• Item: war crimes prosecuted in WWII include aggressive war (starting a war with no need to defend oneself), wanton attacks on civilian targets, and even killing helpless members of the military such as wounded and sick soldiers, shipwrecked or capsized sailors, prisoners of war, and anyone who has surrendered or is otherwise hors de combat. Thus giving the order "Take No Prisoners" is inherently a war crime.
• Item: US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, while serving on the Nuremberg Tribunal, made a major point that the very same principles imposed upon the Axis officer defendants would — if the issue ever came up — be inposed upon Allied (e.g. US) officer defendants.
• Item: Among the Axis defendants executed for war crimes was a civilian head of government, Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō.
No sirens first — no shattered glass,
but paper sealed, and hours that pass
with something gathering, cold and slow,
in rooms where buried ledgers grow.
The ink is dry. The names are set.
Each line recalls a living debt.
Not whispered now, nor cast aside —
but read aloud, and verified.
The chambers fill. The record stands.
No crown can steady trembling hands
when oaths return, no longer bent,
but sharpened into evidence.
They come not robed in myth or flame,
but clerks who call each given name,
and voices — steady, sworn, precise —
that weigh a life against its price.
No rally’s roar can reach this place,
no gilded lie can mask a face
when every claim is turned and tried
against the truth it once denied.
Impeachment spoken, count by count,
no spectacle — just mounting weight,
A ledger balanced, hard, exact
where power yields at last to fact.
And farther still — beyond the shore —
where older statutes wait their hour,
the crimes that crossed both land and sea
are met with jurisdiction’s key.
No single bench, no single pen,
but nations speaking, now and then,
in measured terms that leave no doubt:
the world has called the record out.
No sudden fall. No tyrant’s scream.
A verdict carried, slow, supreme —
the closing of a long-deferred
and long-resisted final word.
They stand — not martyrs, not undone
by force, but by what they've done;
And in that light, so clear, so plain,
no mask survives, no boast remains.
The portals close. The candles dim.
Not chaos — but the weight of them:
a system, strained, yet standing still
enough to bend — and then to will
that law, though late, is not denied,
that truth, though buried, will be tried,
and those who fashioned harm as art
will meet the sum of every part.
No fire falls. No heavens break.
No spectacle for vengeance’ sake —
just something firmer, harder won:
a reckoning that does not run.
— 23 Apr. 2026
© 2026 by C.M. Joserlin, "Raven"
Created in collaboration with Perplexity,
an AI writing assistant powered by GPT‑5.
