Nagasaki marked the 81st anniversary of the United States atomic bombing on Sunday, August 9, with Mayor Shiro Suzuki warning that greater reliance on nuclear deterrence raises the danger of nuclear war. At the ceremony in the southwestern Japanese city's Peace Park, he described nuclear arms as an absolute evil that cannot coexist with humanity and urged nuclear-armed states and their allies to confront the risks created by their policies.
Representatives of more than 90 countries attended, according to the Associated Press. Participants observed a minute of silence at 11:02 a.m., the moment in 1945 when a US B-29 dropped the plutonium bomb known as Fat Man. The attack killed about 70,000 people by the end of that year, three days after the Hiroshima bombing killed about 140,000; Japan surrendered on August 15, ending World War II.
Suzuki directed part of his appeal at Japan's national government. He called on Tokyo to uphold its war-renouncing Constitution, preserve the three non-nuclear principles of not possessing, not producing and not permitting nuclear weapons on Japanese territory, and attend a review conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons later this year. Japan has not joined that treaty and remains protected by the United States nuclear umbrella.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi attended the ceremony and said her government currently maintains the three principles. She again advocated what she characterized as a realistic and pragmatic route toward a world without nuclear arms, but did not explicitly promise that all three principles would remain unchanged as her government revises Japan's defense policy. She also did not mention the prohibition treaty in her address.
The exchange comes amid concern that Japan's forthcoming security documents could strengthen offensive military capabilities or reconsider the principle barring nuclear weapons from entering the country. Survivors, known as hibakusha, have criticized official support for deterrence and protested against any easing of the restrictions. Their number has declined to 91,105 and their average age now exceeds 86, making the preservation of firsthand testimony increasingly urgent.
Sunday's commemoration therefore linked remembrance of the 1945 destruction with a current national and international policy dispute. Suzuki asked leaders to reduce dependence on nuclear threats, while Takaichi said Japan would pursue disarmament through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty framework and decide its approach to the prohibition treaty according to security and disarmament considerations. Japan's defense review and the treaty meeting later this year will show how those competing positions develop.
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