ESSAY

FRONTLINE Volume 24 - Issue 21 :: Oct. 20-Nov. 02, 2007

INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE

The Yasukuni ‘hero’

A.G. NOORANI
In a Japan of resurgent nationalism, Radha Binod Pal’s dissenting judgment
in the Tokyo war trials wins easy admirers.

A memorial to Radha Binod Pal was built at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo a
couple of years ago

JUSTICE Radha Binod Pal is highly remembered by many Japanese for the noble
spirit of courage he exhibited during the International Military Tribunal for the Far
East,” Shinzo Abe, as Prime Minister of Japan, told Parliament during his recent visit
to India. Pal was the only judge on the Tribunal who pronounced in favour of the
acquittal of all the Japanese figures who were accused of war crimes in the Tokyo
trial and on all the charges.

Two years ago, a monument to the Judge was erected at the Yasukuni Shrine, the
memorial to Japan’s war dead and a rallying point for Japanese nationalism. Abe’s
predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, incurred China’s anger for his visits to the shrine.
Abe himself called on Pal’s 81-year-old son Prasanto in Kolkata recently.

Norimitsu Onishi’s report from Tokyo on the Pal phenomenon in the International
Herald Tribune (September 1, 2007) was most revealing. “Many of postwar Japan’s
nationalist leaders and thinkers have long upheld Pal as a hero, seizing on – and
often distorting – his dissenting opinion at the Tokyo trials to argue that Japan did
not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defence and liberation. As
nationalist politicians like Abe have gained power in recent years, and as like-
minded academics and journalists have pushed forward a revisionist view of Japan’s
wartime history, Pal has stepped back into the spotlight, where he remains a
touchstone of the culture wars surrounding the Tokyo trials.

“Abe, who has cast doubt on the validity of the Tokyo trials in the past, avoided
elaborating on his views in the Indian Parliament or during his 20-minute meeting
with Pal’s son, Prasanto. But the meeting’s subtext was not lost on some Japanese
newspapers, which warned that it would hardly help repair Japan’s poor image
among its neighbours.

“After the war, conventional war crimes by the Japanese, categorised as class B and
class C, were handled in local trials throughout Asia. Twenty-five top leaders were
charged with class A crimes – of waging aggressive wars and committing crimes
against peace and humanity.”

Pal regarded the trial as a farce and the main charges as groundless. He brought in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in his judgment as atrocities comparable with Nazi crimes.
The trials were 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 C trials. “I would
hold that each and every one of the accused must be found not guilty of each and
every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted of all those
charges.”

It speaks a lot for the intensity of nationalist feeling in Japan that even a
pronouncement like Pal’s judgment did not earn him unqualified praise. Hideaki
Kase, chairman of the Japan-India Goodwill Association, and an adviser to a former
Prime Minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, criticised Pal for his acknowledgement of the
Nanjing massacre, describing it as a “complete lie” and Pal as a victim to “Chinese
and allied propaganda”. The judge had an admirer in Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister
in the late 1950s, who had been a class (A) criminal suspect but was never tried.
Prime Minister Abe is his grandson.

Flawed character

Professor Takeshi Nakajima of the Hokkaido University Public Policy School wrote a
book, Justice Pal, which was published last July. Post-War politicians invited Pal to
Japan several times “casting subtleties aside”, as Norimitsu Onishi put it, and
showered him with honours. But which Judge of any stature would accept such
accolades for a judicial pronouncement? Pal was Judge of the Calcutta High Court
(1941-43), Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University (1944-46), and thrice Tagore
Law Lecturer (1925, 1930 and 1938). That he accepted those invitations reveals a
significant flaw in his character.

Curiously, in 1953 he was appointed member of the International Law Commission,

presumably at the Government of India’s instance. However, Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru did not think highly of Pal. And rightly so.
The United States’ occupation of Japan ended in 1952 after Tokyo signed the San
Francisco Peace Treaty and accepted the verdict of the Tokyo trials. But the end of
the occupation also lifted a ban on the publication of Pal’s 1,235-page dissent,
which Japanese nationalists brandished as full exoneration of war crimes.

AP

HAWAII, DECEMBER 7, 1941: U.S. sailors amid the wrecked aeroplanes at

Ford Island Naval Air Station as they watch the explosion on USS Shaw in
the background, during Japan's "surprise attack" on Pearl Harbour.

Nehru had strong sympathy for Japan. Overruling the advice of the Secretary-
General of the Ministry of External Affairs, Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, and his sister,
Vijayalakshmi Pandit, then Ambassador to the U.S., he declined to sign the U.S.-
sponsored Peace Treaty with Japan and signed, instead, a separate Peace Treaty on
June 9, 1952. Pal’s judgment drew two comments from Nehru. On December 6,
1948, he wrote in a circular letter to the Chief Ministers: “In Japan the sentence of
death passed on Japanese war leaders has met with a great deal of adverse
criticism in India. The Indian Judge on that Commission, Justice Pal, wrote a strong
dissentient judgment. That judgment gave expression to many opinions and
theories with which the Government of India could not associate itself. Justice Pal
was, of course, not functioning in the Commission as a representative of the
Government of India but as an eminent Judge in his individual capacity.
Nevertheless most of us have felt that it is unfortunate that death sentences should
be passed at this stage on war leaders. We have felt, however, that an official
protest would not do any good either to the persons concerned or to the cause we
have at heart, and therefore, we have not intervened officially” (emphasis added
throughout).

On November 12, 1948, the former Prime Minister of Japan, Hideki Tojo, and 24
others were sentenced to death for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal
set up by 11 nations in Tokyo. On December 22, 1948, Tojo and six other Japanese
leaders were hanged while the sentences of the remaining 18 were commuted to
imprisonment lasting over 400 days.

Nehru’s confidential cable to the Governor of West Bengal on November 29, 1948,
reflected his views on Pal’s performance more candidly: “We are unanimously of
opinion that you should not send any telegram to General MacArthur. He is mere
mouthpiece of other Governments and has no discretion. Apart from this any such
move on our part would associate us with Justice Pal’s dissenting judgment in Tokyo
trials. In this judgment wild and sweeping statements have been made with many
of which we do not agree at all, we have had to inform Governments concerned
informally that we are in no way responsible for it. Any statement sent by you
might well create great difficulties for us without doing much good to anyone else.”
(Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 8; pages 233 and 413, respectively.)

Censure richly deserved

The censure was richly deserved. But that is one part of the story. What is of far
greater importance are Japanese perceptions of the country’s conduct in the war
and Chinese and South East Asian perceptions of that conduct, which are
diametrically opposed to the Japanese perceptions. Not to overlook American
perceptions, either, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, left a
deep wound in the American psyche, and its memories affected American
discussions on war scenarios during the Cold War – the dreaded surprise attack.

These two – Asian and American perceptions of Japan – must be distinguished. The
distinction lies at the heart of the problem of perceptions of war guilt. This problem
must be resolved not by politicians but by acknowledged scholars of the countries
concerned.

A formidable literature exists on neglected warnings of Japan’s attack on Pearl

Harbour, besides the 39 volumes of Congressional hearings. Roberta Wohlstetter’s
work is among the best (Pearl Harbour: Warning and Decision, Stanford University
Press, 1962). She wrote: “Never before have we had so complete an intelligence
picture of the enemy.” Thomas C. Schelling wrote: “If we think of the entire U.S.
government and its far-flung military and diplomatic establishment, it is not true
that we were caught napping at the time of Pearl Harbour. Rarely has a
government been more expectant. We just expected wrong. And it was not our
warning that was most at fault, but our strategic analysis. We were so busy
thinking through some ‘obvious’ Japanese moves that we neglected to hedge
against the choice that they actually made.”

Stunning revelation

But in 2000 appeared a stunning book which offered a sinister explanation for the
neglect – it was deliberate. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted war with the
Axis in order to help Britain, and he manoeuvred to get Japan to fire the first shot.
It is Day of Deceit. The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbour (Free Press) by Robert
B. Stinnet. The author served in the U.S. Navy under Lt. George Bush in 1942-46,
where he earned 10 battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. Bush went on to
become President, siring George W. Bush en route. Stinnett was Consultant on the
Pacific War for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and for Asaki and NHK
Television in Japan. He did research for the book for over a decade. His preface
sums up his thesis: “ This book contradicts and questions much of what has been
written about the events and decisions that led to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour
on December 7, 1941.… As a veteran of the Pacific War, I felt a sense of outrage as
I uncovered secrets that had been hidden from Americans for more than fifty years.
But I understood the agonising dilemma faced by President Roosevelt. He was
forced to find circuitous means to persuade an isolationist America to join in a fight
for freedom. He knew this would cost lives.… Many Americans had chosen
isolationism to shelter their young from the horrors of another war, and believed
that Roosevelt would ‘not send their sons to fight in foreign wars’. Roosevelt
believed that his countrymen would rally only to oppose an overt act of war on the
United States. The decision he made, in concert with his advisors, was to provoke
Japan through a series of actions into an overt act: the Pearl Harbor attack …

“The answer to Roosevelt’s dilemma is found in an extraordinary number of

documents whose release I have been able to obtain through Freedom of
Information Act requests. These papers outline deliberate steps that were planned
and implemented to elicit the overt action that catapulted America into the war, and
devastated military forces at Pearl Harbour and other Pacific bases. Eight steps
were suggested to provoke a Japanese attack. Shortly after reviewing these,
Roosevelt put them into effect. After the eighth provocation had been taken, Japan
responded. On November 27 and 28, 1941, U.S. military commanders were given
this order: ‘The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.’
According to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the order came directly from
President Roosevelt… we intercepted and decoded military cables. We knew the
attack was coming.

“By provoking the attack, Roosevelt accepted the terrible truth that America’s
military forces – including the Pacific fleet and the civilian population in the Pacific –
would sit squarely in harm’s way, exposed to enormous risks…. Roosevelt’s
decisions were strategically calculated to lead to the ultimate victory of allied forces
over the Axis nations that threatened the liberties we all cherish… Historians must
grapple with what is knowable, and as documented as human action and thought
can be.” He consulted more than 200,000 documents and interviewed very many
persons.

There is a smoking gun in Appendix A. It is an eight-action memo of October 7,

1940, by Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the
Office of Naval Intelligence (O.N.I). He was a Japan hand who spoke Japanese
before learning English. The memo was addressed to two of FDR’s most trusted
military advisers, Captains Walter S. Anderson, Director of Naval Intelligence, and
Dudley W. Knox, a strategist who endorsed the memo and sent it to Anderson who,
of course, had direct access to the President.

“The paper trail of the McCollum memo ends with the Knox endorsement. Although
the proposal was addressed to Anderson, no specific record has been found by the
author indicating whether he or Roosevelt actually ever saw it. However, a series of
secret presidential routing logs plus collateral intelligence information in Navy files
offer conclusive evidence that they did see it. Beginning the very next day, with
FDR’s involvement, McCollum’s proposals were systematically put into effect.
Throughout 1941, it seems, provoking Japan into an overt act of war was the
principal policy that guided FDR’s actions toward Japan.”

The memo read thus: “It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion
the United States Government is capable of declaring war against Japan without
more ado; and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the
Japanese to modify their altitude. Therefore, the following course of action is
suggested: A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the
Pacific, particularly Singapore. B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of
base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies. C. Give all
possible aid to the Chinese Government of Chiang-Kai-Shek. D. Send a division of
long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines, or Singapore. E. Send two
Divisions of submarines to the Orient. F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. Fleet
now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. G. Insist that the Dutch
refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.
H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar
embargo imposed by the British empire. If by these means Japan could be led to
commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully
prepared to accept the threat of war.”

Japan’s expansionism

Hemmed in or not, Japan decided to go to war. Here one must pause and ask
whether the U.S.’ 10-point proposal of November 26, 1941, calling inter alia for an
end to its war against China and in Indo-China was at all unreasonable. If it seemed
so to Japan, it was because Japan was bent on expansionism anyway.

It was aggressive, not defensive. Negotiations collapsed on November 28-30.

Emperor Hirohito and his council of advisers, the Liaison Conference, gave the go-
ahead to Admiral Yamamoto to start the war on December 8, 1941, Tokyo time.
Doubtless, the other points in the U.S. proposal might have seemed like an
ultimatum to Japan by another great power. Fundamentally, Japan was expansionist
then.

This brings us to the problem. It is this record of pre-War diplomacy that makes
some Japanese feel that they were not altogether in the wrong after all. War guilt is
not easily faced. After 1919, many Germans thought that their country had not lost
the war. Its enemies did not occupy Germany. In 1945, they did. But there was
Hitler and the Holocaust to remove all doubt. The Japanese have been much less
willing to accept guilt. In this, they are not justified for two reasons. What of
Japan’s war against Asian countries? Secondly, Japan’s crimes in occupied
territories and on the prisoners of war? Even vis-a-vis the U.S., Japan did launch
the war.

China is justifiably resentful of Japan’s ambiguity on war guilt despite expressions of

regret. The wave of resurgent nationalism in Japan must be met by the truths of
history, bearing in mind Burke’s warning against “drawing up an indictment against
a whole people”.

It is possible to end the chapter by recourse to history written jointly by all sides. If
Russian and American scholars can collaborate to write the history of the Cold War,
why cannot American, Japanese and Chinese scholars, besides those of South East
Asia? Why not tap the resources of the Cold War International History Project at the
Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, D.C. – and aid it too. Archives must be
opened by all. The historical truth is a powerful liberating force.
In this exercise Radha Binod Pal’s udgment will be of no help at all. When the
Japanese who extol it face up to the truth, they will realise what a disgracefully
perverse document it is. They need no help from Pal.•