MELBOURNE, May 2 (Xinhua) -- As this year marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Tokyo Trials, Robert Barwick, Australian Citizens Party's National Chairman, has urged his fellow countrymen and the wider world to remember it and its significance to justice, humanity and the post-World War II international order.

From May 3, 1946, to Nov. 12, 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East tried Class-A Japanese war criminals during World War II in a series of international trials in Tokyo, known as the "Tokyo Trial."

Barwick said the Tokyo Trials were an attempt to bring justice to the perpetrators of these atrocities and war crimes, but the outcomes were compromised.

"There were some executions, there were hundreds sentenced to prison, and it felt like justice had been done, except then the Americans released a whole bunch of them," he noted.

Fourteen Class-A war criminals, convicted at the Tokyo Trials, were even enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japanese militarism and wartime aggression.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi recently sent offerings to the notorious shrine to which a cross-party group of Japanese lawmakers paid a visit.

"That is bitterly disappointing," Barwick said, "There's a political tendency in Japan to think that that's okay to do that, that there's no problem with them doing that."

Barwick said Japan is under a pacifist constitution, but there is "a very disturbing tendency" represented by the Yasukuni Shrine-related movements by Japanese political figures and also the gradual relaxation of defence equipment export restraints.

"What it tells you is that there's a growing movement within Japan, and especially in the ruling party, to whitewash their own history at a time when they are remilitarizing."

Barwick admitted that he did not know until he was nearly 50 years old how much China contributed to the fight against Japan during WWII.

"When my grandfather was fighting valiantly on the Kokoda Track (in Papua New Guinea), one of the reasons that he (and his fellowmen) succeeded and held back the Japanese was because he never faced the full might of Japan, because half of it was bogged down in China and China was resisting. That's the truth of the end of WWII."

"And if you're not (aware of the Tokyo Trials), you should ask why, because that will lead you to an understanding that there's a lot of propaganda going around at the moment that's trying to make you believe that black is white, up is down."■