Release of Archives Helps Fill Gap in Files on Wartime Atrocities

Whether it is the hunt for the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust, the restitution of looted artworks, or new evidence of the complicity of governments in that immense crime against humanity by Germany and its allies, U.S. public interest in European war crimes has not flagged since the end of World War II. But the war crimes committed by Japan--including biological warfare, human experimentation, and massacres--have attracted much less attention in the six decades since the war's conclusion, though events such as the publication of Iris Chang's book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II in 1997 created spikes in public interest. This article talks about the efforts made by the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group of filling the gap in files on wartime atrocities.