Russian leaders call for international investigation into US atomic bombings of Japan

[former9thward]

117. Not according to international law.

(i) The conduct endangers protected persons or objects. The majority of war crimes involve death, injury, destruction or unlawful taking of property. However, not all acts necessarily have to result in actual damage to persons or objects in order to amount to war crimes. This became evident when the Elements of Crimes for the International Criminal Court were being drafted. It was decided, for example, that it was enough to launch an attack on civilians or civilian objects, even if something unexpectedly prevented the attack from causing death or serious injury. This could be the case of an attack launched against the civilian population or individual civilians, even though, owing to the failure of the weapon system, the intended target was not hit. The same is the case for subjecting a protected person to medical experiments – actual injury is not required for the act to amount to a war crime; it is enough to endanger the life or health of the person through such an act.

(ii) The conduct breaches important values. Acts may amount to war crimes because they breach important values, even without physically endangering persons or objects directly. These include, for example, abusing dead bodies; subjecting persons to humiliating treatment;making persons undertake work that directly helps the military operations of the enemy; violation of the right to fair trial; and recruiting children under 15 years of age into the armed forces.

Pearl Harbor does not fall into these categories.

https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter44_rule156