Robert Cribb and Sandra Wilson, "Twelve Japanese War Criminals and One Who Got Away" (U Hawaiʻi Press, 2026)

Twelve Japanese War Criminals and One Who Got Away, by Robert Cribb and Sandra Wilson, analyzes thirteen case studies of Japanese wartime atrocities and prosecutions across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The authors combine Japanese and Southeast Asian expertise to investigate motives, wartime context, and the legal aftermath, challenging cultural explanations and emphasizing individual decisions shaped by military pressures and opportunity. The book draws on trial records, military documents, memoirs, and eyewitness testimony to reconstruct cases ranging from massacres and mistreatment of POWs to medical experiments and cannibalism. It also assesses the fairness and effectiveness of postwar tribunals and the politics of repatriation and clemency. The work aims to answer the question of how someone becomes a war criminal and to place Japanese wartime violence in comparative context.