Fact Box: Justice Radha Binod Pal

May 18, 2013

Justice Radha Binod Pal- An important link b/w Indo-Japan foreign relations
He was an Indian jurist who was a legal adviser to Indian government in 1927.
He was dispatched to the Tokyo Trials in 1946 after he was appointed to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East’s trials of Japanese war crimes committed during the Second World War. Among all the jurists, he was the only judge who submitted a dissenting judgment on Japan’s culpability in war crimes. In his judgment he insisted that all defendants were 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.

Pal wrote that the Tokyo Trials were an exercise in victor’s justice and that the Allies were equally culpable in acts such as strategic bombings of civilian targets.
In 1966, the Emperor of Japan conferred upon Pal the First Class of the Order of the Sacred Treasure.
He is revered in Japan for having demonstrated unique independence in the war crimes tribunal.
Japanese honored Justice Pal with a monument in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which commemorates country’s war heroes.

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