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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 50, 13 December 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The International Military Tribunal set up by the victorious Allied powers has condemned Premier Hideki Tojo and 24 of his associates as war criminals. Some of them are row appealing their cases to the United States Supreme Court, which appears to be a higher judicial body than the Allied Military Tribunal, and consequently their sentences have been stayed.
There can be no doubt of the guilt of these representatives of Japanese imperialism. They resorted to imperialist war as an instrument of national policy. They are fully responsible for the horrors of the conflict in the Far East and in particular for the sufferings of the Japanese people.
But what about the representatives of the Allied powers? Are they innocent?
In the opinion of one of the judges on the Tribunal that condemned Tojo, the Allied powers are equally guilty. Justice Radha Binod Pal of India filed a dissenting opinion in which he challenged virtually all the conclusions of the other ten judges.
In the opinion of Pal, as reported by the N.Y. Herald Tribune, “any trial such as that just conducted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East is merely the judgment of victor upon vanquished and therefore must lie outside the realm of justice.”
Japan’s war leaders “were merely working the normal machinery of Japanese government to obtain the objectives of empire, and the nations represented in the tribunal, including their own leaders, are equally guilty of any offenses alleged against the Japanese.”
The Indian jurist observed that at the present stage of international society the word “aggressors” may mean only “the leaders of the defeated party.” He pointed out that during the 1930s the conflict between Japan and China was not called a war although it was one; and that the United States in violation of its so-called neutrality policy actually took part in that war against Japan long before Pearl Harbor.
Justice Pal rebuked the Western powers for their hypocrisy in defending their interests in Asia:
“These interests are usually founded on the past success of Western powers in transmuting military violence into commercial profit.” In his opinion, “Men of violence cannot genuinely repent of their violence and permanently profit by it.”
The most stinging criticism levelled by the Indian judge was over the use of the atomic bomb. He ruled in effect, “that the victor powers cannot condemn the Japanese leaders for war-time atrocities with justice, as long as their hands are stained by massacres of civil populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
To underline his point he recalled that in World War I the Allied powers called the German Kaiser a criminal for making war on civilians to shorten the military conflict by terror.
“It would be sufficient for my purpose to say that if any indiscriminate destruction of civilian life and property is still illegitimate in warfare, then in the Pacific war the use of the atom bomb is the only near approach to the directives of the German Empire in World War I or Nazi leaders in World War II.”
“Future generations,” said the jurist, “will judge the powers that used the atom bomb.”
As for the charge that the Japanese were cruel to fallen American aviators, Justice Pal replied:
“We should not fail to remember that the real horror of air warfare is not the possibility of a few airmen being pitilessly killed, but the havoc wrought by indiscriminate launching of bombs and projectiles. The conscience of the world revolts not so much against punishment meted out to the ruthless bomber, as against his ruthless form of bombing.”
In 1940, Leon Trotsky in assessing the guilt of the imperialist rulers for plunging humanity into World War II declared:
“Before the judgment bar of the proletariat all the present rulers will answer. Hitler will do no more than occupy first place among the criminals in the dock.”
The Allied rulers seek to escape condemnation by loading all the guilt on their vanquished opponents. But it is not likely they will escape so easily. The voice of the Indian jurist, striking an unexpected jarring note in the hand-picked International Military Tribunal itself, is but a faint indication of what the great majority of mankind feel toward the imperialist war-makers. The complete fulfillment of Trotsky’s prediction may be much closer than the war criminals in the Allied camp expect.
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