New easy-to-read version: Dissenting opinion of Justice R.B Pal, Tokyo "war crimes" Tribunal

Carlos W. Porter has just completed the tedious task of reformating the entire Dissenting Judgement, in 11 parts, of Justice R.B. Pal from the Tokyo Tribunal of 1946-48, first published in 1999.

"Publication of Pal’s dissenting opinion at the Tribunal was prohibited during the Occupation years, and even after the allied Occupation was over and Japan had regained her independence, it failed to draw the attention of the Japanese except for a few who had special interest in the Tokyo Military Tribunal. In a word, it was almost forgotten among the Japanese.

Monument to Justice Radhabinod Pal in Japan

"One thing that Pal was especially concerned about regarding the war was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On visiting Hiroshima in November 1952, four years after the Tokyo trial ended, he was reportedly shocked to know the meaning of the monumental inscription dedicated to the A-bomb victims:  “Sleep peacefully, for we shall never repeat the mistake." [we = the Japanese leaders -cy]

“Why should the Japanese apologize to the Japanese?” he said with resentment, “It is not the Japanese who dropped the atomic bombs.” I would like to know what he would have said or, for that matter, what judgment the Tribunal would have passed on Japan if they had known at that time about the Emperor’s order to stop a project by the Japanese military to build an atomic weapon. The Emperor reportedly said that Japan should not be the first to make and use such an inhuman device, and thereupon the Japanese Army, by instructions from General Tojo, immediately gave up its A-bomb production project even at the cost of a possible final victory, while the U. S. decided to develop such a weapon and actually dropped two of them on Japanese cities just to shorten the war." -Akira Nakamura

To read the 11 sections of the Pal Dissenting Opinion, please begin here. At the bottom of each web page there is a link to the next section.