The Illegality of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Perspective of Customary International Law at the Time of 1945

IALANA board member Toshinori Yamada and IALANA co-president Daniel Rietiker attended a conference on the abolition of nuclear weapons in South Korea this summer. The conference was organized by SPARK (Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea).

Please find below the presentations of Toshinori Yamada as well as the discussion paper of Daniel Rietiker.

Link to the conference report (Korean): http://www.spark946.org/party/non_nuclear?tpf=board/view&board_code=4&code=27129

Words of Greetings to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Commemorations

Some contemporary philosophers and scientists would have us believe that evil does not exist. They are wrong. Hitler’s gas chambers were evil, torture is evil and nuclear weapons are evil incarnate. Their power to kill as agents of mass destruction is unparalleled and the manner in which they kill is unbelievably brutal. As the International Court of Justice said, they cannot be controlled in time or space. Those who seek to “modernize” and maintain them are complicit in their evil. And those who, like you, are striving to abolish all nuclear weapons forever are doing the work of goodness, which is the opposite of evil. Let us persevere in that task until it is accomplished.

Peter Weiss

President Emeritus

Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, New York