A while back, on an Amazon history “discussion” site, someone posted a bit on Radhabinod Pal and the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Anyone know where more info may be obtained? Sadly, this apparently important document is not yet up on kindle. A few excerpts from the posting follow. Can’t vouch for the accuracy.
“I would hold that every one of the accused must be found not guilty of every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted on all those charges.”
He argued that the United States had clearly provoked the war with Japan and expected Japan to act. Further, he believed that the exclusion of Western colonialism and the use of the atom bomb by the United States from the list of crimes, and judges from the vanquished nations on the bench, signified the “failure of the Tribunal to provide anything other than the opportunity for the victors to retaliate.” Fear of American nuclear power was an international phenomenon following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He considered, any nation, not just Japan “would have taken up arms against the United States on receipt of such a note (Hull note) as the State Department sent the Japanese Government on the eve of Pearl Harbor.”
The Hull note:
"On November 25 Henry L. Stimson, United States Secretary of War noted in his diary that he had discussed with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt the severe likelihood that Japan was about to launch a surprise attack, and that the question had been “how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”
On the following day, November 26, 1941, Hull presented the Japanese ambassador with the Hull note, which as one of its conditions demanded the complete withdrawal of all Japanese troops from French Indochina and China. It did not refer to Manchukuo, in which hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were already living. Japanese Prime Minister Tojo Hideki said to his cabinet, “this is an ultimatum.”
Jonathan Daniels, President Roosevelt’s administrative assistant at the time, noted Roosevelt’s subsequent reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - “The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be. … But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price. …”
Some modern Japanese commentators say the note was designed to draw Japan into war and thus claim Japan was not the aggressor nation in the Pacific War. Toshio Tamogami, who was the Japan Air Self-Defense Force chief of staff, was sacked by the Japanese government in 2008 for taking this position.