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At the event in Nagasaki Peace Park, scaled down due to the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Tomihisa Taue read a peace statement in which he expressed concern that nuclear states have withdrawn from disarmament efforts in recent years.
Instead, they are upgrading and miniaturizing nuclear weapons for easier use, he said. Taue endorsed the US and Russia for increasing risks by scrapping the Nuclear Forces Treaty in between.
“As a result, the threat of using nuclear weapons is becoming more and more real,” Taue said. Noting that the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty came into force 50 years ago, Taue urges the US and Russia to look at an (asterisk) workable way (asterisk) towards their nuclear disarmament in the NPT review process next year.
He said that “the true horror of nuclear weapons has not yet been adequately conveyed to the entire world” despite fighting and efforts by hibakusha, as a nuclear bomb survivor, to make Nagasaki the last resort of the tragedy.
He also urged the Japanese government and legislators to sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
After attending the ceremony, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe criticized the treaty for being unrealistic. None of the nuclear states has participated, and it is not widely supported even by non-nuclear states, he said.
“The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted without considering the reality of the harsh national security environment,” Abe said at a news conference. “I have to say that the treaty is different from the position and approach of Japan” even though they share the same goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, he said.
Abe has repeatedly refused to sign the treaty. He reiterated that Japan’s approach is not to take sides, but to serve as a bridge between nuclear and non-nuclear states to foster dialogue to achieve a total nuclear ban. Survivors and pacifist groups say Japan is purely at odds with the US and other nuclear states.
Abe called “bad national security environment and a wide gap between the two sides over nuclear disarmament.” He also noted that Japan is facing threats from the development and modernization of nuclear weapons from neighboring regions in the region. ‘
Speaking for Abe, Taue disagreed, saying: ‘Under the nuclear weapons states and countries under the nuclear umbrella, there have been voices saying it is too early for such a treaty. That is not so. Nuclear weapons reduction is far too late to come. ”
While Tokyo bids farewell to its own possession, production as host of nuclear weapons, Japan as a US ally stops 50,000 US troops and is protected by the US nuclear umbrella. The post-World War II security regime complicates the pressure to get Japan to sign the treaty, as it raises its own military to deal with threats from North Korea and China, among others.
An older group of survivors has expressed a growing sense of urgency to tell their stories, hoping to reach younger generations to continue their efforts to establish a nuclear free world.
“There is not much time left for our survival,” said Shigemi Fukabori, 89. He was a 14-year-old student mobilized to work at a shipyard when Nagasaki was bombed.
“I am determined to tell my story so that Nagasaki will be the last place on Earth to have a nuclear attack.”
Fukabori, who nearly lost relatives, said he left the pile of burnt bodies, bombed-out street cars and the badly injured desperately desperate for help and water, never forgetting when he returned to his home in the back of ‘ the Urakami Cathedral, which was also nearly destroyed.
“We do not want anyone else to go through this,” he said.
“Nagasaki bears a responsibility as a witness to catastrophic results that the nuclear weapon has caused to humanity and the environment,” Fukabori said in his speech at the ceremony, representing Nagasaki’s survivors. “I hope that as many people as possible join us, especially the young generations to inherit our path of peace and to move on.”
Many peace events, including conversations of survivors until the anniversary, were canceled due to the coronavirus, but some survivors have collaborated with students and pacifist groups to speak at online events.
