Remembering Justice Radhabinod Pal
To mark the 65th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, the Deccan Herald is running an article today about Justice Radhabinod Pal, the Indian justice who was the lone dissenter at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials:
“Guilty,” pronounced one judge after another, until a voice thundered, “Not Guilty!”
The disbelieving gasps came first and then came the shocked silence and one could hear a needle drop. That voice of dissent belonged to Justice Radha Binod Pal ( 1886 – 1967). A grateful Japan has not forgotten this famous Judge.Radha Binod Pal believed that the Tokyo Trial was incapable of passing a just sentence. According to him, the trial was about the moral subjugation of the vanquished by the victorious and such proceedings, even if clothed in the garb of law, resulted in only placating those still hungering for vengeance.
With his lone dissenting voice, he referred to the trial as a “sham employment of the legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge.” While he fully acknowledged Japan’s war atrocities — including the Nanjing massacre of 1931 — he said they were covered in the class B and C class C trials, and not in this War Criminal Trial which is known as Class A.
(Justice Pal is treated as a hero by Japanese nationalists, and anyone who has visited Yasukuni Shrine has probably seen the above-pictured memorial near its Yushukan museum.)
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