The International Military Tribunal for the Far East opened in a bombed-out Tokyo in April 1946 as a grand demonstration of international law, with eleven Allied nations prosecuting 28 Japanese leaders over two and a half years. But behind the courtroom doors, American officials were secretly coaching defendants to ensure Emperor Hirohito never faced trial. This episode examines the contradiction at the heart of the Tokyo Trial: a tribunal that documented real atrocities while operating alongside a deliberate cover-up run by the people in charge of it.

We walk through the Class A, B and C charge structure, the doctrine of command responsibility, and the loose rules of evidence that allowed a forged document like the Tanaka Memorial into the record. We look at General MacArthur's decision to shield the emperor for Cold War stability, the imm ...