“Saturday, March 9th—I have received an official order to go to Shanghai, Nanjing, Beiping, and other locations in the Chinese theater to carry out investigations of war criminals and collect evidence.”
Tuesday April 2nd - arrived in Nanjing at 11:20 AM.
Friday, May 3rd – The first hearing of the Tokyo Trial began. The people on the defendant’s side looked despondent, like a group of insignificant losers.
In 1946, when he arrived in Tokyo, David Nelson Sutton, the US Deputy Prosecutor and one of the first members of the International Criminal Investigative Bureau to investigate the Nanjing Massacre, became a key link in the entire prosecution chain.
This 51-year-old lawyer from Virginia, USA, was urgently summoned to investigate the Japanese atrocities. He discovered that the Japanese had systematically destroyed combat logs and also threatened and intimidated relevant witnesses. With the situation being urgent, he rushed to collect evidence in a race against time.
From March to April 1946, under the arrangements of Chinese prosecutor Xiang Zhejun and his secretary Qiu Shaoheng, Sutton visited Shanghai, Beiping, Chongqing, and Nanjing. He met with officials, missionaries, medical workers, and survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, collecting a large number of firsthand testimonies, statistical data, and photographic records.
In June of the same year, Sutton went to Nanjing again to find witnesses for court testimony. Eventually, he led more than ten witnesses, both Chinese and foreign, to Tokyo to testify in court. At the same time, he brought back documents from the U.S. Embassy in Nanjing regarding the atrocities committed by the Japanese army. These documents served as crucial evidence in this century-old trial.
During the trial, Sutton wrote six personal notes detailing his journey to China to gather evidence related to the Nanjing Massacre, drug trade, economic aggression against China, and the Japanese army's bacteriological warfare.
On the 80th anniversary of the opening of the International Military Tribunal in the Far East, that is, the Tokyo Trial, in May this year, these six yellowed original diaries, along with a survey report on the Nanjing Massacre, were brought to China from across the ocean. They were first presented to the public at the Memorial Hall for Compatriots Who Died in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invading Troops.
On June 10th, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post pointed out that the release of these archives coincided with the eve of President Trump’s important visit to China. At the same time, China called for remembering the historical experience of the Tokyo Trials, as a warning against Japan’s current attempts to distort and weaken relevant history.
Professor Yang Xiaming, a researcher at the National Memory and International Peace Institute, has been searching for relevant materials about Sutton for over twenty years. He highly praises the historical significance of this collection of documents, as well as Sutton's persistent efforts to uphold justice for people in foreign countries.
He said at an event held in Nanjing, "When you read these diaries, you can truly appreciate the efficient actions of the prosecution team and the great personal sacrifices they made."
Sutton
Finding Sutton's diary seemed to be an accident, but perhaps it was also part of a greater plan.
According to reports from CCTV News and People's Daily, this set of precious historical materials was acquired by the donor Zou Dehua in November 2025 through an auction on a website specializing in military artifacts in the United States.
As a prosecutor who witnessed the Tokyo Trials firsthand, Sutton’s handwritten diary is disclosed for the first time. This information had never been published in the Chinese world before, making it a significant discovery in the history of Nanjing Massacre archives.
These firsthand accounts outside of legal documents provide a complete record from the perspective of the first person involved, covering key processes such as evidence collection, witness selection, and crime formulation. They also reflect Sutton’s strong shock at the atrocities committed by the Japanese army during the invasion of China, as well as his profound thoughts about war.
Unlike the well-known "Rabe Diaries" and "Maggi Videos," Sutton's logs have their own uniqueness. Zhou Feng, the director of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, said, "If the former records history from the perspectives of protectors, witnesses, and victims, then Sutton's logs provide a complete record from the perspective of an international judicial investigator. What makes them unique is that they represent the first perspective of 'enforcement officers' and 'verifiers.'"
He further added that this log fills two key gaps in the historical puzzle: one is the process of evidence collection, and the other is the crime clues that were not adopted or fully utilized. “Suton’s original records provide extremely valuable clues for understanding the limitations of the Tokyo Tribunal study, as well as the broader crimes committed by Japanese militarism.”
Based on field investigations in China, Sutton constructed a 'Evidence Wall' to judge the crimes of Japanese militarism.
He revealed the massive massacre committed by the Japanese invading army in his diary. In a entry dated April 7, 1946, he wrote, "Today, I visited an old and dilapidated Chinese Christian church that was destroyed during the war. Then, I went to a place along the Yangtze River where a large-scale massacre took place. It is said that the Japanese army executed 6,000 Chinese people using machine guns there. A factory building on the original site has also been completely burned down."
The diary also states that the Japanese army not only allowed the circulation and trade of opium and drugs in the occupied areas, but also tolerated and encouraged this activity by supporting puppet governments. They used the opium trade as a source of revenue for the puppet governments, thereby weakening and destroying the health and resistance spirit of the Chinese people.
"This unedited record of the scene, without any embellishment, carries a force and persuasive power that surpasses anything found in secondhand literature," said Zhou Feng.
Sutton's diary records that Japanese invaders used machine guns to execute 6,000 Chinese people along the Yangtze River. Xinhua News Agency
Six yellowed diaries also detail the high-intensity work conditions of the prosecution team from 1946 to 1948.
According to the researchers, after interviewing Japanese war criminals held in China, Sutton and his team often only got to rest at three o’clock in the morning. They traveled non-stop between Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, and Nanjing, interviewing 125 witnesses. The diary also includes images taken in various Chinese cities during Sutton's travels to collect evidence, as well as photographs taken of witnesses appearing in court regarding the Nanjing Massacre case.
This batch of public historical materials also includes a document titled “Report from China: Nanjing Atrocities Against the Common People”. The document is 89 pages long and contains testimony from 27 Chinese witnesses. It provides detailed descriptions of the mass killings, rapes, and torture committed by the Japanese army, which were witnessed by those who were there. The content is very detailed and comprehensive.
This report is key evidence for the prosecution, and it also ensures that important witnesses such as American pastor John Magee can travel to Tokyo to testify in court. Magee recorded the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre through video footage.
According to Zou Dewei, this is one of the five reports drafted by Sutton after his first visit to China. The other four reports focused on economic aggression against China, bacteriological warfare, the trade in opium and drugs, as well as the collusion between Germany and Japan in China.
Yang Xiaming further added to the South China Morning Post that Sutton was one of the few Western prosecutors who took the Japanese biological warfare allegations seriously from the beginning. He met with Austrian health expert Robert Bortichi and Chinese researchers in Chongqing, collecting evidence to prove that Japanese planes had dropped contaminated plague-infected goods in several cities.
The diary records that from March to April 1946, during his investigation in China with his colleagues, he came across clues related to the Japanese military's acts of biological warfare. On April 16, when Sutton was drafting a report on China in Tokyo, biological warfare was listed as the first item. Subsequently, he continued to discuss the issue of Japan's biological warfare against China with Filipino prosecutors and Chinese prosecutors, indicating that the prosecution did not abandon its efforts to investigate this crime.
From the diary content it can be seen that Sutton never gave up chasing after the case," Yang Xia Ming said, "just before he requested leave to return to America to take care of his seriously ill mother, he was still researching these crimes."
In the conclusion of the report on Japanese war crimes against China submitted to the court, Sutton sharply stated his stance on the trial of war crimes: "The initiation of this war blatantly violated solemn treaty obligations and repeated official commitments; the conduct of this war violated all rules of organized warfare, and its methods shocked human conscience."
And the original diary, which had been sealed for eighty years, is now exposed to sunlight again, also bringing the historical timeline back to the starting point of the Tokyo Trials.
Looking back at that unprecedented historic trial, the judicial forces of 11 countries held more than 800 hearings over a period of more than two years. Over 400 witnesses appeared in court, with more than 700 written witnesses involved. Over 4,300 pieces of evidence were accepted, and the judgment itself spanned more than 1,200 pages.
Finally, the court, based on overwhelming evidence and strict legal principles, determined that Japanese militarism launched an aggressive war and seriously violated international law. It exposed the numerous crimes committed by Japanese aggressors in many Asian countries. The court sentenced 25 Class-A war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, to execution by hanging or imprisonment. The court refuted theories such as “victor’s justice,” “self-defense warfare,” and “post-event legislation.”
And now, it is outrageous that, despite the established historical facts and irrefutable evidence from the Tokyo Trials, Japanese right-wing forces deny these facts vehemently, distort them to an extreme, and even glorify the crimes of aggression. They tamper with history textbooks, visit the Yasukuni Shrine, and instill wrong historical views in Japanese society, attempting to rehabilitate militarism.
According to Enar Donn, a senior researcher at the International Governance Innovation Center, the Tokyo Trial ultimately failed to achieve 'complete justice'. On one hand, this was due to the sheer number of war crimes committed by Japan. On the other hand, the Japanese military systematically destroyed evidence, leaving the prosecution overwhelmed.
Tunan said that although nearly 96,000 cases of war crimes were investigated between 1945 and 1946, due to a lack of manpower and resources, the legal team was only able to compile 650 witness testimonies. Constrained by complex bureaucratic procedures, nearly 100,000 cases of atrocities that could be investigated failed to result in any accountability.
He added that political factors further exacerbated this institutional failure: in exchange for relevant research data, the United States decided to exempt the Japanese Emperor from prosecution, as well as exempting those involved in biological warfare planning and research, such as the 731 Unit. It was precisely because the trials were hastily concluded and the crimes were deliberately covered up that Japan failed to reflect on its history like Germany did.
"Japan has yet to fully acknowledge and reflect upon its wartime history." He emphasized that the Yasukuni Shrine's practice of "worshipping ghosts", historical textbooks being rewritten, along with ongoing territorial disputes between Japan and China, all stem from a lack of thorough accountability for war criminals in the past.
At the end of last year, after the new Japanese government came to power, it showed a passive attitude on a series of issues related to its relations with China, which led to strong countermeasures from China.
On June 9, in response to Japanese media reports that the US has requested China to resume exports of rare earths to Japan, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian stated that it is recommended to inquire about the specific situation with Chinese authorities. It should be emphasized that China prohibits the export of all dual-use items to Japanese military users, for military purposes, and to any other end-users or uses that contribute to enhancing Japan's military strength, in accordance with laws and regulations. The purpose is to prevent Japan from attempting to militarize again and to develop nuclear capabilities.
A country that has not completely cleaned up the poisonous legacy of militarism, does it have the qualification to engage in large-scale military cooperation discussions on the international stage? Can it earn trust from the global society, particularly from Asian countries which were its aggressors in the past? I deeply doubt it. Not long ago, the representative group of experts and scholars from the Chinese People's Liberation Army made a profound remark at the Shangri-La dialogue held in Singapore, continuing to shock and inspire people.
As he said, the Tokyo Trials permanently branded the heinous crimes of Japanese militarism on the pillar of historical shame, and also laid the important legal foundation for the post-war international order. However, today, there are still some forces that blatantly glorify war crimes, promote incorrect views of World War II history, and attempt to challenge the verdict of the Tokyo Trials. They seek to rewrite the history of aggression, and have even taken concrete actions that violate the constraints of the post-war peace regime.
“The lessons of the past are not far away. The world today stands at a new crossroads. We must be vigilant against any attempt by militarist ideologies to revive themselves, and we must earnestly safeguard the achievements of World War II and the post-war international order.”
