I'm John Basswood, Professor Gary Bass. His book is Judgment at Tokyo, World War II on trial,

in the making of modern Asia. The Chinese judge on the tribunal, born 1904, his name is May,

May Ruhr. He is extremely well-educated and a modernizer. He's a Stanford graduate.

He's a University of Chicago law graduate. He's gifted. He becomes part of the transformation

of the Qing dynasty to the national Sun Yat-Zan in the early part of the century.

And he keeps going through changes because so does his nation.

He's chosen to be on this tribunal. He arrives. He's very successful on the court. He understands that it's his burden to explain the brutality that the Japanese visited upon his nation.

And at the same time, there's a civil war underway even then. explain the brutality that the Japanese visited upon his nation.

And at the same time, there's a civil war underway.

Even then, he knows about it.

And it will be his fate to be a man of two worlds.

Professor, the May biography is moving because he's a man for all seasons. He's a man for the nationalists. He's a man for the courts in Tokyo. He's a man for the communists. After he becomes a part of the transformation

of China, does he leave an autobiography that explains how he, how to manage these different parts of his life?

So he's a, he's another extraordinary figure.

And as you said, more than anybody else, he's the one who brings the suffering of Asian peoples to the center

of the judgment.

So rather than this just being, as MacArthur would have had it, you know, a quick trial

for Pearl Harbor, May says, we have to have a recognition of the Japanese aggression and

atrocities against Chinese and other Asian peoples.

But at the same time, he's, you know, the country that he belongs to is going through

this terrible civil war.

And he, like a lot of Chinese intellectuals in the period is swept up in the revolutionary fervor.

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