Following World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union conducted trials at the Nuremberg and Khabarovsk tribunals, respectively, prosecuting 35 individuals involved in medical crimes as organizers, participants, and collaborators. While these trials exhibited significant differences in legal foundations, evidence-gathering methods, judicial processes, and sentencing outcomes—reflecting the complexities of distinct social systems, legal frameworks, and value orientations—they demonstrated notable similarities in the charges and convictions of defendants for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This alignment likely stems from the inherent types and characteristics of medical crimes committed by Nazi Germany and wartime Japan. Both tribunals relied heavily on material evidence and witness testimonies during investigations, trials, and verdicts, which became pivotal to judicial rulings and provided critical insights into the medical crimes. To varying degrees, these trials held defendants accountable for wartime atrocities, punished egregiously unethical criminal physicians, and left indelible marks on the history of war tribunals. They also laid the historical groundwork for postwar medical ethics principles. The Permissible Medical Experiments outlined during the Nuremberg trials gradually evolved into the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Declaration. The Khabarovsk trial, meanwhile, marked humanity's first public prosecution of bacteriological warfare crimes, serving as a pioneering documentation of Japanese medical atrocities. It established a factual foundation for global academic research into evidence of bacteriological warfare and human experimentation. Through media coverage, literary works, historical studies, and museum exhibitions, the trial has transitioned from a historical event into collective memory, amplifying its historical significance and contemporary relevance. As "historical legacies", both medical tribunals established benchmarks for identifying perpetrators, factual determinations, and defining the nature of medical crimes. Notably, the Nuremberg Code has become the cornerstone of modern ethics in human experimentation, underscoring the tribunals' lasting contributions and current relevance. This framework suggests that future analyses of medical crimes perpetrated by entities such as the Japanese Army Medical School, Unit 731, and Kyushu Imperial University could be examined through the lens of the Nuremberg Code. Such studies would systematically elucidate the extreme, organized, and militarized features of Japanese medical crimes, as well as their intrinsic connections to the era's sociopolitical environment, institutional structures, and medical systems.