Justice Radhabinod Pal and the Tokyo Tribunal
Posted on April 21st, 2026
Source: National WW11 Museum, New Orleans, USA
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/justice-radhabinod-pal-tokyo-war-crimes-trial
At the Tokyo Tribunal, Justice Radhabinod Pal voted for the acquittal of all the defendants on all counts.
Pal’s dissent, more than 1,230 pages in length, reveals the fissures within the attempts to bring to justice Japanese war criminals. The last of the justices selected for the Tokyo proceedings, Pal, who had acquired his knowledge of international law as an auto-didact, joined after protests from India about the lack of diversity on the Tribunal. His addition did not alter, however, the undeniable fact that the trial was fundamentally a white man’s tribunal,” (‘judging the yellow peril’) as historian John Dower stated so sharply.
Source: National WW11 Museum, New Orleans, USA