Professional Documents
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SITTING IN JUDGMENT
Myron C. Cramer’s Experiences in the Trials of German Saboteurs and Japanese War Leaders
By Fred L. Borch
ne week later, America was plunged into World War II. For the rest of that war, Cramer served
O as the top lawyer in the Army. In 1942 he made history when, in concert with U.S. Attorney
General Francis Biddle, he prosecuted German U-boat saboteurs at a military commission, becom-
ing the first Judge Advocate General since the Civil War to prosecute at this type of tribunal.
At the end of the war, 63-year-old Cramer retired to private practice in Washington, D.C.; he no doubt
believed that his years in uniform were over and he could expect his life to be more tranquil, if not unevent-
ful. But this was not to be, for in 1946 Cramer made history again when he was called out of retirement and
donned his uniform to serve as the sole American judge on the 11-nation war crimes tribunal in Tokyo, Japan.
For the next two and a half years, Cramer decided the guilt of Japanese wartime political leaders, becoming
the only Army lawyer in history to sit as a judge on an international military tribunal.
Cramer returned to the United States moved from a bustling metropolis to the Later, as chief of staff for the First Re-
after the end of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, small town of Tacoma,Washington. Cramer placement Depot in St. Aignan, he was “in
retired a second time, and ultimately did had a general law practice for a few years charge of the office and machinery through
enjoy a civilian law practice until his death before being appointed deputy prosecut- which an average of 40,000 replacements
in 1966. While Cramer did speak in pub- ing attorney for Pierce County. a month” were forwarded to all parts of the
lic about his experiences prosecuting the Within months of his move, Cramer began American Expeditionary Force. Cramer did
German U-boat saboteurs, he did not doc- his career as a soldier. According to his mil- extraordinarily well in overseeing the
ument his time as a judge in Tokyo. For- itary records, he enlisted as a cavalry private movement of the more than 500,000 men
tunately, the records of both tribunals have in the Washington National Guard in January who ultimately were shipped through the
been preserved in the National Archives 1911. Later that year, he obtained a commis- depot. Comments in his efficiency report
and Records Administration (NARA), and sion as a Guard second lieutenant in the First noted that he was a “man of excellent char-
this means that a thorough understanding Washington Cavalry. Cramer’s paperwork acter” who “worked without regard to
of the facts and procedures in both trials from this period shows that he was of medi- hours” and had “an indefatiguable [sic]
is possible. But Cramer’s unique role in um height (5’7’’) and weight (125 pounds), attention to duty.”
these two historical events also can be with brown hair and gray eyes. When Cramer returned home to the
examined because his complete military Promoted to first lieutenant in June United States in late July 1919, he was a 37-
record has been preserved in NARA’s 1915, Cramer was called into federal serv- year-old Officers’ Reserve Corps infantry
Military Personnel Records Center in St. ice a year later and served on the Mexican lieutenant colonel. He was married and had
Louis, Mis souri. Con se quently, although border with Brig. Gen. “Black Jack” a son and a daughter. But, while he resumed
Cramer died more than 40 years ago, the Pershing until February 1917. At the end his civilian law practice, Cramer had already
detailed reports on his performance and of this military duty,
other documents in his file permit a com- Cramer briefly returned
plete picture of his stellar military career to the prosecuting attor-
to be assembled, including his role as ney’s office before he
prosecutor and judge. and his fellow Guards-
men were again federal-
ized for World War I.
Myron C. Cramer— Then Captain Cramer
Lawyer and Soldier went overseas in January
1918 and was sent to
Born in Portland, Connecticut, on No- the Army General Staff
vember 6, 1881, Myron Cady Cramer grad- College in Langres, France.
uated from Wesleyan University in 1904
and Harvard Law School in 1907. After
being admitted to the New York state bar
in September, Cramer practiced law in
New York City on the legal staff of Trav-
elers’ Insurance Company. In May 1910 he
made a major change in his life when he
Opposite page:The International Tribunal of the Far East, in
Tokyo, May 1946–November 1948, with the international
panel of judges at far right and defendants at far left.
Because the government did not want lamation on July 2, 1942, and also issued an ability and sound judgment.” He and Biddle
Hitler to know how easy it had been for executive order appointing Biddle and had successfully completed the first mili-
Germans to land on U.S. shores—and to Cramer as co-prosecutors. That same order tary commission convened by a President
deter any such future sabotage opera- selected four major generals and three and had achieved the best possible results
tions—Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson brigadier generals to serve as the seven- for the government.
and Attorney General Biddle decided that member panel to decide guilt and deter- Cramer continued to serve as the top
a military commission—which could be mine an appropriate sentence. Finally, the Army lawyer for the rest of World War II. It
closed to the public—was the best course order appointed military defense counsel was a challenging job to have in an Army
of action. The fact that the German Reich to represent the accused Germans. that had transitioned from peace to war
had secretly landed its agents in civilian Matters moved quickly for Cramer since and grown to 8 million men and women.
guise on U.S. soil was an act of war, and the he and Biddle began presenting evidence to When Cramer retired on December 1,
planned sabotage constituted a violation of the tribunal on July 8. Preliminary arguments 1945, after four years as the Judge Advocate
the laws of war. While there was some dis- and the taking of testimony took 16 days— General, he was lauded at the highest lev-
agreement among lawyers in the Roosevelt an average of two days for each accused. The els for his “consummate legal skills” and his
administration, the majority view was that military commission completed its work on organizational abilities in running a legal
these facts meant that a trial by military August 1, when it found all eight defendants operation that had grown from 190 uni-
commission was both lawful and proper. guilty of “attempting to commit sabotage, formed lawyers in 1941 to more than 2,160
But there was another reason, and per- espionage, and other hostile acts” and “con- judge advocates in 1945 and had offices
haps the most important reason, to try the spiracy” to commit these same offenses. located throughout the world.
German saboteurs by military commis- Cramer and Biddle argued that the Germans
sion—and it was Myron Cramer who first must be sentenced to death, and the com-
raised it. On June 28, 1942, Cramer wrote to mission agreed. Roosevelt approved the Tokyo War Crimes Trial
Secretary Stimson that a civilian court was death sentence for six of the eight men, and
the wrong forum for the German saboteurs those six were electrocuted on August 8, After retiring on December 1, 1945,
because “the maximum permissible punish- 1942.The other two were imprisoned and Cramer and his wife settled in Washington,
ment . . . would be less than is desirable to later deported to Germany after the war. The D.C., and he began to build a civilian law
impose.” As Cramer explained, this was U.S. Supreme Court later upheld the juris- practice. No doubt he believed that tranquil-
because the Federal rules of evidence would diction of the military commission, and the ity would be the norm in his life. But in
make it difficult to obtain a conviction for lawfulness of its proceed-
sabotage (a 30-year offense) in U.S. District ings, in the case of Ex
Court, making it likely that the men might parte Quirin, which con-
only be convicted of conspiracy (a three- tinues to be cited with ap-
year offense). A trial by military commission, proval by today’s Supreme
however, was not bound by federal proce- Court.
dural or evidentiary rules, and there was no Cramer’s work as co-
limitation on any sentence that could be prosecutor was praised
imposed, including the death penalty. by his superior as “his-
When Stimson met with Biddle the next toric evidence of his legal
day, the two officials agreed that trial in a
civilian court was ill-advised and that a mil-
itary commission would best meet the
needs of the government. Based on their
recommendations, President Roosevelt es-
tablished the military commission by proc-
Sitting in Judgment
05-Borch Gen new. JAG:Layout 1 7/20/09 1:37 PM Page 38
Left: The prosecution at the Tokyo trial presented maps as evidence during the opening session on June 13, 1946. Center: The 28 Japanese military and civilian defen-
dants, May 14, 1946. Right: Prosecution attorney Mei addresses the tribunal on January 14, 1948. The defendants, all wartime leaders in Japan, were charged with
not only “crimes against peace” but also “crimes against humanity.”
June 1946, Cramer learned that John P. Far East, or Tokyo War Crimes Trial, as it is rific evidence of murder, extermination, en-
Higgins, chief justice of the Massachusetts more commonly known, was the Pacific slavement, deportation, and other inhuman
supreme court, who had been appointed as counterpart to the war crimes trials held in acts committed by Japanese troops.
the American judge for the upcoming Nuremberg from November 1945 to Oct- It soon was obvious that the volumi-
Tokyo War Crimes Trial, had abruptly re- ober 1946. Cramer and his 10 fellow judges nous evidence—which ultimately consist-
signed. This was embarrassing, as the trial (from Australia, Canada, China, France, Great ed of thousands of pages of documents
was under way (having started in May), and Britain, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and testimony from 419 witnesses—had
Higgins had been hearing evidence in Tokyo the Philippines, and the Soviet Union) sat in to be organized for the Tokyo tribunal’s
for two months. In this emergency situation, judgment on 28 Japanese military and civil- use. In the division of labor that followed,
and with little time to fill this vacancy, the ian leaders. Most of the defendants were mil- Cramer took on the task of preparing a
War Department asked Cramer if he would itary, the best known being Tojo Hideki, an dossier on Japanese “war crimes commit-
consent to being recalled to active duty to Army general and Japan’s political and mili- ted by the Japanese Armed Forces in ter-
take this important judgeship. Cramer agreed, tary leader (he served as prime minister from ritories occupied by them.”
and his appointment as the lone American 1941 to 1944). But civilian leaders also were Cramer and his assistant,Army lawyer Lt.
judge on the “International Military Tribunal, on trial, such as Hirota Koki, a career diplo- Col. Howard H. Hasting, gathered and orga-
Far East” was personally approved by U.S. mat, who was charged with failing to prevent nized evidence of war crimes presented to
Attorney General Tom C. Clark and Supreme Japanese atrocities in Nanking, China, during the tribunal by the prosecution.Their work,
Commander for the Allied Powers General a six-week period starting in mid-December contained in a two-volume “Brief of Ev-
of the Army Douglas MacArthur. 1937. Notably missing from the list of defen- idence of Conventional War Crimes and
Cramer’s military records show that he dants, however, was the Japanese emperor, Atrocities” records how Japanese soldiers
was recalled to active duty on July 10, 1946, Hirohito, whom many observers expected murdered Chinese civilians as early as
left Washington, D.C., by air five days later, would be tried for war crimes as well. August 1932, when villagers in Pingtingshan
and arrived in Tokyo on July 20. He took his Just as at Nuremberg, the chief purpose of were ordered “to assemble along a ditch and
seat on the tribunal two days later, on July the Tokyo trial was to hold high-level politi- kneel; machine guns were then mounted
22, 1946. In a January 1947 memorandum, cal and military leaders accountable for the behind the victims and used to mow them
Cramer wrote that the War Department ini- waging of a brutal, aggressive war that had down; those not killed by the machine guns
tially believed “the trial would only last six taken the lives of millions of innocent men, were bayoneted.” Considerable evidence
months” and that the proceedings “would women, and children. Consequently, the was collected relating to the Rape of
be over by Christmas” 1946. Since Christmas defendants—all of whom had been wartime Nanking in 1937, with Cramer showing that
had passed, however, and it was January, leaders in Japan—were charged with“crimes some 30,000 Chinese soldiers “who had laid
Cramer now predicted that “it will likely be against peace,”which was defined as conspir- down their arms and surrendered . . . were
the 4th of July [1947] before the case is fin- ing to wage, and waging, an “aggressive war” machine gunned and bayoneted to death
ished.” Even that estimate proved wrong, as in contravention of “international law, and their corpses burned with kerosene”
the Tokyo War Crimes Trial would consume treaties, agreements or assurances.” But the and that Japanese soldiers had “raged like
a total of two and a half years before reach- Japanese also were accused of having com- savages” in brutally raping thousands of
ing a verdict in November 1948. mitted “crimes against humanity” and “war Chinese women. Cramer ultimately con-
The International Military Tribunal of the crimes,” and as a result, the judges heard hor- cluded that between 260,000 and 300,000
Sitting in Judgment
05-Borch Gen new. JAG:Layout 1 7/20/09 1:37 PM Page 40
judges to find him “derelict in the perform- him guilty of genocide, incitement to com-
ance of his duties in not insisting . . . that mit genocide, and crimes against humanity.
immediate action be taken to put an end
to the atrocities.”As Cramer and his fellow
judges saw it, Hirota’s “inaction amount- Life after the Army
ed to criminal negligence” under interna-
tional law and consequently he not only When Cramer retired a second time on
was guilty as charged but merited the ulti- March 31, 1949, he was 67 years old and had
mate penalty: death by hanging. been soldiering for more than 38 years. He
This was an important legal result because almost certainly looked forward to a more
it established that a civilian may be account- tranquil future at his home on Fordham
able for war crimes even though he was not Road NW in Washington, D.C. Cramer had
in the military chain of command. The impor- once told his wife that he believed he had
Hirota Koki, prime minister (1936–1937) and foreign min-
tance of Hirota has been lasting: the In- been “allotted . . . three score and ten years,”
ister (1941–1944), was charged with failing to prevent
Japanese atrocities in Nanking, China.The charge against ternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda so he may have thought he had but a few
him of “criminal negligence” established a precedent that (ICTR) cited the Hirota decision in issuing its years to live. But he was wrong and contin-
a civilian may be accountable for war crimes even though September 1998 judgment against a former ued to live a vigorous life until passing away
he was not in the military chain of command. Rwandan mayor, Jean-Paul Akayesu, finding on March 25, 1966, at age 84. P
NEW
F R O M T H E N AT I O N A L A R C H I V E S
World War II
Guide to Records Relating to U.S. Military Participation
Compiled by Timothy P. Mulligan
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