legal framework established what the military deemed to be necessary restrictions limitations and prohibitions on the day-to-day life of civilian which facilitated the extension of military control in those areas. Military laws were enforced by the kenpei, members of units that became infamous post-war for atrocities and which carried out military policing, law enforcement and counter-intelligence (among other) duties in the field. Invested with extensive law enforcement and judicial powers, these units wielded, according to their own handbook, the ‘power of life and death’ over civilians living under military rule. Ad hoc military commissions (gunritsu kaigi) were also created based upon regulations drawn up in the field to punish civilians who violated the provisions of martial law and operated following military principles of justice. 

The administration of law and justice over civilians in occupied territories through this system was designed partly to meet obligations placed upon belligerents under international law by ensuring some degree of security and stability for civilians, especially in areas where colonial judicial organs could no longer function without the colonisers. However, it was, first and foremost, a military mechanism, rooted in the doctrine of necessity, which served to protect Japanese forces, safeguard national interests and facilitate the realisation of wartime objectives. As such, it tended to prioritise military needs, sometimes even convenience, over civilian welfare and rights. As a nexus, a main point of contact and interaction between civilians and military authorities during this conflict, it is hypothesised that this system played a central exacerbating role in the quotidian hardships of occupation experienced by populations in Southeast Asia and contributed to violence, of various forms, directed towards civilians as a means of reinforcing military control and realising wartime objectives. 

Based on this premise, this sub-project examines the military justice system and its functions in occupied territories in greater depth than has thus far been attempted by other scholars. It has three main areas of concern. Firstly, it analyses the legal framework as determined by laws and regulations established by senior officers in three different armies (the Fourteenth Army in the Philippines, the Sixteenth Army in Java and the Twenty-Fifth in Singapore, British Malaya and later Sumatra) operating in the region, as well as instructions and orders regarding the implementation of such. It takes a comparative approach, considering the role of this legal framework within occupation policy and how the different circumstances prevailing in the aforementioned areas, in addition to the very different occupation styles adopted by those armies, impacted how it functioned and evolved over the course of the Asia-Pacific War. Secondly, it explores the enforcement of those laws and regulations by the kenpei and the courts. In the case of the former, textbooks, handbooks, manuals, regulations and instructions from senior commanders are drawn upon in order to establish the parameters, expectations and standards of conduct for officers involved in this task. Similarly, trial regulations and other internal guidance is analysed to determine the judicial principles and procedures to be adopted in military courts adjudicating civilians in occupied areas. The project then explores how these institutions functioned in practice by utilising various wartime documents – kenpei reports (on public order, police affairs and investigations), as well as relevant operation orders, case files and court judgements – supplemented by post-war memoirs, explanatory notes and statistics prepared for war crimes prosecution. Finally, it reflects on the ways in which this system contributed directly, as well as indirectly in more structural, systemic ways, to military violence directed at civilian populations. It is particularly interested in the radicalisation and streamlining of judicial procedures and the increasing use of summary execution as a means of bypassing the system in the final stages of war. This involves analysis of military correspondence, regulations and reports alongside delving into evidence, statements and testimony compiled post-war for war crimes tribunals. As such, it also examines efforts to prosecute members of the kenpei for systematic crimes (the use of torture in investigations and unlawful executions), as well as crimes involving what we might term ‘denial of justice’ to civilians. In so doing, this sub-project not only aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of what role the military justice system played in occupied territories of Southeast Asia, but also seeks to highlight how, why and the ways in which this system contributed to violence, including in its more structural, systemic and quotidian forms, during the Asia-Pacific War.

Monographs and Edited Volumes

• Military Justice in Modern History: The Adjudication of War and Violence in a Globalizing World (Berlin: De Gruyter) (with Tino Schölz, Urs Matthias Zachmann and Nicolas Stassar).

Articles and Chapters

2024 - forthcoming

• The Limits of Military Necessity: Unlawful Trials and Summary Executions during the Japanese Occupation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ in Henning de Vries and Frank Reichhauzer (ed.), (Il)legality of Military Force and Violence – Navigating between Possibility, Necessity and Proportionality (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg)
• ‘Military Justice and its Potential for Violence towards Civilians under Wartime Occupation: The Imperial Japanese Army in China, 1894-1941’, in Kelly Maddox, Tino Schölz, Nicolas Stassar & Urs Matthias Zachmann (ed.), Military Justice in Modern History: The Adjudication of War and Violence in a Globalizing World (Berlin: De Gruyter).

2024

•  ‘Violencia de masas y radicalización de la estrategia bélica japonesa en el Sudeste Asiático, 1942-1945’ [Instrumentalising Mass Violence: The Radicalisation of Japanese Military Strategy in Wartime Southeast Asia, 1942-45], Ayer: Revista De Historia Contemporánea, 1–28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55509/ayer/2199
• ‘An Instrument of Military Power: The Development and Evolution of Japanese Martial Law in Occupied Territories, 1894 – 1945’, Law and History Review, 42(2) [First online 2023], 367-91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248023000524

2023

• ‘“First Essentials of Survival”: Ensuring the Support of Civilians in the Guerrilla Conflict with Japan on Panay, 1942-1945’, War in History, 30(3) [First online 2022], 300-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/09683445221136183

2020

• ‘An Island of Killing and Slaughter: Anti-Guerrilla Warfare and Civilian-Targeted Violence on Panay, 1943’, Journal of Contemporary History, 55(3) [First online 2019], 535-56. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022009419843313

2017

• ‘From Liberation to Elimination: Violence and Resistance in Japan’s Southeast Asia, 1942¬-1945’, in Philip Dwyer & Amanda Nettlebeck (ed.) Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World (New York & London: Palgrave Macmillan), 243–64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62923-0_12