This article highlights the cross-disciplinary methodological potential of Third World approaches to international law (TWAIL) and microhistory by studying the active and complex exercise of agency by victims in an understudied historical instance of post-war justice, namely, the Singapore ‘Sook Ching’ trial or Nishimura trial. This trial dealt with the arbitrary massacre of Chinese residents by the Japanese military during the Second World War. Using TWAIL and microhistory methods, this article analyses trial transcripts and archival material on the Nishimura trial, with a focus on the trial experiences of witnesses, survivors, and community representatives. By studying the Nishimura trial as mobilization and meaning-making opportunity, this microhistory draws attention to the exercise of social and political agency by the Chinese community under difficult post-war conditions and British colonial rule. Chinese community leaders represented the community as collectively victimized and united in the pursuit of post-war justice. However, a close analysis of trial transcripts reveals tensions within the community and the need for a more complex understanding of victimhood.

Between 1945 and 1949, the British military conducted a large number of war crimes trials in Europe and Asia. Based on historical archival records, among other sources, this article evaluates and compares the British authorities’ implementation of the 1945 Royal Warrant and war crimes trials in Europe and Asia, with a specific focus on trials organized in Germany and Singapore. By examining the British war crimes trial experience in those two jurisdictions, the article analyzes factors shaping the evolution of the Royal Warrant's legal framework and trial model in different contexts. It therefore contributes to the growing historical work on post-Second World War trials and current debates among scholars of transitional justice and international criminal law on the contextual factors that impact on war crimes trials.

By studying British Indian Army [BIA] desertions during World War II, and British postwar trial responses, this paper explores the complicated dimensions of desertion and draws attention to the need for a more explicit and comprehensive approach to desertion in international humanitarian law. The paper focuses on less known British trials dealing with desertion, namely, war crimes trials conducted by the British in Singapore. It examines how these trials dealt with contested interpretations of desertion. Drawing on lessons from these trials, the paper then highlights gaps in today’s international humanitarian law framework, specifically, the need to take into account the realities of desertion, its different permutations, and the difficulties of differentiating between prisoners of war [POWs] and deserters.

After the Second World War, the British military organised 131 war crimes trials in Singapore, which served as the base for British war crimes investigations in Asia. These trials brought together diverse participants-judges and counsel from the UK, India, and other Allied countries; accused persons from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan; defence counsel from Japan; and witnesses from all over Asia. The majority of defendants in these trials did not deny their involvement in the war crimes concerned; instead, these defendants argued that their conduct was consistent with Japanese norms, beliefs and practices. This article explores trial participants' varied and contested interpretations of the culturally influenced arguments put forward by the defence.