Ryuichi Shimoda et al. v. The State

[fred8615]

I may be opening up a hornet's nest here, but I need some opinions. I'm one of the editors of the articles on Wikipedia about the a-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recently another person has launched a one-man crusade in the article to have it labeled a war crime. I and others finally managed to get him to realize he couldn't just arbitrarily declare it so without any kind of legal ruling from an international court. So now he's latched on to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryuichi_Shimoda_et_al._v._The_State

For those who don't want to follow the link, 5 a-bomb survivors sued in a Japanese court claiming the bombing was a war crime. 8 years later, the court ruled in their favor. So now he insists the a-bombing is at least a war crime in Japan, can be labeled as such, and the article should now reflect that.

I should mention that when this person found this court ruling, he recreated an "Allied war crimes in Japan" category that had been deleted from Wikipedia for who knows how long JUST so the a-bombings could be listed in it!

Needless to say, I and others are resisting this "backdoor" attempt at having them labeled a war crime. My personal reasons for denying it based on this one court case are:

- The article on the case makes it pretty clear this was nothing more than a stunt. There was no real intention to seek reparations, just to have the bombings declared a crime.

- The plaintiffs didn't sue in U.S. courts because they knew they couldn't win, so they sued in Japan. Hardly an endorsement of impartiality.

- They sued at a time when Japan, unlike Germany, refused to acknowledge or admit their own war crimes. So how could they seriously accuse and convict another nation of committing them?

- This to me is the kicker. They claimed they couldn't sue the U.S. because of the treaties ending the war, so the plaintiffs sued the Japanese government, claiming the U.S. committed a war crime! The U.S. did not get to defend itself. The Japanese government was the defendant, and at a time when said government. internally at least (and to some degree still today), portrayed itself as the victim in the war. And thus to some extent had a vested interest in losing the case. Regardless of that, the fact is, Japan was sued, but the U.S. convicted. I don't see how this case has any legal standing anywhere based on that.

So there it is. Am I in the wrong here?

[old_pop2000]

I may be opening up a hornet's nest here, but I need some opinions. I'm one of the editors of the articles on Wikipedia about the a-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recently another person has launched a one-man crusade in the article to have it labeled a war crime. I and others finally managed to get him to realize he couldn't just arbitrarily declare it so without any kind of legal ruling from an international court. So now he's latched on to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryuichi_Shimoda_et_al._v._The_State

For those who don't want to follow the link, 5 a-bomb survivors sued in a Japanese court claiming the bombing was a war crime. 8 years later, the court ruled in their favor. So now he insists the a-bombing is at least a war crime in Japan, can be labeled as such, and the article should now reflect that.

I should mention that when this person found this court ruling, he recreated an "Allied war crimes in Japan" category that had been deleted from Wikipedia for who knows how long JUST so the a-bombings could be listed in it!

Needless to say, I and others are resisting this "backdoor" attempt at having them labeled a war crime. My personal reasons for denying it based on this one court case are:

- The article on the case makes it pretty clear this was nothing more than a stunt. There was no real intention to seek reparations, just to have the bombings declared a crime.

- The plaintiffs didn't sue in U.S. courts because they knew they couldn't win, so they sued in Japan. Hardly an endorsement of impartiality.

- They sued at a time when Japan, unlike Germany, refused to acknowledge or admit their own war crimes. So how could they seriously accuse and convict another nation of committing them?

- This to me is the kicker. They claimed they couldn't sue the U.S. because of the treaties ending the war, so the plaintiffs sued the Japanese government, claiming the U.S. committed a war crime! The U.S. did not get to defend itself. The Japanese government was the defendant, and at a time when said government. internally at least (and to some degree still today), portrayed itself as the victim in the war. And thus to some extent had a vested interest in losing the case. Regardless of that, the fact is, Japan was sued, but the U.S. convicted. I don't see how this case has any legal standing anywhere based on that.

So there it is. Am I in the wrong here?

Hi:
You are opening a pandora's box. IMO, you are not wrong. This is just a method to cleanse the Japanese soul by saying that "yes we conducted a barbarous war by killing captured soldiers and civilians, conducted experiments in China on subjects, but the US is no different. They dropped a terrible weapon on our poor defenseless country."

In point of fact, the Japanese were working on their own nuclear bomb project, but just didn't have the smarts and resources. This is what comes of attacking the most powerful nations in the world. Considering the alternatives to the bombs, I think we were generous to the Japanese. But, that was then, this now. It's time to move on.

[William Miller]

Fred8615,

These sort of 'hot-potato' topics go against the policies of the forum due to the types of "debates" that invariably result, so this thread will be closed.

I will however leave with this note: Anyone interested in this topic should read Richard B Frank's book "Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire" (I happened to have re-read that book recently), which covers this subject in a definitive manner and also IMHO debunks the revisionists who attempt make such claims as you mention.

[Warship NWS]

My response is simple... the kamikaze and fight to the last man vicious combat was the Japanese attempt at convincing the US forces that it would be too costly to invade the main island of Japan - well it worked, US forces did not invade. Whether US forces dropped atomic weapons or firebombed.. Japan was going to be destroyed until unconditional surrender was agreed upon and they could have given up at ANYTIME. No politician had any logical excuse to send massive numbers of troops from Europe to Japan to instigate a slaughter of lives, for both sides, in epic proportion when there was an alternative option at ending the war in shorter time. I'm done, and so is this thread.. sorry, but this is one topic of debate that defies any reasonable sense of logic. No offense to the original thread poster, but I completely agree with WM that this is not a thread that needs to be debated over.

Thanks.