Episode 57: Ishiro Honda and Crimes Against Humanity

In this episode I tackle the issue of Ishiro Honda’s time during World War II administering a comfort women camp.

I was asked how he evaded punishment for committing Class C War Crimes (Crimes Against Humanity), and I have a definitive yet complex answer.

Honda’s films were supportive of human rights, and this is what we remember his place in history during World War II.

If Honda was an unnamed Japanese man who participated in these crimes, I would have wanted him to be brought to justice and served some kind of punishment for them.

However, there are many reasons why this didn’t happen.

So put on your thinking cap and listen as I explain how complex this situation is.

MP3:

http://kaijuvisionradioepisodes.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/57-ishiro-honda-and-crimes-against-humanity02v7a94mcs02v74dhs2.mp3

Transcript:

I received a question after I advertised a Q and A for YouTube. I did not receive them on Twitter publicly – they were all submitted privately. Given the nature of this particular question, I can see why it was submitted anonymously. I gave my initial reflections in Livestream 2, and in this episode I’m going to further address this issue.

First I’ll give you some background. In episode 4 of the show, I covered the issue of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. I utilized a few sources plus what I already knew and thought about regarding the subject. I’ve never shied away from a subject because it was too difficult for me to read about and process. But I’ll preface what I say with this: It’s not my place to forgive Ishiro Honda for what he did under the command of the Imperial Japanese Army. It also isn’t your place to forgive him. The only ones who can forgive him are the women (and men) who were put in the camps. And it isn’t Godzilla fandom experts’ place to downplay the significance of that chapter of his life. I can only give you my analysis of what I’ve learned and thought about.

Honda was in a command position at a comfort women camp during World War II. He administered actions there. He would have participated in “acquiring” women for the camp, also known as abducting, or kidnapping, and forcing them into sexual slavery. Human trafficking is another way to put this. These actions classify him as a class C war criminal, for crimes against humanity. He was not arrested, charged, or punished after the war was over.

The US only got around 5,000 of the war criminals, and some were charged by other countries like Australia. When the surrender took place the Japanese military and government destroyed the records, and the military personnel put on civilian clothes or went into hiding, or both. Without a record of who was connected to these war crimes, it’s hard to prove they did anything. Virtually everyone else threw themselves under the bus for Emperor Showa (Hirohito). Out of political expediency, the US gave Emperor Showa a way to out of it by not focusing on him in order to preserve the oldest imperial family on Earth. This action enabled nationalists in Japan and war crimes deniers, as well as anyone else who didn’t want to accept responsibility. Needless to say, denying these war crimes is beyond shameful. Nationalists say that the class A war criminals who were executed sacrificed themselves to keep the imperial family. The US also let the Unit 731 chemical and biological weapons scientists and employees free too, and judges at the tribunal weren’t even told about that.

The more you learn about the comfort women camps, the more shocking it gets. These camps were where some of the worst violations of human rights occurred during the war. Women were raped and beaten. They were pulled into a state-organized sex trafficking operation. Women were raped up to and exceeding 80 times a day in these camps. Many wished they were dead, some attempted or committed suicide, and they thought death would be better than t