Japan surrendered days later – on August 15, 1945 – bringing the war to a close.
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A U.S. diplomat who attended this week’s 70th anniversary of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima stated Friday that nuclear weapons ought to by no means be used once more.
“I don’t know why I’m still alive today”, said Tsuboi, who now serves as chairman of the Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations.
Abe’s security bills, which he says are needed to increase Japan’s deterrence capabilities in the face of growing threats in the region, have run into stiff public opposition. If the bomb, dropped from the U.S. bomber “Enola Gay”, had been dropped on Las Vegas, almost the entire area would have felt the effects.
The Global Times tabloid, which is published under the People’s Daily newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, conceded in an editorial that it was “understandable” for Japan to recall the bombing.
At a ceremony near the onetime industrial exhibition hall that has been preserved as a skeletal monument to the attack, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe renewed a long-standing Japanese pledge to seek worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. She said the stories must be passed down to future generations and the world must continue nonproliferation efforts. Another bomb was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki three days later, killing an estimated 70,000 residents.
Junji Sarashina, a member of the American Society of Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-bomb Survivors, will recount his personal experience of the bombing in Hiroshima at the event later today. Tens of thousands of attendants stood for a minute of silence at 8-30 a.m.at the ceremony in Hiroshima’s peace park near the epicentre of the 1945 attack, marking the moment of the atomic blast. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, a Hiroshima native, wrote in an article for CNN that progress in eliminating atomic bombs has been “much too slow”. Many survivors of the initial blast burned to death, while cancers caused by the radiation affected countless others, causing years of misery to both adults and children. Instead, they have recommended a step-by-step approach, eventually leading to a ban on the possession and production of nuclear weapons. The anniversary comes as Japan is divided over Abe’s push to pass unpopular legislation to expand the country’s military role internationally.
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The movement to permanently shut down Japan’s fleet of nuclear power plants seemed on the verge of success after the Fukushima disaster in March 2011.
