Letters from Yokohama : Major John Dickey and the prosecution of Japanese Class 'B' and 'C' war crimes

Abstract

John Horace Dickey was a fourth generation Haligonian lawyer who, after serving on the domestic front with the Canadian Army travelled to Japan as a part of the Canadian War Crimes Liaison Detachment - Far East. Dickey was involved in the prosecution of Japanese Class 'B' and 'C' war crimes committed against Canadian soldiers that were captured after the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941.

Class 'B' and 'C' or 'minor' war crimes consist of traditional or conventional war crimes, "violations of the laws and customs of war," and crimes against humanity, "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts." These trials are important as they have been largely overlooked in favour of the Class 'A' trials, crimes against peace, at Nuremberg and Tokyo, and also allow for an investigation of the experiences of individual soldiers involved in both sides of the conflict.

This study will broaden English language war crimes trials scholarship, and also make an addition to a growing body of historiography investigating Canadian involvement in war crimes trials. While the political impetus for Canadian involvement has already been well developed, analysing the experiences of individual prosecutors from a social history perspective allows for a better understanding of how the sentences and judgments were reached, and the context that the trials themselves were undertaken.