Features of the Center's Archive
The Center's collection is unique. It comprises two major divisions involving trial records from the Pacific and European theaters in WWII. Most of the trial
records in our holdings have never before been reproduced and for
this reason have scarcely been accessible to researchers and practitioners.
These records include some case files that are still sealed in the countries
where the trials took place, but which we have obtained through the
cooperation of other archival sources. For example, we have an ongoing project to collect the records of trials of Japanese war criminals held before Chinese military tribunals, 1945-1948. Our archival work is particularly
timely and urgent because some of the materials may serve as valuable
reference materials for current tribunals, and much of the original
documents are in danger of deterioration. We conduct our archival projects in close collaboration with our partner center at the University of Marburg, which has implemented a number of important initiatives in this area.
Our researchers are currently collaborating with a number of archives
including:
- The British Public Records Office
- The Australian National Archives
- The Australian War Memorial,
- The Singapore National Archives,
- The Dutch War Documentation Center
- The U.S. National Archives,
- The National Archives of Japan
- The Italian Miltary Archives
- Academica Sinica, Taiwan
Our current large-scale projects include the following:
- Creation of a catalogue and index to the individual
national war crimes programs
- Compilation of a resource guide to over 500,000 pages of trial transcripts
in our holdings
- Online summaries and analyses of selected WWII cases - Programming
of a searchable database of war crimes trials in collaboration with
the University of Marburg, which will eventually be available online
for public use.
Preservation
of Oral History
In addition
to archival preservation of written documentation, the Center also
aims to preserve the memories of the victims of war crimes, and the
participants in war crimes trials. There have been major oral history
projects for the Holocaust, but none for the war crimes trials in
Asia. As such, the Center is carrying out an oral history project
with the National Archive of Singapore, The National University of
Singapore, and with Japanese and Singaporean scholars.
