To Erase Militarist Past, Japan Must Re-Learn It
This article is for subscribers only.
April 15 (Bloomberg) -- It was raining heavily last weekwhen I visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, whichcommemorates Japanese who died in the “imperial cause.” But thetour buses still discharged scores of elderly Japanese visitors,and I received approving looks and even a faint smile from twoJapanese women as we stood in the rain before the memorial to anIndian jurist called Radha Binod Pal.
Pal was the only Indian judge at the so-called TokyoTrials, Japan’s protracted version of Nuremberg. In his 1,235-page dissent, he voted to acquit the 25 Japanese accused byAllied powers of the “unprecedented” crime of “conspiringagainst peace.”