Kanode, woman at Tokyo, in illustrious company

(credit)

(Part 2 of a 2-part series; Part 1 is here)

Attorney Grace Kanode Llewellyn (below left) worked as a prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (right), and holds the distinction of being the first woman to appear before an international criminal tribunal.
In my posting yesterday, I introduced Kanode to IntLawGrrls readers, and described what I have discovered thus far of her legal career. As I mentioned, when Judge William Webb of Australia, President of the IMTFE, greeted Grace Kanode Llewellyn before the tribunal on July 1, 1946, he stated,

'We welcome you cordially. You probably are the first woman to appear before an International Military Tribunal.'

Kanode, however, was not the only woman to appear before a war crimes tribunal during that nascent era of international criminal law.  Half a world away at Nuremberg, prosecutors were simultaneously prosecuting the worst criminals of Nazi Germany.
As we know from scholars such as Diane Marie Amann, Diane Orentlicher, and John Q. Barrett, who have brought to light the contributions of women at postwar trials in Nuremberg, one woman played a key role in drafting the London Charter that set up the International Military Tribunal, and in the later Nuremberg proceedings quite a few women distinguished themselves as prosecutors.
Yet Judge Webb’s kind welcome to Kanode is corroborated by records indicating that no woman appeared during the first “Trial of the Major War Criminals” at Nuremberg. This trial lasted from November 14, 1945, to October 1, 1946, and thus Kanode’s appearance at Tokyo, in July 1946, was likely the first by a woman.
Kanode was not the only woman at Tokyo:

Los Angeles Times photo of, from left, Eleanor Jackson, Virginia Bowman, Grace Kanode Llewellyn, Bettie Renner, and Lucille Brunner, published April 15, 1946

► The prosecution team also included, as depicted above, U.S. lawyers Eleanor Jackson, Virginia Bowman, Bettie Renner (about whom, this tragic article), and Lucille Brunner.
► Eleanor Bontecou worked for the War Department and helped prepare for the prosecution of major war criminals in the Pacific theater. (prior IntLawGrrls post)
► A Dutch woman was also listed as assistant prosecution counsel: Mrs. C.R. Strooker.
► American Helen Grigware Lambert gave the final summation against the defendant Naoki Hoshino, a highly influential government official of Manchukuo who served as the Vice Minister of Financial Affairs during the war.
Kanode’s obituary indicated that she was

'believed to be the first woman ever to figure in the proceedings of a military tribunal.'

Though she was the first, she was among illustrious company globally.

Women at Nuremberg redux

At the IntLawGrrls-sponsored "Women and International Criminal Law" roundtable this Friday, I'll have the privilege to hear comments on the latest of my research regarding women who played roles in the Allies' Trial of the Major War Criminals, as well as subsequent trials that the United States held after World War II at Nuremberg, Germany.
The research owes much to IntLawGrrls' alumna Diane Orentlicher, now Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, at the U.S. Department of State. She dedicated her work on the blog to "Beatrice," the presumed name of an unremembered woman who prosecuted defendants at Nuremberg. Eventually, Diane determined that any number of women might have been "Beatrice." The most likely candidate was "Ceil" Goetz (above right); the quest for her and her sisters at Nuremberg first was explored in my "Women at Nuremberg" series of blog posts.
My roundtable essay, Cecelia Goetz, Woman at Nuremberg, tells more about Goetz, an American woman who turned 30 at Nuremberg. Included are not only details on how and why she became a prosecutor in the Krupp trial, but also a life story marked by many “first woman” chapters -- on the law review at New York University School of Law, at the U.S. Department of Justice, and, after Nuremberg, in the federal judiciary.
This essay follows upon another overview, "Portraits of Woman at Nuremberg," published recently in Proceedings of the Third International Humanitarian Law Dialogs (Elizabeth Andersen & David M. Crane eds., 2010). "Portraits" places women at the trials within the context of social developments during the post-World War II era. Mentioned are women who were defendants, journalists, or witnesses; however, the focus is on women, mostly Americans, who served as prosecutors at Nuremberg. Among the latter was Sadie Arbuthnot, depicted at left in a photo recently discovered in Harvard Library's digital trove.
Later a judge in the United States' court system in Germany and after marriage a lawyer at NASA, Arbuthnot too was a woman at Nuremberg.
More to come.

Women at Nuremberg: Prosecutors

As promised, the 1st in a series about women at the Nuremberg trials:
Readers may recall that for months we at IntLawGrrls have stayed on the trail of women who served on the team that prosecuted defendants before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The quest was launched by Diane Orentlicher, who's assumed the IntLawGrrl nom de plume of "Beatrice" in recognition of a conversation that our colleague Patricia Viseur-Sellers had with IMT prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz; he said

that, along with another woman whose name he could not recall, 'Beatrice' was part of the Nuremberg Prosecution team.

Later, another source relayed a story that 1 of the women at Nuremberg was married to a male prosecutor, a fact the couple tried to keep quiet.
Sleuthing's led us to believe that Ferencz might've had in mind Cecelia H. Goetz, a New Yorker who appeared before the bench during the "industrialists" trial of Alfred Krupp. Other names of women prosecutors at Nuremberg also have surfaced: Phillis Heller Rosenthal, Belle Mayer Zeck, and Mary Kaufman.
Questions remain:
Were those 4 all the women who prosecuted at Nuremberg? These are Americans -- did women work with the Russian, English, or French teams? And what of "Beatrice"?
According to a slim but excellent volume I picked up this summer at Nuremberg, the answer to the 1st question quite clearly is "no."
In his German-English book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials (2001), Peter Heigl writes:

[I]t is interesting to point out that staffs were comprised about equally of both genders, with the exception of the all-male judges and the prosecutors and defense lawyers; at the follow-up trials there were three female prosecutors and a few female defendants. (pp. 52-53)

The only 1 of those "3" prosecutors whom Heigl gives a name is altogether new: Dorothea G. Minskoff, pictured above next to a defense attorney at a Ministries case hearing. No other names're mentioned, nor any more information given.
A 1948 directory of IMT personnel, however, provides additional clues. Goetz is listed, as is to be expected, and Mary Kaufman, too. But the only Mayer was named Hilde, and neither Heller nor Rosenthal is there. An interesting find: the listing for Dorothea G. Minskoff reveals her at the same address as Emanuel Minskoff, a prosecutor in the I.G. Farben case. Is this the couple mentioned in the story above?
Even more intriguing, 2 women named Beatrice served at IMT in 1948, Beatrice E. Benford and Beatrice O. Bushnell. Might 1 be our "Beatrice"?

Still to come in this Women at Nuremberg series: Staffers, Press, Witnesses, and, alas, those Defendants.