Political Background
Pal's lone dissenting opinion that Japan did not wage an aggressive, therefore illegal, war and its leaders cannot be prosecuted as war criminals was surprising and dismissed as a political ploy by his contemporaries. Pal was also an admirer of the Indian National Army (INA), an Indian army which collaborated with Japan to fight against Great Britain and liberate India from British colonization. Pal wrote that the Tokyo Trials were an exercise in victor's justice and that the Allies were equally culpable in acts such as strategic bombings of civilian targets. In 1966, Pal visited Japan and said that he had admired Japan from a young age for being the only Asian nation that "stood up against the West." Regardless of his political opinion, his legal reasoning was a landmark in international law and should more or less balance the charge that his dissent was politically charged.
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