Give me back my husband
Give me back my children
Give me back my youth that was burnt and destroyed

Throw all the A-bombs possessed by America and Russia right to the bottom of the sea


This is excerpted from the poem that Sadako Kurihara, an A-bomb survivor from Hiroshima, wrote in 1952. Shortly after, an intense competition in nuclear arms development began, involving, not only the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but also Britain, France and China. As a result, in 1986, the number of nuclear missiles reached its peak of more than 69,000. However, by the end of the cold war in the early 1990s, the number of nuclear warheads had rapidly decreased. Yet today it is said that there are still about 30,000 nuclear warheads on the earth.

The number of nations that possess nuclear missiles has been increasing as Israel, India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club, and more recently it is suspected that North Korea and Iran are also keen to develop their own nuclear arms. It is undeniable that this current situation is closely inter-linked with U.S. policies, which are indeed accelerating nuclear proliferation. As far as its own nuclear policies are concerned, the Bush administration refused to ratify the CTBT, withdrew itself from the ABM Treaty, and is promoting new types of nuclear arms. Surely these policies must be seen as inconsistent, given that the U.S. government regards North Korea as a “rogue nation” and a “threat to the world,” although it claims Pakistan is not a threat, even though it provided North Korea with information on nuclear arms technology. Similarly, the U.S. carried out a preemptive strike against Iraq, claiming that America was defending itself against a nation which already possessed or was developing weapons of mass destruction including nuclear arms. Yet, it remains silent about the possession of nuclear arms by Israel. It is these kind of inconsistent “nuclear proliferation policies” of the U.S. that are responsible for making the NPT defunct.

During the period of nuclear arms expansion, nuclear tests were conducted in various places around the world. Nevada in the U.S.; Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, Central Asia; the Bikini and Marshal Islands and Moruroa Atoll in the South Pacific and Maralinga in Australia are among areas that suffered from these experiments. By the end of 1996, the total number of nuclear tests conducted throughout the world reached 2,051. The test sites were contaminated with radiation and many local people as well as military personnel who participated in the tests were irradiated, resulting in serious health damage and many deaths. In addition, many other people have been irradiated from the environmental contamination caused by radiation at and around the uranium mining sites in Australia, America, Namibia, Canada and India.

In this way nuclear arms have killed many people, not only in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also in a number of other places throughout the world. They have also killed various animals, creatures and plants through the destruction of the environment. In a broader sense, nuclear arms have been destroying democracy itself and have been one of the main causes of conflict and violence which are now seen in various parts of the world. Needless to say, the origin was the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 59 years ago.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki typifies two kinds of crimes against humanity ? indiscriminate bombing and mass killing ? both of which are common phenomena in contemporary warfare.

Indeed, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians was first conducted by German planes against Parisians in August 1914, 11 years after the Wright brothers successfully flew the first aircraft in 1903. By the end of 1914, the Allies were also making serial air raids into German territories. By the time World War I ended in 1918, both sides had conducted indiscriminate bombing, killing or injuring several thousand civilians.

Shortly after World War I, planes from the British Royal Air Force (RAF) were sent to the Middle East to engage in a new type of operation ? the bombing of what an RAF document refers to as “rebels of uncivilized tribes” who refused to submit to British rule. Over several years from 1920 onward, the RAF attacked rebel groups in Iraq - for which Britain was the trustee nation at the time - dropping bombs, including incendiary bombs, on remote villages and tent encampments. The technique of indiscriminate or terror bombing targeting civilians was used throughout the British Empire, including India and South Africa. British administrators commended this use of airpower as “outstandingly effective, extremely economical and undoubtedly humane in the long run.”

In the European theater of World War II, indiscriminate bombing ? now termed “strategic bombing” ? was increasingly used to terrorize civilians as the war intensified. Both the Axis and Allied sides engaged in such bombing, resulting in the mass slaughter of civilians and destruction of cities. The Germans suffered particularly heavy casualties. By the end of the war, 131 German towns and cities had been bombed, and approximately 600,000 German civilians killed by indiscriminate bombing conducted primarily by the British with support from US forces.

The Japanese Imperial Navy engaged in the first indiscriminate bombing in the Asia-Pacific region with a January 1932 attack on civilians in Shanghai. Thereafter, Japanese bombers targeted civilians in Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongqing and other cities. Chongqing , in particular, was specifically targeted and suffered more than 200 air raids over three years from the end of 1938, bringing the total death toll up to 12,000. In 1940, the U.S. Government condemned these repeated Japanese aerial attacks on Chongqing as inhumane acts of terror.

A few years later, cities on the Japanese mainland became the targets of U.S. air raids. Beginning in March 1945, the U.S. carried out “saturation bombing,” repeatedly attacking cities from Hokkaido to Okinawa, including Tokyo, Kawasaki, Osaka, Kobe, Fukuoka and Naha. In total, 64 major cities were destroyed by firebombing, causing over one million casualties, including half a million deaths, the vast majority of them civilians.

Indiscriminate bombing reached its peak when mass-killing atomic weapons annihilated two Japanese cities in August 1945. The A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people in one second, and an estimated 140,000 died by the end of 1945. In Nagasaki, an estimated 70,000 people died by the end of the same year. Tens of thousands of others died subsequently as a result not only of the blast and fire but also radiation, sometimes taking its deadly toll over many years. In his announcement of the bombing, American President Harry Truman said, “The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians.” On the contrary, as the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey stated following Japan’s surrender: “The air attack on Japan was directed against the nation as a whole, not only against specific military targets, because of the contribution in numerous ways of the civilian population to the fighting strength of the enemy, and to speed the securing of unconditional surrender.” The clear intent, both of the fire bombing and atomic bombing was the terrorizing and killing of civilians and the elimination of Japan's cities.

Since then, indiscriminate bombing has been repeatedly used in the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, and more recent wars in Kosovo, Chechen, Afghanistan and Iraq, notably, but not exclusively, by the United States as its weapon of choice. In the Korean War, U.S. forces bombed and destroyed two large irrigation dams, causing enormous flood damage and wreaking havoc with North Korea’s agricultural economy. In the Vietnam War, in addition to a new type of napalm bomb, cluster bombs, Daisy-Cutter bombs (so-called earthquake bombs), and Agent Orange (a chemical defoliant) were widely used. This new bombing strategy resulted not only in the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians but also inflicted long-term damage to the environment.

In recent aerial attacks conducted by the U.S. and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, many civilians were killed or injured as a result of the bombing of “wrongly identified targets” by “incorrectly programmed smart bombs,” or as “collateral damage.” Such terror bombing also creates huge numbers of refugees, as seen in Afghanistan where thousands of people fled their homes shortly before the onset of U.S. bombing. Eventually, as a result of more than a decade of fighting, some one million Afghans ended up in refugee camps, while more than four million were forced into exile. Such aerial bombing, which inflicts enormous hardship on vast numbers of civilians, constitutes state terrorism.

U.S. and the British Forces started using munitions, bombs and missiles containing depleted uranium (DU) in the Gulf from 1991. DU munitions and bombs are mainly used as penetrators on tanks. DU missiles are fired to destroy large buildings and bunkers deep under the ground. When exploded, exposed depleted uranium disperses as dust-like particles in a burning cloud of vapor. Settled dust is chemically poisonous and radioactive. By the end of the Gulf War, 320 tons of DU was dispersed throughout southern Iraq. Since then, thousands of American and British soldiers have developed a strange illness known as the Gulf War Syndrome and some children born after the war also suffering from physical deformities. In southern Iraq, deaths due to cancer and leukemia increased sharply, particularly among children. Many more Iraqi children are suffering from leukemia and various types of cancer as well as physical deformities. The link between such phenomena and the use of DU is strongly suspected. High dosages of radiation have been detected in various parts of Afghanistan, indicating that U.S. and British Forces used DU weapons there, too. An estimated 1,000 to 2,000 tons of DU was used in the recent Iraq War, gravely damaging the health of Iraqi people and all troops on the ground.

At the same time, the difference between conventional weapons and nuclear arms is now rapidly disappearing due to the wide use of DU weapons and the increasing possibility of using tactical nuclear arms, as well as the availability of super-large bombs like the Daisy Cutter and the new 9,450 kg MOAB (“Mother of all Bombs”).

Despite this, it is a sad reality that some Japanese cabinet members openly claim the necessity for nuclear arms as well as the need for Japan’s right to preemptive strikes against foreign countries if required. It is extremely disappointing that these people do not understand that Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution was established as a result of 3,100,000 Japanese deaths incurred in the Asia-Pacific War. These included an estimated 210,000 victims (i.e., the estimated death toll by the end of 1945) of the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Article 9 was also created in recognition of the deaths of tens of millions of Asian people as well as the Allied soldiers who died due to the war. Clearly, we Japanese bear the responsibility not simply to maintain the spirit of our own Constitution, but to act positively in order to contribute to creating world peace by promoting Article 9.

Thus as citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we bear a moral responsibility to represent the voices of Hibakusha, i.e., all the victims of irradiation, as well as the voices of all the victims of indiscriminate bombing throughout the world. We need to inform the world of the serious criminal nature of nuclear arms and their threat against humanity and the environment, and the criminal nature of indiscriminate bombing and mass killing.

On March 3, 1947, at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (the so-called Tokyo Tribunal), one of the defending lawyers, an American, Ben Bruce Blakeny, argued that the atomic bomb was a weapon banned by the Hague Convention, thereby attempting to point out the criminality of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, some efforts have been made, both in Japan and overseas, to appeal to the court to plead the criminal nature of nuclear arms, but so far none have been successful.

In recent years, the “weathering of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki experience” has become a serious concern for many citizens of these two cities, due to the rapidly diminishing number of Hibakusha there. Therefore there is an urgent need for us to closely examine the criminality of the use of nuclear arms against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By doing so, this would also serve to effectively warn the world of various problems caused by the development and tests of nuclear arms during the past 60 years as well as to alert people to the current ever-worsening world situation. In other words, a thorough examination of the criminal nature of the use of atomic bombs is one way to revitalize the Hiroshima/Nagasaki spirit of aspiring to eternal-peace, and to send a message to the world demanding absolute denial of violence for any reason whatsoever. 

For this purpose, in autumn 2005 - 60 years after first use of nuclear arms in the history of mankind - we will hold the Peoples’ Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This tribunal will be conducted with the assistance of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and therefore it will be a “tribunal based upon the peoples’ sovereign power” rather than a “tribunal based upon the nation’s sovereign power,” although it will have no legal force. No national government has ever tried to fulfill its responsibility by pursuing justice on this matter. Therefore our aim is to conduct a fair and just tribunal, free from any national interest, and void of any political ideology.

We call for a fair trial of the following people: President Harry Truman, Henry Stimson and other key members of the White House who made the decision to use the A-bombs; General Leslie Groves, Robert Oppenheimer and other major scientists who were closely involved in developing the atomic bombs; and General George Marshall, Karl Spats, Paul Tibbets, Charles Sweeny and other military personnel who actually carried out the order given by President Truman to drop the bombs. As the statute of limitations is not applicable to war crimes, the responsibility should lie with the present U.S. government, too. However it is our understanding that the selection of the accused should be left to the prosecutors.

We are hoping that some Hibakusha representatives who are now scattered throughout Hiroshima, Nagasaki, North and South Korea, the U.S., Canada, Brazil and Australia, will testify at this tribunal.

Various discussions, continuing efforts and fund raising are necessary in order to realize this tribunal next year. We wish many people to understand the meaning and purpose of the Peoples’ Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to render their support and cooperation to achieve this goal.

 

Written by Yuki Tanaka
on behalf of the Preparatory Committee for The International Peoples・Tribunal on the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima