I generally agree with the Aug. 26 editorial, "Eyes on the prize with India," with regard to the emerging economic, political and strategic closeness between Japan and India. But the argument at the tail end that, by meeting the son of late Justice Radhabinod Pal in Calcutta, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe somehow conferred the mantle of legitimacy on the ultraright revisionists of Japan is flawed. That Japanese hyper-patriots have turned Justice Pal into their patron saint by honoring him at Yasukuni Shrine is deplorable, and only proves the old adage that, once launched, even a well-aimed arrow is beyond control of the archer.
Despite the misappropriation of Pal's legacy by Japanese ultra-rightists, can any impartial student of history really disagree with the fundamental principle of his dissenting opinion at the Tokyo tribunal that justice could not be delivered because the trials were designed by the victors to wreak vengeance against the vanquished under a fig leaf of international, and deceitful, judicial proceedings? If Pal's opinion was legally worthless, why did the U.S. Occupation ban its circulation in Japan instead of letting it sink on the basis of its presumed legal untenability? Not only that, British and American authorities, for a long time, did not allow it to be read in their home countries.
Finally, whatever the legal aspects of the issue, war crimes were committed by all participants in World War II. Some recent correspondents in this space have used a lot of despicable sophistry to defend the barbarous atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who authorized and those who carried out the two missions and those who firebombed Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945, incinerating more than 85,000 people in one night, were all equally guilty of war crimes, as were those who committed mass murders in Europe, Asia or Africa.
What Justice Pal's dissent calls upon all of us to do is develop some humility and self-reflection and help create systems of global justice that are fair and compassionate and do not simply fulfill the needs of self-serving groups or countries.