Radhabinod Pal

Justice Radhabinod Pal (27 January 1886 – 10 January 1967) was an Indian jurist. He was the Indian member appointed to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East's trials of Japanese war crimes committed during the second World War.

Career

Justice Radhabinod Pal was born in 1886 at a small village called 'Salimpur' under 'Taragunia' union of 'Daulatpur' Upazilla of Kushtia District in Bangladesh.

He studied mathematics and constitutional law at Presidency College, Kolkata, and the Law College of the University of Calcutta. He worked as professor at the Law College of the University of Calcutta from 1923 till 1936. He became a judge of Calcutta High Court in 1941 and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta in 1944. The Indian government installed him as a legal adviser in 1927 and dispatched him to the Tokyo Trials in 1946. Pal had no formal training in International law and what knowledge he had of international law was self taught prior to the trial in Tokyo. [ [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087(199224)23%3A1%3C45%3ATOWTSC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087(199224)23%3A1%3C45%3ATOWTSC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J] ] He delivered one of the three dissenting opinions of the Tribunal. He found all the defendants not guilty of Class A war crimes, even though he condemned the Japanese war-time conduct as "devilish and fiendish". He was highly critical of conspiracy and he was unable to apply such a new crime as waging aggressive wars and committing crimes against peace and humanity -- Class A war crimes created by the Allies after the war -- ex post facto. His reasoning influenced the dissenting opinions of the judges for the Netherlands and France.

Following the war-crimes trials, he was elected to the United Nations' International Law Commission, where he served from 1952 to 1966.

War Crimes Trial Dissent

While finding that 'the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war', he produced a judgment questioning the legitimacy of the tribunal and its rulings. He held the view that the legitimacy of the tribunal was suspect and questionable as the spirit of retribution, and not impartial justice, was the underlying criterion for passing the judgment.

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."

He never intended to offer a juridical argument on whether a sentence of not guilty would have been a correct one. However he argued that the United States had clearly provoked the war with Japan and expected Japan to act (Zinn, 411).

He believed that the Tokyo Trial was incapable of passing a just sentence. He considered the trial to be unjust and unreasonable trial, contributing nothing to lasting peace. According to his view, the trial was the judgment of the vanquished by the victors; such proceedings, even if clothed in the garb of law, resulted in nothing but the satisfaction of the desire for vengeance. In his lone dissent, he refers to the trial as a "sham employment of legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge." While he fully acknowledged Japan’s war atrocities — including the Nanjing massacre — he said they were covered in the Class B and Class C trials. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/world/asia/31memo.html Decades After War Trials, Japan Still Honors a Dissenting Judge - New York Times ] ]

Further, he believed that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the use of the atom bomb by the United States from the list of crimes, and judges from the vanquished nations on the bench, signified the "failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate." [ "The Tokyo Judgment and the Rape of Nanking", by Timothy Brook, "The Journal of Asian Studies", August 2001.] In this he was not alone among Indian jurists of the time, one prominent Calcutta barrister writing that the Tribunal was little more than "a sword in a wig". Fear of American nuclear power was widespread among foe and friends following Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Judge Pal's typewritten book-length opposition to the decision was formally prohibited from publication by the Occupation forces and was released in 1952 after the occupation ended and a treaty recognizing the legitimacy of the Tokyo Trials was signed by Japan. Pal's publication had also been prohibited in Great Britain, and it remained unpublished in the United States as well.Fact|date=February 2007 However, a portion of his "original" judgment can be found [http://homepage3.nifty.com/kadzuwo/history/Hall-content.htm here] , and copies of the original text in modern editions are available for sale online.

The American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, after Tokyo signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and accepted the Tokyo trials' verdict. The end of the occupation also lifted a ban on the publication of Judge Pal’s 1,235-page dissent, which Japanese nationalists brandished and began using as the basis of their argument that the Tokyo trials were a sham by selectively choosing passages from his dissent. Even though Pal believed that the Japanese committed atrocities during World War II, his dissenting opinion has been used by Japanese nationalists as evidence that the crimes had never happened. [http://www.archives.gov/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf]

Political background

Pal's lone dissenting opinion that Japan did not wage an aggressive, therefore illegal, war and its leaders cannot be prosecuted as war criminals was surprising and dismissed as a political ploy by his contemporaries. Pal was an anti-imperialist and sincerely believed Japan's propaganda that World War II was fought to liberate Asian people from Western colonization. Pal was also an admirer of the Indian National Army (INA), an Indian army which collaborated with Japan to fight against Great Britain and liberate India from British colonization. Deeply entrenched with this anti-imperialist and anti-West politics, Pal then used legal arguments to excuse the charges against Japan's leaders. Pal also believed that the Tokyo Trials was an exercise in victor's justice and that the Allies were equally culpable in acts such as strategic bombings of civilian targets. In 1966, Pal visited Japan and openly said that he had admired Japan from a young age for being the only Asian nation that "stood up against the West." Regardless of his political opinion, his legal reasoning was a landmark in international law and should more or less balance the charge that his dissent was politically charged. Timothy Brook, "The Tokyo Judgment and the Rape of Nanking", "The Journal of Asian Studies", Vol. 60, No.3 (Aug, 2001), pp. 673-700 ]

ignificance in Indo-Japanese relations

In 1966, the Emperor of Japan conferred upon Pal the First Class of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. Pal is revered by Japanese nationalists and a monument dedicated to him stands on the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine, seen as a symbol of Japan's wartime militarism. [ [http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSSP23909120070824?pageNumber=2 Embattled Japan PM woos back conservatives | International | Reuters ] ] The monument was erected after Pal's death.

Justice Pal's dissent is frequently mentioned by Indian diplomats and political leaders in the context of Indo-Japanese friendship and solidarity. For example, on 29 April 2005 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to it as follows, in his remarks at a banquet in New Delhi in honor of the visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi:

:"It is a noteworthy fact that though we have gone through various phases in our relationship, in times of difficulty, we have stood by each other. It is important to recall that India refused to attend the San Francisco Peace Conference in 1951 and signed a separate Peace Treaty with Japan in 1952" [ [http://meaindia.nic.in/treatiesagreement/1952/chap66.htm http://meaindia.nic.in/treatiesagreement/1952/chap66.htm] ] . This, Pandit Nehru felt, gave to Japan a proper position of honour and equality among the community of free nations. In that Peace Treaty, India waived all reparation claims against Japan. The dissenting judgement of Justice Radhabinod Pal is well-known to the Japanese people and will always symbolize the affection and regard our people have for your country." [ [http://pmindia.nic.in/speech/content.asp?id=114 http://pmindia.nic.in/speech/content.asp?id=114] ]

On December 14, 2006, Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, made a speech in the Japanese Diet. He stated::"The principled judgment of Justice Radhabinod Pal after the War is remembered even today in Japan. Ladies and Gentlemen. These events reflect the depth of our friendship and the fact that we have stood by each other at critical moments in our history."Embassy of India in Japan; [http://www.embassyofindiajapan.org/word/2006primeminister/Diet_Speech_eng.doc Prime Minister's speech to the Japanese Diet] on December 14, 2006 (Doc file)]

On August 23, 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Pal's son, Prasanta, in Kolkata, during his day long visit to the city. Prasanta Pal, now an octogenarian presented prime minister Abe with four photographs of his father, of which two photographs were of Radhabinod Pal with Nobusuke Kishi. They chatted for half an hour at a city hotel. [ [http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-29108320070823?pageNumber=1 Abe risks ire by meeting son of Indian judge | Top News | Reuters ] ]

Quotes

"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. We cannot afford to be ignorant of the world in which disputes arise."

"Even contemporary historians could think that 'as for the present war, the Principality of Monaco, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, would have taken up arms against the United States on receipt of such a note (Hull note) as the State Department sent the Japanese Government on the eve of Pearl Harbor.'"

"When time shall have softened passion and prejudice, when Reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentation, then Justice, holding evenly her scales, will require much of past censure and praise to change places." (Pal here is quoting Jefferson Davis)

"I might mention in this connection that even the published accounts of Nanking "rape" could not be accepted by the world without some suspicion of exaggeration... Referring to the same incident, Sir Charles Addis on that occasion could say: 'Between two countries at war there was always a danger that one or other of the combatants would seek to turn public opinion in his favour by resort to a propaganda in which incidents, inseparable alas from all hostilities, were magnified and distorted for the express purpose of inflaming prejudice and passion and obscuring the real issues of the conflict.'" (page 606 of his Dissent)

Notes

References

* Pal, Radhabinod. "Judgment." In The Tokyo Judgment: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) 29 April 1946 - 12 November 1948. Edited by B. V. A. Röling and C. F. Rüter. Amsterdam: University Press Amsterdam, 1977.

* Nandy, Ashish. The Savage Freud and Other Essays on Possible and Retrievable Selves. Delhi; London: OUP, 1995. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995.

* Pal, Radhabinod. [http://homepage3.nifty.com/kadzuwo/history/Hall-content.htm "In Defense of Japan's Case 1 & Case 2" (Vol. 1 & 2)]

External links

* http://www.nankingatrocities.net/Tribunals/imtfe_01.htm (includes a picture and additional details)
* http://homepage3.nifty.com/kadzuwo/history/Hall-content.htm (Original judgment by Justice Radhabinod Pal)
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/world/asia/31memo.html?ex=1346299200&en=005794f37666dd1a&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink Decades After War Trials, Japan Still Honors a Dissenting Judge]