Furthermore, in the early Cold War, the United States turned from firebombing Japan to fortifying it against the spread of Communism in Asia. That meant halting the prosecutions of lower-ranked war criminals, and even the parole and rehabilitation of Class A war crimes suspects. Perhaps the most important of these was Nobusuke Kishi, a senior official in Japanese-run Manchuria who later served in Tojo’s cabinet at the time of Pearl Harbor, and who after the war was jailed by the Americans for more than three years as a Class A suspect. After being released without being tried in December 1948, he went on to become Japan’s foreign minister and then … Continue reading Wartime Memories (Gary J. Bass)