After World War II, the Allied Powers put high profile Axis leaders on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. One of these trials, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) tried Japanese leaders and led to a controversial outcome. This type of trial endeavors to not only to punish those guilty of war crimes, but also to help a society heal and move away from an era of oppression. This paper analyzes the IMTFE to determine whether it was successful or not in achieving its goals through a political, legal, and historical lens and analyzes the IMTFE in its own context as well as in comparison to other well-known international tribunals. The IMTFE had mixed results because though it was a largely successful criminal trial that made important contributions to international transitional justice, it failed in other ways due to defects such as procedural flaws, the absence of many crucial leaders from the indictment, and a Majority Opinion that fell short as a communicative document.  Carrying out this project involved examining the record of the trial, later works that critiqued the IMTFE and primary documents written by key players in the trial. Further research on the subject should compare the IMTFE to more recent efforts to determine whether changing certain features have an impact on the transition of a society.