I'm John Bachelor with Professor Gary Bass.

The book is Judgment at Tokyo, World War II on trial and the making of modern Asia.

The judges include one particular scholar, international law scholar, Rabhabino-Pal, born 1886, in Bengal province, then part of the British Empire,

the British Raj, now part of Bangladesh. He is extremely well educated as a young person.

Strikingly, his father leaves the family, and he's raised by a determined mother with his two sisters.

He has gifts in many directions and goes to law school in Calcutta.

He's a Hindu, but he's a man way before the 20th century, way before his time in the 20th century.

Professor, spending time with Paul in your book is a pleasure because

it's a glimpse of another world of a man who understood here in the 21st century we're going

to struggle with tolerance. What do we need to know about his education and his skills and why he

was chosen for the court? So he's, I'm so glad that you liked him because he's one of my favorite figures.

And one of the great pleasures of writing this book was spending time with his children and

grandchildren in Calcutta, who very generously shared memories of their father and their grandfather.

He is from, you know, an absolutely self-made man who brought himself up from

rural poverty in Bengal, part of British India, to rise to be at the pinnacle of

of academia in, in Bengal at the time.acle of of academia in

in Bengal at the time. He's the head

of a great university

in Calcutta

and is a

very impressive legal scholar.

He's not actually trained in

...