Clockwise from top left: Joseph Keenan in conversation with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander for the Allied Powers; telegraph from George L. Berry to Prosecuting Attorney Joseph B. Keenan ’13; a snapshot of a Japanese child on a village street; and aerial view of a decimated Hiroshima taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in December 1945
War crimes trial collection is now online
A behind-the-scenes look at the Tokyo Trial
At the end of World War II, thousands of individuals were tried for war crimes in courtrooms around the world. The Japanese War Crimes Trial—known as the Tokyo Trial—is considered, with Nuremberg, to be one of the most important trials of the 20th century.
The Joseph Berry Keenan Digital Collection of manuscripts and photographs from the Tokyo Trial is now available for the first time online at the Harvard Law School Library Web site. The collection, which exists only at Harvard, was gathered by Joseph B. Keenan ’13 during his tenure as chief counsel in the International Prosecution Section for the Allies for the Tokyo Trial.
“The collection provides a terrific insight above and beyond what you’d find in the official transcripts, a behind-the-scenes take on the trials, based on [Keenan’s] position as the chief prosecutor,” said Edwin Moloy, curator of modern manuscripts and archives for the library.
The materials, which consist primarily of Keenan’s correspondence during his tenure as prosecutor, also include black-and-white photographs he collected, spanning the years 1945 to 1947.