Shinzo's tryst with history

Kolkata, Aug 23 (UNI) In a sentimental journey to the past, visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today met the son of an Indian judge, whose lone dissenting voice marked the trial of war criminals in Japan after the second World War.

As the eightyone-year-old Prashanta Kumar Pal visited Mr. Abe, it was a tryst that an 'Indian son' and a 'Japanese grandson' made churning through the history.

The son is Mr.Prashanta Pal, the scion of late Dr. Radha Binod Pal, the only Indian representative in the 1946 Tokyo trial by the International Military Tribunal while the grandson is Mr. Abe himself, whose grand father Kishi Nobuske, a former Japanese Prime Minister, was one of the war criminals.

Radhadha Binod is highly respected in Japan because of his dissenting judgment in the tribunal, where he questioned the legitimacy of trial where war victors tried the losers.

Although Kishi was imprisoned after the second World War as a Class A war criminal for three years, he was never tried by the 1946 Tokyo tribunal, where Radha Binod was the judge.

It was through the initiative of Kishi that a memorial of the late Indian judge was set up in Japan in 1975.

"The Japanese people still remember Dr. Radhabinod Pal and love him," Mr. Abe told Mr. Pal, a retired Supreme court advocate.

Mr. Abe told him that the Japanese national television had showed on August 14 a documentary on Dr. Pal, whose dissent against execution of war criminals had endeared him to the islanders.

Since then the Government had received plenty of letters and phone calls appreciating his role in the war tribunal, he said.

"Indo-Japanese friendship was there, is there and will be there as well," Mr. Abe avowed.

Mr. Pal, who was accompanied by his daughter and son-in-law, told the visiting premier that he was happy to meet him during the Indo-Japanese friendship year.

He also presented to Mr. Abe four photographs taken during his visit to Japan in 1966 that captured both Dr. Radhabinod Pal and Mr. Nobuske.

UNI