From the Japanese perspective, the Soviet presence on the tribunal constituted a particularly egregious aspect of victor’s justice. The Soviet Union, after all, had not exactly been an exemplary model of peace and justice (although many leftists believed otherwise). Closer to the bone, the Soviets were guilty of the crudest sort of hypocrisy. Japan was being accused of having violated sacred treaty obligations, but the U.S.S.R. had qualified to sit in judgment in Tokyo only by ignoring its bilateral neutrality pact with Japan in the final week of the war. And although the most harrowing
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