Seoul Tribunal on Atomic Bombings, in Second Day, Builds Case for Acknowledgement, Apology, Reparations, and Prevention of Repetition

• Asia, Demilitarization, East and Southeast Asia, Endangerment, Immorality, World

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 14, 2026

Report on Day 1.

Remarks on Day 1 from Ann Wright.

On Day 2 of this International People’s Tribunal, we heard more powerful stories from victims, as well as more testimony from expert historians, lawyers, and advocates (some people are, of course, more than one of those things).

New witnesses:

We also heard in particular about the Japanese occupation that forced so many Koreans to work in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where people from over 30 countries had nuclear bombs dropped on them, but by far the second largest national group there was Koreans.

The tribunal heard from a witness from Congo about the damage done by uranium mining there, and a witness from the Marshall Islands about the damage done by bomb testing there, as well as a witness from the United States about the damage done by the bomb testing on the very country supposedly being served in some way by the nuclear weapons.

One of the most publicly hidden facts about nuclear weapons for over half a century has been that a treaty (the Treaty on Nuclear Nonproliferation) requires eliminating all nuclear weapons and all other weapons too. 

Richard Falk recounted how U.S. “national security” people (whoever they are) once told him that Article VI of that treaty was a “useful fiction” to trick non-nuclear states.

Article VI reads: 

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete  disarmament under strict and effective international control.

My reflections thus far: 

It strikes me that the immorality of dropping the atomic bombs is the key point and still would be the key point even had those bombings been legal. Adding that the bombings were illegal is extra.

The number of victims who have talked about the need for money for their healthcare bills also strikes me. In the United States we often think that the rest of the world has healthcare. How many know that victims of U.S. atomic bombings desperately need healthcare and fairly reasonably want the U.S. government to help out?

The main goal, I think, needs to be preventing future horrors, preventing, as one speaker said, Washington and Beijing being the next Hiroshima and Nagasaki (even though we know it would be the whole world, not two cities).

To get there, to even have a reality-based conversation about the immorality and illegality, will require something this conference has not focused much on yet, namely debunking the lies, the lies that the nukes were life-saving, or that they were a bad bit of an otherwise just war — a war made just by the Japanese attacks of December 7, 1941 (and the lie that this was not the culmination of a many-year mutual buildup to war — as well as the strange notion that all war horrors can be at least prima facie justified for years and years by a story about the start of the war).

A Seoul monument to the overthrow of a U.S. puppet dictator (Syngman Rhee) who was driven out and who fled to the United States.

Does the law matter?

It strikes me that what distinguishes international from domestic law is that with virtually all international law, as with only a segment of domestic law, the law is being created and reshaped by the criminals.

If we take the law on the criminals’ terms and interpret it based on the trends of their criminal practices rather than on the written word, if we treat the answers to legal questions as mysteriously out of the reach of absolute certainty, if we take the most awful thing ever done and declare the key question to be its legality and then suggest that it just might have been legal, what will we have accomplished? 

On the other hand, if we declare the atomic bombings clearly illegal on their own terms in their own day, and we explain our case concisely, could it perhaps open some minds or provide some political cover for decent actions? 

The losers of WWII were treated as guilty of crimes in every action taken because the war was a crime in toto. Our failure to treat the crimes of the winning side by the same standard seems a moral and strategic blunder of the first order to me.

The present risk and misdirection:

CNN earlier today, playing with people’s hopes: 

“President Donald Trump will meet jointly next week with China’s leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House said Friday, a first-ever trilateral sit-down between the leaders of the three countries.

“The meeting, on the sidelines of the APEC summit in China, will focus on nuclear non-proliferation, a topic Trump has said he believes could yield a new agreement between the world’s biggest nuclear-armed states.”

The article goes on to suggest that unnamed White House staff are sure nothing will come of it.

At a Buddhist temple in Seoul.

On the evening of Day 2 we gathered to discuss possible plans to follow up on the tribunal after its conclusion on Day 3.

Some of the ideas in the works now: 

Promote the preliminary findings of the tribunal to media covering Trump-Putin-Xi meeting next week. 

Promote to media covering each new Trump or Putin threat of nuclear war.

Do a Report-Back Event after returning home from Korea.

Include the Tribunal in the upcoming 24-Hour Peacewave.

Create an online event kit and a kit that can be mailed to facilitate local events.

Include text and videos, the script for performing victims’ stories that was performed here on Day 1, a powerpoint that can be modified and used, a video contrasting actual victims’ stories with the New York City video recommending that you go indoors if you’re being nuked.

Also include exhibits and displays from this Tribunal, a draft resolution for the Korean government, one for the U.S. Congress, etc., each doing four things: 

• acknowledge
• apologize
• compensate
• act to avoid repetition

Also local resolutions in support of national ones. Perhaps a plan as well to promote to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Also a global petition for organizations and individuals, a speakers’ bureau, curricula for teachers of various grade levels, and perhaps plans for hosting a cultural forum including film screenings.

One more idea that nobody likes but me: 

Offer Trump a giant golden statue of himself in the middle of Seoul in exchange for nuclear disarmament. 

(Tear it down later.)

It might also be worth noting that I suggested to the group that the whole world should oppose increasing U.S. military spending. People applauded, but later one guy angrily declared that it was not his duty to fix the United States; that was the United States’ duty. This was clearly his idea of a correct anti-imperialist position; you shouldn’t help shrink the U.S. military because you oppose it more deeply and it’s not your fault, or something. But whose fault is it, that of those of us trying day and night, year after year, to shut it down? Of course national identity is almost all pervasive, and the truly global movement for a world beyond wars and borders remains a work very much in progress.

Videos from Day 2 (with a musical introduction from Day 1):

What else South Korean peace activists are up to: 

Closing smile: 

Photo collection:

Reflections from Ann Wright and Corazon Valdez Fabros: 

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