Yes some Japanese were tried and hung for torturing American prisoners during World War II with techniques that included waterboarding. Here is more on that topic at the bottom.
Source(s):
http://www.kirotv.com/politics/14728128/detail.html#-

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Japanese were tried and executed for torture methods that included methods much more extreme than waterboarding. A few examples are cited in the sources below and briefly described here.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/LeonardGSiffleet.jpg

Aitape, New Guinea, 1943. An Australian soldier, Sgt Leonard Siffleet, about to be beheaded with a shin gunto sword. Many Allied prisoners of war (POWs) were summarily executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.

Tales were told by surviving prisoners and soldiers who found the mutilated bodies of their lost comrades. How the Japanese placed Bamboo shoots under the tied down Allied Prisoner. The bamboo shoots are rapid growing, even so it might take days for a prisoner to finally die from the sharpened Bamboo tips that pierced their body bit by painful, slowly, bit.

Some prisoners that were captured had their testicles and private parts cut off, then placed into their mouths and their mouths sewn up. Then they would send the prisoner back to the Allied Battle lines.

Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. One of the most infamous was Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, amputations, and were used to test biological weapons, among other experiments. Anesthesia was not used because it was believed to affect results. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths.

One of the most notorious cases of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine out of 12 crew members survived the crash of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on May 5, 1945. (This plane was Lt. Marvin Watkins' crew of the 29th Bomb Group of the 6th Bomb Squadron.28). The bomber's commander was sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.

Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel in many parts of Asia and the Pacific committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. In many cases this was inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel as a result of hunger. However, according to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers". This frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies.

Seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.
Source(s):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/37/a4865637.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#The_crimes

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It seems so.

It's hard to find original sources, but reputable secondary sources seem to be clear that it was considered a war crime. It's not 100% clear from the sources whether the people were hanged for waterboarding specifically, as they may have been found guilty of several different crimes, but by the sound of it, it was considered deserving of severe punishment.

Most detailed is this article by an author who's written a book about aspects of Japan's history in WW2:

http://robinrowland.com/garret/2005/11/waterboarding-is-war-crime.html

-- quote --

The man who authorized those techniques at the Singapore YMCA, Lt. Col. Sumida, was sentenced to hang. Sumida, in his statement during the trial said, “I felt the state of peace and order and this serious incident were related and that a thorough measure should be taken to prevent the recurrence of such serious incidents.”

-- /quote --

See also articles by the Washington Post and NPR:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834
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I don't think there is any evidence of people being executed specifically for waterboarding (though, as mentioned above, someone got fifteen years for it, while another got a life sentence)..

What is important to realize is that waterboarding (or the "Water Cure" as they called it) was just one in a very comprehensive arsenal of torture techniques used by the Japanese against prisoners and civilians.
Source(s):
http://www.theworld.org/node/25807
http://www.historynet.com/japanese-war-crime-trials.htm
http://blogs.georgetown.edu/?id=28978
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/69/a4641969.shtml

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There are already a number of high-quality responses to this question.

Given the current political context of this question, it might be worthwhile to consider a related question:

"Were the proper channels of government followed to approve the US policy of waterboarding, or was it a Bush/Cheney unilateral cowboy-style approach to international terrorism?"

--Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002--
FTA: "The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html

--Pelosi Says She Was "Never Briefed" on Waterboarding--
FTA: " 'We were not told of waterboarding or any other enhanced interrogation methods used,' Pelosi told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference."
FTA: "Waterboarding was an interrogation technique that the CIA used on only three top al Qaeda detainees and only after the Justice Department had issued opinion stating that it was legal for the CIA to use the procedure."
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=47108

Also,
--CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles--
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46949
FTA: “The ‘waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘other interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.' "

I offer no analysis of these reports, except that it seems this is murky water. To what lengths is it acceptable to go to protect one's country? If the proper judicial channels are followed, is it reasonable to prosecute those who may have engaged in questionable behavior in hindsight? Are the excesses of the Japanese WWII imperialistic endeavor comparable to a response to a grand scheme of international terrorism?
Source(s):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR200712080...
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=47108
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46949

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