Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: World War II

  • Peace Declaration

    In the company of hibakusha who, on this day 65 years ago, were hurled, without understanding why, into a “hell” beyond their most terrifying nightmares and yet somehow managed to survive; together with the many souls that fell victim to unwarranted death, we greet this August sixth with re-energized determination that, “No one else should ever have to suffer such horror.”

    Through the unwavering will of the hibakusha and other residents, with help from around Japan and the world, Hiroshima is now recognized as a beautiful city.  Today, we aspire to be a “model city for the world” and even to host the Olympic Games.  Transcending the tortures of hell, trusting in the peace-loving peoples of the world, the hibakusha offer a message that is the cornerstone of Japan’s Peace Constitution and a beacon to the world.

    The results of the NPT Review Conference held this past May testify to that beacon’s guiding influence.  The Final Document expresses the unanimous intent of the parties to seek the abolition of nuclear weapons; notes the valuable contribution of civil society; notes that a majority favors the establishment of timelines for the nuclear weapons abolition process, and highlights the need for a nuclear weapons convention or new legal framework.  In doing so, it confirms that our future depends on taking the steps articulated by Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the more than 4,000 city members of Mayors for Peace, and the two-thirds of all Japanese municipalities that formally supported the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol.

    That our cry of conscience, the voice of civil society yearning for a future free from nuclear weapons, was heard at the UN is due in large measure to the leadership of His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, who today has become the first UN Secretary-General to attend our Peace Memorial Ceremony.  President Obama, the United States government, and the 1,200-member U.S. Conference of Mayors also wielded their powerful influence.

    This ceremony is honored today by the presence of government officials representing more than 70 countries as well as the representatives of many international organizations, NGOs, and citizens’ groups.  These guests have come to join the hibakusha, their families, and the people of Hiroshima in sharing grief and prayers for a peaceful world.  Nuclear-weapon states Russia, China and others have attended previously, but today, for the first time ever, we have with us the U.S. ambassador and officials from the UK and France.

    Clearly, the urgency of nuclear weapons abolition is permeating our global conscience; the voice of the vast majority is becoming the preeminent force for change in the international community.

    To seize this unprecedented opportunity and actually achieve a world without nuclear weapons, we need above all to communicate to every corner of our planet the intense yearning of the hibakusha, thereby narrowing the gap between their passion and the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, many are unaware of the urgency; their eyes still closed to the fact that only through luck, not wisdom, have we avoided human extinction.

    Now the time is ripe for the Japanese government to take decisive action.  It should begin to “take the lead in the pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons” by legislating into law the three non-nuclear principles, abandoning the U.S. nuclear umbrella, legally recognizing the expanded “black rain areas,” and implementing compassionate, caring assistance measures for all the aging hibakusha anywhere in the world.

    In addition, the Prime Minister’s wholehearted commitment and action to make the dreams of the hibakusha come true would lead us all by 2020 to a new world of “zero nuclear weapons,” an achievement that would rival in human history the “discovery of zero” itself.  He could, for example, confront the leaders of the nuclear-weapon states with the urgent need for abolition, lead them to the table to sign a nuclear weapons convention, and call on all countries for sharp reductions in nuclear and other military expenditures.  His options are infinite.  

    We citizens and cities will act as well.  In accordance with the Hiroshima Appeal adopted during last week’s Hiroshima Conference for the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons by 2020, we will work closely with like-minded nations, NGOs, and the UN itself to generate an ever-larger tidal wave of demand for a world free of nuclear weapons by 2020.

    Finally, on this, the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing, as we offer to the souls of the A-bomb victims our heartfelt condolences, we hereby declare that we cannot force the most patiently enduring people in the world, the hibakusha, to be patient any longer.  Now is the time to devote ourselves unreservedly to the most crucial duty facing the human family, to give the hibakusha, within their lifetimes, the nuclear-weapon-free world that will make them blissfully exclaim, “I’m so happy I lived to see this day.”

  • Message for Hiroshima Day 2010

    The Nuclear Age is 65 years old.  The first test of a nuclear device took place on July 16, 1945 at the Alamogordo Test Range in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto Desert.  The Spanish name of this desert means “Journey of Death,” a fitting name for the beginning point of the Nuclear Age.  Just three weeks after the test, the United States destroyed the city of Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, followed by the destruction of Nagasaki three days later.  By the end of 1945, the Journey of Death had claimed more than 200,000 human lives and left many other victims injured and suffering.  

    Over the past 65 years, the Journey of Death has continued to claim victims.  Not from the use of nuclear weapons in war, but from the radiation released in testing nuclear weapons (posturing).  We can be thankful that we have not had a nuclear war in the past 65 years, but we must not be complacent.  Our relative good fortune in the past is not a guarantee that nuclear weapons will not be used in the future.  Over the years, the power of nuclear weapons has increased dramatically.  They have become capable of ending civilization and complex life on the planet.  What could possibly justify this risk?

    We remember the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as cautionary tales.  The survivors of the bombings, the hibakusha, have been strong proponents of “Never Again!”  They have spoken out about what they experienced so that their past does not become our future.  They have warned us repeatedly, “Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist.”  We must choose: nuclear weapons or a human future.  The choice should not be difficult.  Humanity should shout out with a single voice that we choose a world free of the overarching nuclear threat, a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The people must lead their leaders, choosing hope for a far more decent human future.  The United States alone has spent more than $7.5 trillion on nuclear weapons over the span of the Nuclear Age.  The world currently spends more than $1.5 trillion annually on weapons, war and the preparation for war, while spending only a small portion of this on efforts to meet human needs and achieve social justice.  Clearly, change is needed.  Bringing about this change could begin by joining together to eliminate the nuclear weapons threat to the human future.  

    The future is now.  Sixty-five years of nuclear threat to humanity is enough.  We continue to rely upon the theory of deterrence at our peril.  The theory requires rationality from leaders who are not always rational.  The higher rationality and greater good for humanity would be to eliminate the threat by eliminating the weapons.  The time to raise our voices and demand a world free of nuclear weapons is now, before it is too late.  On this demand we must be both insistent and persistent.

  • Nuremberg and Nuclear Weapons

    David KriegerThe principal message of the Nuremberg trials is that individuals are responsible for what they do, and will be held accountable for committing serious crimes under international law. At Nuremberg, these serious crimes included crimes against peace (that is, planning, preparing for, or participating in acts of aggressive warfare), war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

    One of the great ironies of history or perhaps it is not such a great irony is that the Charter establishing the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was signed on August 8, 1945. That was just three months after the German surrender. More importantly, it was just two days after the first nuclear weapon was used in warfare on the city of Hiroshima, and one day prior to a nuclear weapon being used on the city of Nagasaki. The nuclear weapon used on Hiroshima, with an equivalent force of some 15 kilotons of TNT, killed some 90,000 people immediately and some 140,000 by the end of 1945. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki, with an equivalent force of some 20 kilotons of TNT, killed some 40,000 people immediately and some 70,000 by the end of 1945.

    It has been pointed out that the number of people who died immediately from the use of each of these nuclear weapons was less than the number of people who died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945 as a result of U.S. bombing raids. This number is estimated at approximately 100,000. The major difference between the Tokyo bombings and those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the former took nearly a thousand sorties to accomplish, while the destruction of the latter two cities took only one bomb each.

    I think it is reasonable to speculate that if the Germans had had two or three atomic bombs, as we did at that time, and had used them on European cities prior to being defeated in the Second World War, we would have attempted to hold accountable those who created, authorized, and carried out these bombings. We would likely have considered the use of these weapons on cities by the Nazi leaders as among the most serious of their crimes.

    The irony of history, of course, is that the Germans did not develop nor use atomic weapons, and thus this issue never came before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, or before any other international tribunal. The record of the past 50 years reflects the consequences of this lack of accountability, namely, the nuclear arms race pursued by the United States and the former Soviet Union, which lasted until the end of the Cold War in approximately 1990.

    The question which I want to address is not whether war crimes were committed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Under the rules of international humanitarian law they were, and they were also committed by the bombings of London, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. The primary targets of all these bombings were civilians, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians has always in modern times been understood to be a clear violation of the laws of war.

    Nuclear Weapons and International Law

    The more relevant question has to do with where we stand today. Not long ago, on July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice in the Hague issued an opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. Actually, two questions were placed before the Court for advisory opinions. The first question, posed by the World Health Organization in May 1993, asked: “In view of the health and environmental effects, would the use of nuclear weapons by a state in war or other armed conflict be a breach of its obligations under international law?”

    The second question, put to the Court by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1994, asked: “Is the threat or the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances permitted under international law?”

    The International Court of Justice found that the question asked by the World Health Organization, as a legal question, fell outside the scope of activities of the organization, and thus declined to accept jurisdiction. On the question posed by the United Nations General Assembly, however, the Court did find jurisdiction, and issued an advisory opinion.

    In a multi-part answer to the question, the Court found the following: “…that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.

    “However, in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

    In reaching this opinion, the Court dramatically reduced the possible circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be threatened or used in conformity with international law. The Court left open only the slim possibility of legality under “an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.” Even in this circumstance, the Court did not say that such use would be legal; it said only that it could not determine legality under these conditions. Judge Bedjaoui, the president of the Court, said in his declaration upon releasing the Court’s opinion, “I cannot insist strongly enough on the fact that the inability of the Court to go beyond the statement it made can in no way be interpreted as a partially-opened door through which it recognizes the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons.”

    Judge Bedjaoui went further to describe nuclear weapons as “blind weapons” that “destabilize, by their very nature, humanitarian law, the law of distinguishing in the use of weapons.” He continued, “Nuclear weapons, absolute evil, destabilize humanitarian law in so far as the law of the lesser evil. Thus, the very existence of nuclear weapons constitutes a great defiance (challenge) to humanitarian law itself…. Nuclear war and humanitarian law seem, consequently, two antithesis which radically exclude each other, the existence of one necessarily supposing the non-existence of the other.”

    Where does this leave us today? Although the opinion of the Court is an advisory opinion, it is the most authoritative statement of international law on this question, and must be taken seriously. Thus far, however, there have been no statements made by any of the declared or undeclared nuclear weapons states indicating that they plan any changes in their nuclear policies as a result of the Court’s opinion.

    Individual Accountability

    We know what the Principles of Nuremberg tell us about individual accountability. The primary principle is that “Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.” The fact that there is no penalty for the act under internal law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law. Nor does the fact that the person acted as a Head of State or as a responsible government official relieve that person of responsibility. Nor does the fact that the person acted pursuant to superior orders, so long as a choice was in fact possible to him, relieve him of responsibility.

    It was the United States, along with the U.K., France, and Russia, that created the Nuremberg Principles after the Second World War by holding Nazi and other Axis leaders accountable for their crimes under international law. I submit that if we want to create a world community that lives under international law in the 21st Century, we must apply the Nuremberg Principles to one and all, equally and without prejudice. That means we must apply these Principles to ourselves as well as to others. If the threat or use of nuclear weapons is, in fact, illegal under international law in virtually every conceivable circumstance, then we must act accordingly and neither use nor threaten the use of these weapons. Instead, we must dismantle our nuclear arsenal subject to agreement with other nuclear weapons states. In the meantime, we must explain to all military personnel with responsibilities for nuclear weapons the criminality under international law attendant to the threat or use of these weapons.

    Military organizations must operate under the law, and that clearly includes the international law of armed conflict. If military organizations do not operate under the law, then are they any better than state-organized thugs? It was for violating the laws of war at My Lai that Lt. Calley was tried and convicted. Lt. Calley’s crimes, terrible though they were, would pale in comparison to the crime of again using nuclear weapons on cities filled with innocent people.

    The International Court of Justice added to their opinion a clarification of Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Court unanimously found that: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”

    The Court has clearly indicated that the nuclear weapons states have an obligation to negotiate in good faith not only for nuclear disarmament, but for nuclear disarmament “in all its aspects” and to bring these negotiations to a conclusion. In the aftermath of the Cold War, we have been moving far too slowly to attain this goal. It is a necessary goal so that no other city will ever again have to face the consequences of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the future of humanity will not be jeopardized.

    The Need for a Permanent International Criminal Court

    Even if the threat or use of nuclear weapons is unlawful under international law, however, there currently exists no tribunal where persons committing such acts can be brought to account. One of the great shortcomings of the current international institutional structure is the lack of a permanent International Criminal Court. Two Ad Hoc Tribunals have been created by the United Nations Security Council one for the former Yugoslavia and one for Rwanda. The jurisdiction of both of these tribunals, however, is limited by time and space. It is perhaps ironic that while the effects of nuclear weapons are unlimited by either time or space, the jurisdiction of our international criminal tribunals is so limited.

    Were nuclear weapons to be used by accident or design, the consequences would be horrible beyond our deepest fears. Nazis and other war criminals were convicted and punished in part for bringing human beings to the incinerators of the Holocaust. Nuclear weapons may be conceived of as portable incinerators portable crematoria, if you will that bring incinerators to the people. In my view, the silence of the American, Russian, British, French, and Chinese people in the face of these potentially genocidal or omnicidal weapons is as disquieting as the silence of the Germans in the face of Nazi atrocities. Yet none of the people in countries possessing nuclear weapons today are facing the same fearful authoritarian rule that the Nazis imposed upon the Germans during World War II.

    For many, perhaps most, people in nuclear weapons states today, nuclear weapons are not perceived as a critical issue. They are largely ignored. However, if they were to be used again, I think future historians if there were any would be very critical of our lack of commitment to ridding the world of these terrible weapons.

    We have the opportunity, in fact the responsibility under the Nuremberg Principles, to speak out against these genocidal weapons, but for the most part we do not do so. We must break the silence that surrounds our reliance upon these weapons of mass destruction. A hopeful sign recently occurred at the State of the World Forum in San Francisco when General Lee Butler, a former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, broke his personal silence and made a ringing plea to abolish nuclear weapons. “We can do better,” he said, “than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are enshrined as the ultimate arbiter of conflict. The price already paid is too dear, the risks run too great. The nuclear beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste. The task is daunting but we cannot shrink from it. The opportunity may not come again.”

    It is within our grasp to end the nuclear weapons era, and begin the 21st Century with a reaffirmation of the Nuremberg Principles.

    Steps That Need To Be Taken

    1. The following confidence building measures proposed by the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons:
      • Taking nuclear forces off alert;
      • Removal of warheads from delivery vehicles;
      • Ending deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons;
      • Initiating negotiations to further reduce United States and Russian nuclear arsenals; and
      • Agreement amongst the nuclear weapons states of reciprocal no-first-use undertakings, and of a non-use undertaking by them in relation to the non-nuclear weapons states.
    2. International agreement by the year 2000 on a Nuclear Weapons Convention that, under strict international control, would eliminate all nuclear weapons within a reasonable period of time and prohibit their possession.
    3. The establishment by treaty of a permanent International Criminal Court to hold all individuals, regardless of their rank or nationality, accountable for acts constituting crimes under international law. Considerable progress has been made in preparing such a treaty at the United Nations. It may be hoped that this treaty will be ready to be opened for signatures in 1998, and certainly by 1999 when a third International Peace Conference is convened in the Hague.