This page has been validated.
C O N F I D E N T I A L
GENERAL HEADQUARTERS
SUPREME COMMANDER FOR THE ALLIED POWERS
CIVIL INFORMATION AND EDUCATION SECTION
21 December 1945
MEMORANDUM:
TO : Section Chiefs
- The following information plan will be used in connection with the arrest and trial of war crime suspects:
I. Background:
- By official definition, Japanese war crimes are divided into the following tree classes:
- A. "Planning, preparation, initiation and waging of war of agression in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.
- B. "Violations of the laws or customs of war; such violations shall include but not be limited to murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas or elsewhere, improper treatment of hostages, plunder of public or private property, whether destruction of cities, towns or villages or devastation not justified by military necessity.
- C. "Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts committed against any civilian population before or during the war or persecutions on political racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime defined herein, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
II. Objectives:
- A. To show that there is adequate oral basis for punishing those found guilty of planning, preparing, initiating, waging or conspiring to wage a war of aggression.
- B. To show that is is in behalf of all mankind that action is being taken against those suspected of war crimes.
- C. To show that punishment of war criminals is necessary for the construction of peaceful and prosperous Japan and for future world security.
- D. To show that war criminals bear the major responsibility for the present blight of the Japanese people, but that the people themselves share a co-responsibility for tolerating or actively supporting the militarist regime.
C O N F I D E N T I A L
