Command ability and command responsibility: Lt. Col. Hirateru Banno and the 'F Force' trials (Japan)

The relationship between command ability and criminal responsibility was key to a case in a British military court in Singapore in 1946 that convicted Japanese Lt. Col. Hirateru Banno and six others for the deaths of 3,097 British and Australian prisoners of war, part of a group known as "F Force" on the Burma Thailand Railway during the Second World War. Banno was handed a sentence of three years.; The reviewing officer upheld the sentence, accepting evidence of Banno's inability to command his troops. He also questioned the ability of the senior British officers in the POW camp.; The Banno case took place a year after the precedent-setting trial of Lt. General Tomoyuki Yamashita, which appeared to hold commanders to a strict liability for war crimes committed by their subordinates.; This thesis also examines the status of prisoners and how they are protected by the laws of war as well as the question of fairness in trials by military tribunals.