What a US lawyer’s diaries show about prosecuting Japanese atrocities of Nanking massacre

A US prosecutor’s newly revealed diaries from World War II have laid bare the gruelling effort to document Japanese wartime atrocities in China and the unlikely bond forged between him and the people he helped.

The diaries belonged to David Nelson Sutton, an American assistant prosecutor at the Tokyo Trial, or the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – a landmark international judicial effort.

The tribunal drew upon a vast “evidence wall” comprising nearly 50,000 pages of trial records to dismantle the legal foundations of Japanese militarism and establish the historical record of war crimes in the region.

Six volumes of Sutton’s diaries and a report on the Nanking massacre were donated to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanking Massacre by Japanese Invaders. They made their public debut on April 29 at a symposium commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Tokyo Trial’s opening on May 3, 1946.

Yang Xiaming, a researcher at the Institute for National Memory and International Peace who has spent 20 years tracking Sutton’s legacy, hailed the archives’ historical significance and Sutton’s pursuit of justice for a country not his own.

“When you read these diaries, you understand the efficiency and the enormous personal sacrifice of the prosecutorial team,” Yang said at the event in Nanjing.