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Chang Cai (History and Business Administration major)
"World War II War Crimes Trials Against Japanese War Criminals Conducted by the Chinese Nationalists from 1946 to 1949"
Sponsor: David Cohen, Rhetoric
Project Description
While there has been great scholarly interest in international tribunals
such as the Nuremberg and Tokyo, little research has been done on Allied
national efforts to prosecute the Japanese in the post-WWII era. Over
700 Chinese nationalist trials were conducted between 1946 and
1949 against the Japanese at twelve different locations in China. This is
a wonderful example of domestic applications of an emerging body of
international law. While an analysis of the trial judgments is an
important part of the project, Chang will also closely examine the Chinese
nationalist government's involvement in the trials. Chang
will travel to London to do research at the National Archives of the
United Kingdom, which house important documents on the
Chinese nationalists and their influence on the tribunals.
Scholar's Photo
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Chang Cai in front of the Pulteney bridge in Bath |
Scholar's Journal
Ok, the first day at the National Archives of UK was rather overwhelming. There were blue-coat security guards everywhere, checking your bag at the front desk, and hovering over you when you are looking through the files. If you accidentally put your elbows on the files, the blue-coats would whisper to you, "Don't do that."
This is my first time doing archival research, and it is a really illuminating experience. Doing this kind of work really requires a great deal of patience. It's so easy to become depressed at an archive, because I was by myself and had no one to talk to about my discoveries or the lack thereof. For a large portion of the time there, what I did was basically to try to get most out of the archive's search engine, to make up as many keywords as possible, so that they would lead to the right files.
Another way to find the files was to look through the print index, and this is almost like detective work. The print indexes would not exactly lead me immediately to the files I wanted, but one print index would have a key that guided me to another set of print indexes, and then would I be able to find the call number to the actual file. However, it turned out, that for the files located in FO 371, which contains most of the war crimes files, about 93% of them were destroyed.
But I was lucky enough to find many of the documents I wanted on the sub-commission, including half of the minutes of the meetings, correspondences among the British representatives, and work of the main United Nations War Crimes Commission that relate to the sub-commission. There were moments of discovery that were extremely rewarding. One day, just as when I was about to go home for the day, since I was not getting any results, I chanced upon an important document that details a British diplomat's invective against some Chinese member of the sub-commission. It's really moments like this that makes research so worthwhile!
And England is a beautiful country. After a day's work, I would ride the tube up to downtown London, pass through the glorious shopping district of Piccadilly Circus, and reach Leicester Square, where I would see, strange though it may be, foot prints of all the actors that portrayed the 007 agents. And it was so worthwhile to come to London, to feel the rainy weather, and to do research at such a lovely place that always reminded me of episodes of Wallace and Gromit.
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