400 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )
Th e majority of the bench, however, ruled all twenty- eight of the defen-
dants to be guilty of at least one charge. Seven were sentenced to hang. Th e
various sentences of imprisonment proved to be less severe than they ap-
peared when handed down. All of the surviving prisoners who received life
sentences were released on parole by the postoccupation Japa nese govern-
ment in 1954– 56. One of the convicted defendants— Shigemitsu Mamoru,
the former foreign minister— reentered politics and even served another
stint as foreign minister.
A New World Parliament
Th e League of Nations maintained a vestigial existence throughout the Sec-
ond World War, fi nally being offi cially wound up in 1946. By that time, it
had been supplanted by the UN, whose charter was approved in San Fran-
cisco in April 1945. Th is new or ga ni za tion was, in essence, a continuation
into peacetime of the war time alliance (offi cially known as the “United Na-
tions”). A principal change from the League system was that collective secu-
rity was now placed onto a po liti cal rather than a legal basis. Instead of an
automatic duty of states to support one another in the face of aggression, as
provided in the League Covenant, decisions on collective action were to be
taken by a po liti cal body— the Security Council— on an ad hoc basis. Th e
Security Council, originally comprising nine states, had fi ve permanent
members (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China)—
each with a veto power over substantive decisions.
One of the most important diff erences between the UN and the League
was that the UN Charter contained— as the League Covenant conspicu-
ously did not— a general prohibition against the use of force by states. Th e
resort to armed force was not merely confi ned within procedural barriers,
as in the League system, but was outright prohibited in principle, as in the
Pact of Paris. In one important respect, though, the UN Charter went even
beyond the pact: it prohibited “the threat or use of force” in general, and
not merely the resort to “war.” It has therefore been generally accepted
that forcible reprisals fall within the scope of the UN Charter’s prohibi-
tion (a point confi rmed by the World Court in 1996). Th e charter also
diff ered from the pact in making explicit allowance for armed force in
self- defense.