In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the victorious powers turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For American leaders President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur, Britain's Winston Churchill, China's Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan's militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for their crimes. For the Allied powers, the trials were an opportunity both to render judgment on their vanquished foes and to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was no more than victors' justice. For more than two years, the tensions and contradictions of the courtroom could be seen playing out across Asia as the trial unfolded in the crucial early years of the Cold War and the end of the European empires. They have influenced power politics across Asia and the Pacific ever since.

Gary J. Bass is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of The Blood Telegram, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction, Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention, and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals. A former reporter for The Economist, Bass has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Washington Post amongst others. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.