Tokyo [Japan], August 7: The Japanese city of Hiroshima on Wednesday commemorated the victims of the atomic bombing 80 years ago, as global concerns over the threat of nuclear conflict grow.
At a ceremony marking the anniversary of the US atomic bombing on August 6, 1945, Mayor Kazumi Matsui urged younger generations to continue the fight against nuclear weapons.
Matsui said that younger generations must understand that misguided decisions on military spending, national security and nuclear weapons could lead to inhumane consequences.
At 8:15 am - the moment when the US bomber Enola Gay dropped the first wartime atomic bomb, known as "Little Boy" - attendees observed a minute of silence.
Tens of thousands of Hiroshima residents were killed instantly and by the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 people had died. Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the US dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered shortly after.
Last year, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidanky?, a Japanese organization representing survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, for its work towards a nuclear-free world.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned in a statement that the risk of nuclear conflict is rising again. The same weapons that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he said, are once again being used as tools of pressure.
Japan increasing military capabilities Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba reaffirmed on the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing that the government remains committed to the three principles of not producing, possessing or allowing nuclear weapons on Japanese soil.
However, in light of Russia's war against Ukraine, China's growing power and the threat from North Korea, Japan is significantly ramping up its military capabilities. There are even voices in Japan - the only country to have suffered atomic bombings - openly calling for the country to arm itself with nuclear weapons.
Experts like MG Sheftall, a professor of modern Japanese cultural history at Shizuoka University, have observed a gradual decline in the pacifism deeply rooted in Japanese society for decades, based on the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Sheftall, who documented the experiences of the last eyewitnesses of the atomic bombings in two books with harrowing detail, criticized the erosion of peace education programmes in Japan. These programmes, which for decades conveyed the horrors of war - particularly those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - are being undermined by conservative politicians and education officials, he said.
As a result, Japanese youth today know almost nothing about the war, "apart from what they pick up from sensationalist manga comics, sentimental TV dramas and films, or lurid internet content," the expert told foreign journalists.
Source: Qatar Tribune
