Radhabinod Pal: The forgotten “Japanese” post-war Hero

You might be a little confused about how an Indian person can be a Japanese post-war hero. Just yesterday, I was watching one of the many miniseries available on Netflix. While the series as a whole was very informative and lived up to my expectations, but what caught my attention, even more, was the curious case of the hero of today’s story, the Indian Judge who was part of it, Radhabinod Pal. That’s correct today I am going to remember the Historic Tokyo Trials and the great Radhabinod Pal.

Pal was a judge on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), which was set up by the Allied powers, post World War II, to try Japanese leaders for “war crimes". The other 10 judges were from the US, Canada, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, China, and the Philippines, representing every nation which burnt in the fire of Japanese Imperialism.

The court found all the 25 defendants guilty. Seven were sentenced to death, 16 to life imprisonment, and two were sentenced to 20 years and seven years in prison, respectively.

Why Pal, you all might still wonder? Well, It is because Pal was the sole dissenting judge who exonerated all the arrested suspects of all charges. Making him an excellent example of the Integrity of the absolute highest levels.

You can say IMTFE or the popularly called Tokyo Trials were a token act, where hardly anyone was doubtful about the judgment of trials. The war was over with an allied victory and history is always written by the victors. In this case, trials were drafted under the leadership of the United States. The charges were categorized into classes A, B, and C. The class A charge involved crimes against peace (waging aggressive war). Classes B and C charges covered conventional war crimes and crimes against humanity, respectively. In fact, Pal was included as a judge after the trial proceedings had started, suspected to be a mere Asian presence in the tribunal.

Pal refused to be the token Indian on the bench.

He surprised—rather, shocked, embarrassed, and angered—his colleagues. Pal pointed out that the tribunal could not apply the class A and class C charges—crimes against peace and crimes against humanity—with retrospective effect. There were no such crimes listed under international law when Japan had gone to war, so Japan could hardly have broken any law. By trying the defendants under these charges, the tribunal was going against every accepted legal procedure. The indictments themselves were invalid. The very charter (known as the Tokyo Charter) that set up the tribunal, transgressed the fundamental rules of international law, said Pal. The Tokyo Charter, he argued, ought to decide merely what matters would come up for trial before the tribunal. It should be up to the tribunal to determine whether these acts constituted any crime under appropriate laws. Basically, his logic was that we cannot simply make a new law criminalizing any act and then holding someone from past guilty for the same. (By that logic, who knows even Jefferson would be tried for holding slaves, No??)

In his 1,235-page dissenting judgment, Pal wrote that the tribunal was “sham employment of legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge". He pointed to the “failure of the tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate". He concluded: “I would hold that every one of the accused must be found not guilty of every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges." When it came to conventional war crimes (which he agreed was an indictment permissible under law), Pal recognized the fact that the Japanese army had behaved abominably in the territories that it conquered—especially in China; he called the atrocities in Nanking (now Nanjing, and then the capital of the Republic of China) “devilish" and “fiendish".

Also, asked Pal, had the defendants committed any greater crimes against humanity than the US had done in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The British and American air forces then developed precise scientific methods of firebombing civilian populations to cause maximum deaths with maximum efficiency. On the night of 9-10 March 1945, in the single most destructive airstrike in human history, American bombers killed an estimated 100,000 civilians in Tokyo—20,000-30,000 more than were killed instantly in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

“Questions of law are not decided in an intellectual quarantine area in which legal doctrine and the local history of the dispute alone are retained and all else is forcibly excluded," he wrote. “We cannot afford to be ignorant of the world in which disputes arise."

In his judgment, Pal questioned the very moral right of the Allies to condemn Japanese imperialism when large parts of humanity had been colonies of British and other Western powers for two centuries or more.

In recent years, Japanese revisionist historians have used sections of Pal’s judgment to bolster their argument that the Japanese were not aggressors or invaders in World War II. Pal would not have been pleased. He had never supported what Japan had done. What he had said was that Japan could not and should not be singled out for its imperialist lust. In fact, in a speech he delivered at Hiroshima in 1952 (he had been invited by the Japanese government), he said: “If Japan wishes to possess military power again, that would be a defilement against the souls of the victims we have here in Hiroshima." Making it clear that he wasn’t someone with a soft corner for Japan but a righteous man who weighed everyone on the same scale.

In his judgment, he wrote: “I doubt not that the need of the world is the formation of an international community under the reign of law, or correctly, the formation of a world community under the reign of law, in which nationality or race should find no place."

A shoulder with the responsibility of millions

Pal would be in Tokyo when India gained freedom and was partitioned (his village would go to East Pakistan). All these events back home would have been on Pal’s mind as he worked in a far-off alien land, first as the sole representative of the colonized world, and then of a newly free people. The job at the Tokyo tribunal would have demanded much more from him than from any of the other judges.

Reading about Pal today, what is astonishing is his courage and integrity, as he stood by his principles and refused to give in to the tremendous pressures he must have faced from his fellow judges on the tribunal. (You should remember India was still a British Colony at the time of trials).

In Japan, this Bengali jurist elicits the kind of recognition and reverence that other countries reserve for the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. He has a memorial in Yasukuni Shrine, where all the martyrs of the Japanese army are buried. He was also immortalized with his own memorial in the Kyoto Ryozen Gokoku Shrine. It should also be noted that when Shinzo Abe, visited India in 2007, he made it his priority to meet with this great Man’s son and show his gratitude. I would also highly recommend the show “Tokyo Trials” for those who haven’t watched it.

It has been almost 75 years since the Tokyo trial ended. It may be a good time to remember this brave and patriotic man who showed us, no matter what are the circumstances one should be true to his fundamentals. It is disheartening that the one who is so respected in Japan remains unknown in his own homeland.

I hope this article is read by a lot of people and they can pay respect to this great man.

Follow my space Quizzing Palace in quora too for more such hidden stories of rich Indian History.

~Ciao

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