History

Curriculum Connections
for Grade 10

Lesson One:
The War in the Pacific, 1931-1938

Lesson Two:
The War in the Pacific, 1941-1945: The Human Cost and the Enduring Legacy

Handout 2.1: Timeline and Description of Events of the Asia-Pacific War, 1939-1945

Handout 2.2: The Battle for Hong Kong, Before, During and After, 1941-1998

Handout 2.3: Japanese-Canadian Internment

Handout 2.4: Slave Labour in Japan and the Occupied Territories

Handout 2.5: The San Francisco Peace Treaty, 1951

Lesson Two: The War in the Pacific, 1941-1945: The Human Cost and the Enduring Legacy

Overview:

Students become familiar with some of the major events of the second half of the Asia-Pacific war, including the Canadian defense of Hong Kong and the fate of the Canadian soldiers who fought there; the internment of Japanese-Canadians at home; and the use of slave labour by the Japanese. They become familiar with issues of reparations and compensation for these and other groups.

Teaching/Learning Strategies

Tactical errors made during a war have high costs in human lives and in peoples’ well-being. In small groups, students will discuss one of the two topics below:

1) What were the major errors of judgement and action taken by Canadian officials which resulted in the surrender of Hong Kong, and the deaths of so many soldiers then and afterward? What might have been done to avoid making this costly decision?

2) How was the internment of Japanese-Canadians justified? How might this reprehensible decision been avoided?

A major concern of victims of war is compensation and reparation. Students will work in groups on one of the following topics:

1) From whom did Canadian Hong Kong veterans demand compensation, and why? What were the barriers? What was the eventual outcome? How long did it take?

2) What did Japanese-Canadians ask for by way of compensation and reparation? From whom? How long did it take to be realized? Why?

3) Were people who were forced to perform slave labour compensated? How is this situation similar to or different from the post-war treatment of other civilian victims of military aggression—such as comfort women or victims of the Nanking Massacre?

4) What is the relationship between the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and Japanese reparations to civilian victims of the war?

Each group will make a presentation to the class that will include both its conclusions and the questions that remain unanswered.

Time: 140 Minutes

Materials:

Handout 2.1(Timeline and Description of Events of the Asia-Pacific War, 1939-1945)
Handout 2.2 (The Battle for Hong Kong, 1941, and after)
Handout 2.3 (Japanese-Canadian Internment, 1942 and after)
Handout 2.4 (Slave Labour in Japan and the Occupied Territories)

Handouts for Grade 10

Handout 2.1: Timeline and Description of Events of the Asia-Pacific War, 1939-1945

In 1939 war broke out in Europe, and in 1940 Japan became an ally of Germany.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, in Hawaii, in an attack on the U.S. fleet there. This precipitated the entrance of the United States into the war, in both Europe and Asia. The Allies then included Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, Poland, the Soviet Union and the United States; the Axis countries were Germany, Italy, and Japan. Later that year, the Canadians fought unsuccessfully to defend Hong Kong, then a British colony, from Japanese occupation.

By mid-1942, the Japanese Army occupied many parts of China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, and many island groups in the Pacific.

World War II ended in Europe with the defeat of the German army in 1945; in Asia, it continued until mid-1945, and ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.

In the Second World War, the position of Japan was very similar to that of Germany: both were militaristic regimes whose ambition was to conquer and colonize their continents. They both took the offensive, attacked countries which had not attacked them, and asserted their superiority and fitness to rule others, as well as their right to provide their own people with more land and resources. Both were initially very successful in their military campaigns. And both were unusually brutal in their treatment of both prisoners of war and civilians.

(Handout 10-1.1 lists three of the most notorious of those brutalities in Asia: the establishment of biological and chemical warfare units, beginning in 1932; the Nanking Massacre in 1937; and the sexual slavery or “comfort women” system that accompanied the Japanese army wherever it went. Both are described in Handout 10-1.2.)

1939   World War II starts in Europe.
1940    Japan moves into northern Indo-China (now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).
1941
Japan joins the Axis Alliance with Germany and Italy.   Tojo Hideki becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
Japan raids Pearl Harbour on December 7. British Malaya and Hong Kong are simultaneously attacked. The Pacific phase of World War II begins , as the Allies declare war on Japan.
Hong Kong falls on December 25. Of the 1,975 Canadian soldiers sent to defend Hong Kong, 290 are killed in action and 1,685 are captured and interned by the Japanese military. 267 die in internment.

1942
Forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans in the United States and Japanese Canadians in Canada begin.
Throughout the Japanese occupied territories, the Japanese military exploits millions of Koreans, Chinese and other Asian peoples to work as slave labourers.
To make up for the wartime labor shortage inside Japan, tens of thousands of Koreans, Chinese and Allied POWs are brought to Japan to work as forced laborers,
By May 1942 Japan has gained control over wide territories including Hong Kong, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma (now Myanmar), Malaya (now Singapore and Malaysia), Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and many other Pacific islands.

1945
The first atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August.
The Soviet Union declares war on Japan on 8 August.
The second atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August.
Japan surrenders on 15 August. World War II ends.

Handout 2.2: The Battle for Hong Kong, Before, During and After, 1941-1998

The Pacific theatre of World War II is often neglected in Canadian history courses. This is unfortunate: much is to be learned, and much should not be forgotten, about what happened in Asia before and during the war.

It was the bombing of Pearl Harbour which brought the United States into the war, and made it truly a World war, not one confined to a single continent. It ushered in the nuclear age, with the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it resulted in the peculiarly Canadian tragedy that was Hong Kong.

Part One: OVERVIEW

In 1941, The British government requested that Canada send troops to Hong Kong to bolster its defenses against the Japanese invasion which was inevitable. The Canadian government sent two battalions, approximately 2000 soldiers. Hindsight and archival evidence suggest that the British request for troops and Canada’s compliance were unfortunate decisions, hastily made and ill-considered. Without any doubt, the consequences were disastrous.

The actual battle for Hong Kong occurred in the last week of December, 1941. The official surrender of the British colony to the Japanese took place on Christmas Day. Just under 2000 Canadian soldiers—with extremely inadequate training, experience and equipment--had been defeated by about 50,000 battle-proven Japanese soldiers.

The errors in judgment about the Japanese made by the Allied war leadership were not all based on factual misinformation about Japanese training and ordinance. Some important mistakes were subjective, and race-based. “The Allied leadership operated under racist notions about the fighting ability of the Japanese. They believed them to be inferior fighters, unable to see at night, and afraid of the water. . . . [but] The Japanese troops fought with a savage fury and a fearless dedication.” (HKVCA, Nick Brune writer, pp19-20.)

Almost 300 of the Canadian soldiers died in the battle for Hong Kong, and almost as many died afterward, in Japanese Prisoner of War camps. In fact, military prisoners of the Japanese were six to seven times more likely to die in their camps than was true of military prisoners in German war camps. The prisoners of the Japanese Imperial Army were forced to work hard, were fed little and poorly, lived in cold and filth, and commonly caught diseases caused by these conditions. Some were tortured and some were executed.

The survivors faced tremendous emotional and psychological problems. “They had to struggle to get their lives back in order. They had to return to school, get a job, and make a living. They had to relate to family and friends after having been profoundly changed by their Hong Kong experience. They had to cope with the sense of guilt that they had survived and friends had not. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) did not exist as a term back then. But it certainly did exist as a devastating reality and condition.” (HKVCA, Nick Brune author, pp.35-36)

The Canadian Hong Kong veterans fought long and hard to get compensation for their suffering and the disabilities that followed from it. Compensation was not only monetary; it was also symbolic of recognition and acknowledgement of their sacrifice, and carried the promise that they would not be forgotten at home. The struggle for compensation was long: it was more than forty years after the war, in 1998, that the Canadian government granted compensation to the surviving Hong Kong POWs or their widows. The Japanese government never did so, thus refusing to admit any wrong-doing. For many veterans, receiving compensation is less important than what they feel is their right to an apology from the Japanese government for their treatment.

While our focus is on the fate of the Canadian soldiers who fought to defend Hong Kong, we should not forget that the civilian population of Hong Kong also suffered greatly under the Japanese occupation.

As in mainland China, Korea, Indonesia and elsewhere throughout the Japanese occupied territories, the Japanese raped rampantly and forced thousands of women in Hong Kong—the most common estimate is about 10,000-- to serve the Japanese soldiers as military sex slaves, the so called “comfort women,” and, as elsewhere, many of them died of physical abuse and repeated rape.

Local residents were forced to dig caves to conceal attack boats, and some of them were killed to ensure secrecy. Others were shipped away (to Hainan Island and elsewhere) as slave labourers. Hundreds of thousands were driven back onto the mainland to reduce the island population, and among those who remained many died of starvation. People who continued to live in Hong Kong were impoverished by a forced exchange of currency at artificially low rates; this was another cause of penury and even starvation for some.

Conditions in Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945 were, as in other Japanese-occupied territories, always difficult and often desperate for both prisoners of war and civilians.

Part Two: CANADA IN HONG KONG: 1941-1945 *

Governments make a multitude of decisions in both wartime and peacetime. Those decisions, some brilliant and innovative, others faulty and ill-considered, are arrived at for a host of different reasons by people of influence and power. Without a doubt, decisions made in the course of a war are far more significant in that matters of life and death are involved. Relative to the average citizen, the individuals making those decisions have access to more information, but they do not always have more intelligence. Their decisions can be right or wrong depending on the costs, benefits, consequences, and repercussions of the decision. To be assessed fairly, they must be viewed in light of what the decision makers themselves knew then, not what we know now. Hindsight is indeed 20/20.

However, the Canadian government’s decision in the fall of 1941 to agree to Britain’s request for Canadian troops to bolster Hong Kong defences was not only naive, but ill-conceived, and little short of disastrous. Today, this decision produces very polar views. On the one hand, there is the more traditional interpretation of C.P. Stacey and J.L. Granatstein that the decision was the best one, given the military and political difficulties under which Canada operated. At the other extreme, people such as Brian and Terrence McKenna and Carl Vincent argue that it was a decision of negligence and incompetence. This lesson will examine that decision, the way in which it was made, the possible motives behind the decision, and the initial consequences of the decision. Students involving themselves in the process will begin to appreciate and understand the decision-making model.

Within six months, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s opinion on this issue completely reversed. At the beginning of 1941, he was adamantly opposed to sending more troops to reinforce the garrison at Hong Kong. He argued that to do so was complete folly, and that if Japan went to war with Britain, there “[would] not [be] the slightest chance of holding Hong Kong or relieving it.” However, the British War Office convinced Churchill to alter his thinking. Further, arguing that British troops were too precious to spare, on September 19 Britain formally requested that Canada send “one or two” battalions to Hong Kong to support the British battalions garrisoned there.

Canadian authorities, naively accepted this reversal of British policy in good faith. Nothing in the way of independent investigation was done. No one questioned or challenged the new orthodoxy. Canada simply went along with the British request. To make a bad situation worse, Canada implemented the decision with far too much haste and too little thought. The troops chosen were ill-prepared and minimally trained. Some did not even know how to fire a gun. Their transport and other essential equipment, through bureaucratic incompetence, never arrived.

The tragedy of the Canadian decision to commit troops to Hong Kong in 1941 will be multiplied if succeeding generations fail to learn how it came about. That it was wrong goes without saying, and hardly needs to be debated. However, we must understand how the decision was made, and thus be on guard should something like this happen again. George Santayana’s often-quoted maxim about history applies with devastating force in this situation. “Those who forget their history are fated to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

THE BATTLE

The actual battle for Hong Kong was many things-- short, intense, disorganized, and tragic. For a number of reasons, the 1,975 Canadian troops were thrown into an impossible situation. Virtually every aspect of military planning and strategy worked against them. They were badly out-numbered, ill-equipped, and poorly trained. If that was not bad enough, their leaders were motivated by racist assumptions about the inferiority of the enemy being faced. And finally, against this backdrop, the Canadian troops were ordered to hold an indefensible position. The result was as tragic as it was inevitable – complete defeat.

British intelligence estimated the Japanese strength at about five thousand troops with little artillery support. In reality, the number was ten times that many. In addition, they were battle-hardened troops with considerable fighting experience. And they were fully equipped. Poor planning had resulted in none of the 212 Canadian military vehicles that had been included ever arriving in Hong Kong. The two battalions selected, the Royal Rifles and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, had been on garrison duty, in Newfoundland and Jamaica, respectively. They had absolutely no combat training or experience, and, in fact, had been labelled “unfit for combat” by the high command. The Canadian authorities, deciding that time was of the essence, hastily assembled these troops with very minimal experience. Many had less than five weeks training and several could not even fire a gun. The Allied leadership operated under racist notions about the fighting ability of the Japanese. They believed them to be inferior fighters, unable to see at night, and afraid of the water. As events would sadly prove, nothing could have been further from the truth. The Japanese troops fought with a savage fury and a fearless dedication. Once the Allied position on the peninsula around Kowloon fell in a matter of days, the garrison was forced to try to hold the island of Hong Kong. That would prove to be an impossible task.

Everybody makes mistakes, including governments. However, the consequences when governments make them, particularly in wartime, are far more serious. In this lesson, students will understand and appreciate the results of the Canadian decision to send troops to Hong Kong. Such decisions made in boardrooms by the high command play out with devastating human consequences on the hard ground of reality. Pierre Berton, writing in a recently published book, Marching as to War, called the entire enterprise “a travesty…[and] a blatantly foolish enterprise.” Carl Vincent echoes his sentiments. “There was no reason why Canadian troops should have been dispatched to the doomed outpost of Hong Kong – but through a combination of British cynicism and Canadian thoughtlessness, they were sent anyway.” The greater tragedy may well be if succeeding generations fail to know and applaud the courage of those Canadian troops sent into an impossible situation.

SURVIVING THE PRISONER OF WAR CAMPS

The great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, once sagely noted that the best way to judge the degree of civilization of any society was to visit its prisons. For the 1,685 Canadian survivors of the Battle of Hong Kong, this telling indictment speaks not only of the barbarity of the camps but also of the prisoners’ incredible will to survive. Imprisoned by their Japanese captors in prisoner-of-war camps at North Point on >Hong Kong Island and at Sham Shui Po on Mainland China, the Canadians were forced to endure conditions that could rightly be described as horrific and horrendous. Exhausted from battle, many wounded, they were hoping for the best. What they faced was unknown, but the Geneva Conventions that set out humane rules for the treatment of prisoners gave them some cause for hope. Three and a half years of brutal captivity proved just how illusory those hopes were, and the accuracy of Tolstoy’s reflection.

The Japanese violated the Geneva Conventions with impunity. They set their captors to work – in mines, on the docks, and constructing an airport – all in direct violation of the rules regarding the treatment of prisoners of war. Nevertheless, having to work for the Empire of the Rising Sun may well have been the most minor of the Japanese infractions. Not only did the Japanese work their prisoners cruelly, the conditions in which they were kept were inhumane. Food rations were meagre – often only a small bowl of rice. The huts in which they had to live were rat infested, dark, with no heat. The prisoners were forced to sleep on wooden planks or a cement floor. Given their already weakened conditions, the hard work, and the lack of adequate medical care, diseases were rampant through the camps. Dysentery, thyroid problems, diphtheria, wet beri beri, and dry beri beri (hot feet) infected all but a small handful. Drugs that might have alleviated some of the suffering and saved lives were stolen by camp commanders and sold on the black market. Some prisoners were tortured and others executed.

The camps were, in short, a living hell. The casualty rate was high. While 290 soldiers had died in battle or had been executed by the Japanese, almost the same number died in the POW camps. In total, 554 soldiers of the 1,975 soldiers who originally sailed to Hong Kong were buried or cremated in the Far East. The soldiers who had fought bravely and survived the fighting, in some ways came to envy their fallen comrades. They had come through the battle, but now they faced another challenge in this “hell on earth,” although a very different one. For example, those who were fortunate enough to survive typically lost almost half of their body weight.

This lesson seeks to have students understand and empathize with what these men endured. It is a testament to the indomitable human will to survive. We do them a great disservice if we fail either to remember or to commemorate their struggle.

CORRIGAN L.B. Lieut. The Winnipeg Grenadiers Born: Nov. 11, 1911

Weight: 1941: 195 lbs. Oct. 1943: 140 lbs. July 1945: 160 lbs.

General remarks on 22.5.45:

24.12.41 Sword wound

Right hand - NIL -

8/42 Fever - Aspirin Capt. Reid

R.C.A.M.C.

12/42 Beri beri Oedema feet & ankles

disturbed sensation B1 Injts. -do-

9.2.43 6.3.43 Malaria B.T. - Quinine Major

Course Crawford

R.C.A.M.C.

8.7.43 B avitaminosis Numbness both feet &

legs halfway to knee B1 Injts. -do-

31.8.43 I.A.T.L. fot. - Heat -do-

18.9.43 29.1.44 Dysentary amoebic - Emetine. E.B.I. Capt. Gray

Enterovioform R.C.A.M.C.

Yatrin. Major Swyer

Major Anderson

14.2.44 B avitaminosis.

Sore tongue. Tharyngitis: Local. Maj. Crawford

9.3.44 24.3.44 Peptic ulcer. Complicated by Diet. Alkalis.

diarrhoea, Scabies: Scrubs. -do-

6.9.44 B avitaminosis No complaints Wt. 168

Vision R.20/20 L 20/20 Vit. Capsules -do-

21.9.44 29.944 Sprain L. intercostal muscle. Chest binder -do-

15.1.45 18.1.45 Injury Cut L eyebrow 1 stitch -do-

10.6.45 26.6.45 Malaria B.T. - Quinine gr. Capt.

30d. 8d. Strahan

3.7.45 Peptic Ulcer Epigastric pain gr. Rice diet & eggs

COMPENSATION ISSUES

The great American writer, Thomas Wolfe, entitled one of his novels You Can’t Go Home Again. He intended it in another sense but it is no less appropriate for soldiers returning home from war. “Coming home” from any war is a difficult and often traumatic experience. For Canadian soldiers, returning from Hong Kong was traumatic, and more so. These survivors most certainly felt a myriad of emotions – relief, guilt, confusion, euphoria, frustration, and bitterness. And they were the lucky ones. Close to six hundred soldiers of the original contingent, almost one-third, never returned.

Those Canadian soldiers who did come home were scarred, in many cases permanently. There were the evident physical wounds with which they returned. Many were emaciated, having lost close to half of their normal body weight. That was not altogether surprising, given the fact that they were conscripted labour in the POW camps and fed meagre rations. Most returned with a number of different ailments and diseases. Decades of medical treatment in Canada would alleviate some, though scarcely all of them. The overwhelming majority of returning Hong Kong veterans would endure a lifelong variety of medical problems, from hearing and sight loss to intestinal and digestive difficulties.

As serious as their physical challenges were, they paled in comparison to their emotional and psychological difficulties. They had to be demobilized and reintegrated as civilians. They had to struggle to get their lives back in order. They had to return to school, get a job, and make a living. They had to relate to family and friends after having been profoundly changed by their Hong Kong experience. They had to cope with the sense of guilt that they had survived and friends had not. Post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) did not exist as a term back then. But it certainly did exist as a devastating reality and condition.

And finally, they had to deal with the issue of compensation. Certainly there was the financial aspect to it, that they should be compensated for what they had endured, and for what they had suffered, as well as for the violation of their rights. But that was merely the tip of the iceberg. They wanted to be recognized, to be acknowledged, and not be to forgotten. Compensation was a verification of all those things. In addition, it would be evidence that their own government recognized their suffering, as well as proof that the Japanese government was admitting a wrong and attempting to redress it. Unfortunately, neither government has acted with much dispatch or integrity. It was only in December, 1998, after considerable pressure and lobbying, that the Canadian government granted compensation of $24,000 to each surviving Hong Kong POW, or POW’s widow, after the Japanese refusal to do so.

*This essay is excerpted, by permission of the author, from Canada in Hong Kong: 1941-1945, The Forgotten Heroes, written by Nick Brune for the Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative Association.

Additional References:
www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers
www.remember.sympatico.ca/ww2/
www.valourandhorror.com/HK/HKsyn.htm

Handout 2.3: Japanese-Canadian Internment

The Internment of Japanese-Canadians

While this lesson is about the war in Asia, there was an important piece of North American history being made at home, as a result of the Asian war.

In North America, because of the war in Europe, some restrictions supposedly related to national security were imposed on residents who were of German or Italian birth. But only in the case of the Japanese did these restrictions go beyond curfew hours, and only in the case of the Japanese did they extend to those born in North America. In both Canada and the United States, all persons of Japanese origin, wherever born, were, in 1942, removed from their homes and sent to internment camps, where they were made to stay not only until the War ended, but beyond. In Canada, the majority of the people interned were Canadian citizens. Nonetheless, they were taken from their homes, mostly in British Columbia, to camps as far east as Ontario. Often families were split up. The living conditions in the camps were primitive and difficult. And the people were not free to go where they chose until 1949. It is very clear that the interment of Japanese Canadians was race-based and unjust.

Additional References:

Japanese Canadian timeline and bibliography. Produced by Japanese Canadian National Museum, Burnaby, BC. www.jcnm.ca Students begin on the second page, at the year 1941.

2.From Racism to redress: the Japanese Canadian experience. Produced by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. www.crr.ca

3.Japanese Canadian Internment. Produced by the University of Washington Libraries. www.lib.washington.edu

Handout 2.4: Slave Labour inJapan and the Occupied Territories

Over 61,000 Allied POWs and 250,000 Asian civilians (mainly Chinese, Malay, Tamil and Burmese) were used as slave labourers to build the 415 kilometre-long Burma-Thailand Railway, the infamous "Death Railway.” It is estimated that half of the Asian labourers, and one-fifth of the Allied POWs, perished on the railroad.

Japanese private corporations also relied on slave labourers during the War. An example is Kajima Corporation, a well-known Japanese company. In 1944, a group of 986 Chinese were taken to Japan and forced to work in Kajima's mining and construction site at Hanaoka in northeast Honshu. More than 400 of them died from torture, starvation, and the horrifying conditions of Kajima's slave camp.

Additional References:

www.Vikingphoenix.com/public/Japan incorporated/1895-1945/kajima-1.txt
www.Vikingphoenix.com/public/Japanincorporated/1895-1945/kajima-2.txt

Handout 2.5: The San Francisco Peace Treaty, 1951

San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951

Article 14(a) of the treaty

"It is recognized that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless, it is also recognized that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient if it is to maintain a viable economy to make complete reparation for all such damage and suffering and at the same time meet its other obligations."

Article 14(b) of the treaty:

"Except as otherwise provided in the present treaty, the Allied Powers waive all reparation claims of the Allied Powers, other claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan and its nationals in the course of the prosecution of the war, and claims of the Allied Powers for direct military costs of occupation." Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity

(Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly of the UN resolution 2391 (XXIII) of 26 November 1968, entry into force 11 November 1970).

Preamble of the convention states:
"Noting that the application to war crimes and crimes against humanity of the rules of municipal law relating to the period of limitation for ordinary crime is a matter of serious concern to world public opinion, since it prevents the prosecution and punishment of persons responsible for those crimes.

Recognizing that it is necessary and timely to affirm in international law through this convention the principle that there is no period of limitation for war crimes and crimes against humanity and to secure its universal application.

Article 1 of the convention states:
"No statutory limitation shall apply to the following crimes, irrespective of the date of their commission:

(a) War crimes as they are defined in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, of 8 August 1945 ... for the protection of war victims;

(b) Crimes against humanity whether committed in time of war or in time of peace as they are defined in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, of 8 August 1945... even if such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the country in which they were committed."

Additional references:

www.aplconference.ca/resource/html