New digital tools document WWII war crimes

The War Crimes Documentation Initiative (WCDI), a UH Mānoa digital humanities lab, has released two new tools that shed light on Japanese war crimes in Asia and the Pacific during World War II, with a third coming soon. 

Led by a multidisciplinary team of historians, librarians and GIS specialists, WCDI develops interactive digital resources that map, contextualize and analyze data to help users explore how Japanese military operations, government and power structures, and war crimes intersected across space and time.

The initiative’s latest resources include:

• An interactive ArcGIS map: War Crimes against Ethnic Chinese: A Case Study of Group-Selective Violence by the Japanese during the War in the Pacific, 1941–1945 geospatially visualizes the postwar Allied trials involving war crimes committed against ethnic Chinese communities. The map highlights how Japan’s prolonged war against China (1931-1945) spilled over into the Pacific Theater (1941-1945), revealing patterns of targeted violence, intimidation and coercion against Chinese populations overseas.

• A text-searchable source: Imamura Statements: The 8th Area Army Commander’s Apologia for Japanese War Crimes at Fortress Rabaul was digitized with Text Encoding Initiative standards to provide scholars with a searchable historical resource. The two statements General Imamura Hitoshi submitted during his 1947 war crimes trial in Australia reveal how much the former commander knew about the Japanese military’s abuse of prisoners of war around Rabaul—Japan’s main operating base in the South Pacific—and how he viewed the merit of the postwar proceedings against his subordinates and himself. 

• A StoryMap Exhibit (forthcoming): “The Sook Ching Massacre: Promises and Limitations of a British Singapore War Crimes Trial, March 10–April 2, 1947” will explore one of the most notorious cases of group-selective violence against ethnic Chinese civilians and how Allied war crimes prosecutions sought to document war atrocities and deliver justice – often with mixed results.

Since its launch in 2019, WCDI’s objective has been to empower users to discover, analyze and assess the Japanese conduct of war and military occupation during WWII. Its interactive maps, searchable archives and digital exhibits help make complex historical evidence more accessible to scholars, students and the public – and encourages continued conversations about justice and accountability.

“WCDI’s projects illuminate the scale and patterns of WWII Japanese war crimes in Asia and the Pacific. They expose students and researchers to primary sources, information and data otherwise hidden or difficult to discover because of language barriers or being deeply buried in historical documents,” said Theodore Kwok, geospatial librarian in Hamilton Library’s Government Documents and Maps department. “These projects aim to reimagine and visualize patterns and events to stimulate student interest in further research.”

Yuma Totani, the UH Mānoa history professor who spearheaded WCDI, has collaborated with Hamilton Library to help build awareness of the library’s resources and encourage students to use them. In the process, the team has also expanded the library’s resources in these areas.

“WCDI has a terrific team of librarians whose expertise in digital technologies, knowledge in the fields of the humanities, and commitment to collaborative work have been invaluable,” she said. “It is thanks to them that WCDI has been able to produce a wide variety of original digital humanities products using ArcGIS, Text Encoding Initiative and graph database.”To explore all of the WCDI digital resources, please visit manoa.hawaii.edu/wcdi.