Is an attack on a country without a declaration of war a war crime?
The Tokyo war crimes trials, 1946-48, ruled that Hideki Tojo, the Japanese prime minister implicated in the decision to bomb Pearl Harbour without a declaration of war, was guilty of war crimes.
He was hanged. (P 260 A World History of War Crimes by Michael Bryant, 2021).
Fast forward to now: are Israeli and American leaders guilty of the bombing and assassination of the top leaders of Iran, which was done without a declaration of war? Is it legitimate self-defense under the UN Charter?
Can UN Charter Article 2 (4) be invoked as a defense? The Western nations are not in one voice. The world is divided not by logic but by partisan vested interests.
War crimes have always been a contested space. Is it victor’s justice? Would a winning country’s leaders or soldiers be tried?
We had a similar ‘amnesia’ for the massacre of civilians by British forces in the Batang Kali Massacre during the Malayan Emergency.
Post WW2, war crimes trials were held in China for Japanese war criminals, in Manila for General Yamashita, and in Tokyo for Tojo and others.
The Japanese responsible for Unit 731 (which did biological experiments on civilians and committed biological warfare, like causing 20,000 Chinese deaths by releasing pestiferous rats into Heilongjiang and Kirin provinces) were never tried, as the Americans wanted to use the research done by Unit 731 (p. 255).
Why was the war in Asia so much more vicious compared to Europe?
27% of Allied soldiers died in Japanese captivity compared to 4 percent in German/Italian custody. (P 255).
14 March 2026