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Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State

On 7 December 1963, in Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the subject of a Japanese judicial review .^[1] On the 22nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the District Court of Tokyo declined to rule on the legality of nuclear weapons in general, but found that "the attacks upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused such severe and indiscriminate suffering that they did violate the most basic legal principles governing the conduct of war."^[2] In the opinion of the court, the act of dropping an atomic bomb on cities was at the time governed by international law found in Hague Convention of 1907 IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land^[3] and IX - Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War^[4], and the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923^[5] and was therefore illegal.^[6][7] Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ... The original Wikisource logo. ... December 7 is the 341st day (342nd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1963 calendar). ... The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter. ... Judicial review is the power of a court to review a law or an official act of a government employee or agent for constitutionality or for the violation of basic principles of justice. ... The Hague Conventions were international treaties negotiated at the First and Second Peace Conferences at The Hague, Netherlands in 1899 and 1907, respectively, and were, along with the Geneva Conventions, among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the nascent body of international law. ...

It was reported in the Hanrei Jiho, vol. 355, p. 17; translated in The Japanese Annual of International Law, vol. 8, 1964, p. 231.^[8] that the facts were that

The plaintiffs, Japanese nationals, were all residents either of Hiroshima or of Nagasaki when atomic bombs were dropped on these cities by bombers of the United States [Army] Air Force in August 1945. Most of the members of their families were killed and many, including some of the plaintiffs themselves, were seriously wounded as a result of these bombings. The plaintiffs jointly brought the present action against the defendant, the State, for damages on the following grounds: (a) that they suffered injury through the dropping of atomic bombs by members of the [Army] Air Force of the United States of America; (b) that the dropping of atomic bombs as an act of hostilities was illegal under the rules of positive international law (taking both treaty law and customary law into consideration) then in force, for which the plaintiffs had a claim for damages; (c) that the dropping of atomic bombs also constituted a wrongful act on the plane of municipal law, ascribable to the United States and its President, Mr. Harry S. Truman; (d) that Japan had waived, by virtue of the provisions of Article 19 (a) of the Treaty of Peace with Japan of 1951, the claims of the plaintiffs under international law and municipal law, with the result that the plaintiffs had lost their claims for damages against the United States and its President; and (e) that this waiver of the plaintiffs' claims by the defendant, the State, gave rise to an obligation on the part of the defendant to pay damages to the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs' cause of action was based, more specifically, on the provisions of Article I of the State Redress Law, which was applicable to the case of injury to a private person through an unlawful act of a government official; on the provisions of Article 29 of the Constitution, which provided for the obligation to pay just compensation in every case of expropriation of private property by the State for public use; and, finally, on unlawful infringement of the rights of the plaintiffs through the omission of the defendant to take appropriate measures for recovery of compensation.

and that it was held: For other uses, see Hiroshima (disambiguation). ... Nagasaki City Hall Mayor {{{Mayor}}} Address 〒850-8685 Nagasaki-shi, Sakura-machi 2-22 Phone number 095-825-5151 Official website: www1. ... USAAF recruitment poster. ... Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953); as Vice President, he succeeded to the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. ... Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru of Japan, gave a speech on Reconciliation and rapport (和解と信頼) in 1951 at San Francisco Peace conference. ...

that the action must fail on the merits. The aerial bombardment with atomic bombs of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an illegal act of hostilities according to the rules of international law. It must be regarded as indiscriminate aerial bombardment of undefended cities, even if it was directed at military objectives only, inasmuch as it resulted in damage comparable to that caused by indiscriminate bombardment. Nevertheless, the claimant as an individual was not entitled to claim damages on the plane of international law, nor was he able, as a result of the doctrine of sovereign immunity, to pursue a claim on the plane of municipal law. In these circumstances, the plaintiffs had no rights to lose as a result of the waiver contained in Article 19 (a) of the Treaty of Peace with Japan.

The aerial bombing of cities became a common tactic in World War II. World War I The first ever aerial bombardment of civilians was on January 19, 1915, in which two German Zeppelins dropped 24 fifty-kilogram high-explosive bombs and ineffective three-kilogram incendiaries on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Kings...

Footnotes

1. ^ Shimoda et al. v. The State, Tokyo District Court, 7 December 1963
2. ^ Falk, Richard A.. "The Claimants of Hiroshima", The Nation, 1965-02-15. reprinted in (1966) “The Shimoda Case: Challenge and Response”, Richard A. Falk, Saul H. Mendlovitz eds. The Strategy of World Order. Volume: 1. New York: World Law Fund, pp. 307-13.
3. ^ Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
4. ^ Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War (Hague IX); October 18, 1907, The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
5. ^ The Hague Rules of Air Warfare The Hague, December, 1922-February, 1923 These rules were never adopted
6. ^ Boyle, Francis A. (2002). The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 58.
7. ^ Falk, "The Claimants of Hiroshima", p.308
8. ^ Hanrei Jiho, vol. 355, p. 17; translated in The Japanese Annual of International Law, vol. 8, 1964, p. 231. {PDF)