This week the world marks the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where at least 214,000 people were killed, when the United States dropped atomic bombs before the end of World War II.
The commemoration coincided with a censure from Japan’s prime minister at Russian threats to use nuclear weapons as Japan marked the anniversary of the atomic bombing on Sunday.
Around 140,000 people died in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and 74,000 in Nagasaki three days later – which preceded the surrender of Japan to the Allied troops led by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.
At a ceremony in Hiroshima, which has since been reconstructed, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whose family comes from that city, said “Japan, as the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings in war, will continue efforts towards a nuclear-free world.
“The path towards it is becoming increasingly difficult because of deepening divisions in the international community over nuclear disarmament and Russia’s nuclear threat.
“Given this situation, it is all the more important to bring back international momentum towards realization of a nuclear-free world,” he said.
Kishida is correct and on the right track when he said devastation brought to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear weapons “can never be repeated.”
Kishida’s comments echoed those of UN chief Antonio Guterres, who issued a statement on the Hiroshima anniversary, saying “some countries are recklessly rattling the nuclear saber once again, threatening to use these tools of annihilation.”
“In the face of these threats, the global community must speak as one. Any use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable,” Guterres said.
Earlier in May the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, and the President of the Japanese Red Cross Society, Atsushi Seike, issued a statement ahead of the three-day G7 summit in Hiroshima.
In their statement, which we endorse as well, they said the world must remember the horror wrought by the two atomic bombings of 1945.
For the sake of the survival of humanity, we must indeed free the world of weapons that threaten catastrophic humanitarian consequences and irreversible harm.
This requires immediate and decisive action by the entire international community.
The risk of use of nuclear weapons is highest since the worst moments of the Cold War, amid heightened political tensions and new steps to expand arsenals.
With almost 13,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear-armed states, many with much more destructive power than the Hiroshima bomb and ready to be launched within minutes, “that dark path would have catastrophic effects on human health, the environment, the climate, food production, and socio-economic development around the globe.”
As Mirjana Spoljaric and Atsushi Seike correctly pointed out: “No government or international organization is prepared to deal with such a situation.”