Monday, February 12, 2024

Road to Surrender Does Not Mention Dissenting Opinion of Radhabinod Pal

 I finished reading "Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II", 2023 by Evan Thomas in August 2023.

It ended much quicker than I had anticipated.

"...After about fifty military tribunals all over Asia, nearly a thousand Japanese army officers were executed for specific atrocities, up to and including cannibalism. But the main war crimes trial, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, held in Tokyo over more than two years stretching into 1948, was on less solid ground. In a massive courtroom carved out of the old War Ministry at Ichigaya Heights (with air conditioning installed), twenty-five senior Japanese officials were tried for “crimes against peace.” The hope was to put the world on notice that the international community would not tolerate wars of aggression—as opposed to defensive wars...

...To the Japanese, the proceedings in Tokyo had a strong whiff of “victors’ justice.” The Japanese defendants in the dock could argue, with some merit, that they were being prosecuted because they had lost. The Japanese also argued that they were the victims of white man’s justice, since almost all the judges were white men from colonial powers like Britain and its commonwealth, France, and the Netherlands, as well as the United States..."

I was disappointed not so much with Japanese attitude towards “victors’ justice.” but that the author forgot to mention three non-white judges on the tribunal. 

One of them being Radhabinod Pal, who had a dissenting opinion

 

The first group picture of the International Justices of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East on July 29 1946.