At Hiroshima remembrance ceremony, Shinzo Abe proposes new nuclear disarmament

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated the fearsome destructive power of two crude and small nuclear devices and spurred the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union played nuclear roulette in the game of nuclear deterrence and the world came close to annihilation on many an occasion.

Members of a rightist group offer silent prayers for the victims of the atomic bombing with anti-U.S. banner near the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Thursday, August 6, 2015.

Also present were representatives from a record 100 nations, including the United States, which in an unprecedented move sent a high-level official from Washington to join the event along with U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy.

Japanese Red Cross has run hospitals for atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima since 1956 and in Nagasaki since 1969.

Even in a hypothetical world in which we could persuade all countries to give up their nuclear weapons and commit never to develop them again, history suggests that the world would likely become a less peaceful place. He said the world till bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons.

Abe, also addressing the ceremony, said that as the sole country to face a nuclear attack, Japan had a duty to push for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Defence Minister Gen Nakatani, however, was quick to add that such a development was in reality impossible because of Japan’s long-standing policy of not possessing or producing nuclear arms and not letting others bring them into the country. He quickly dismissed that idea as unlikely, however.

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said nuclear weapons were an “absolute evil” and urged the worldwide community to abolish them forever.

“My grandfather died here at that time and I keep wondering what he felt then”, said Tomiyo Sota.

On 6 August, 1945, a US B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay had dropped the uranium bomb in the city claiming at least 70,000 lives on that day alone.

“It was a white, silvery flash”, Hiroshima survivor Sunao Tsuboi, 90, told AFP before Thursday’s memorial. “He was still 21 years old and it pains me to think he died so young”.

The US bomb killed 140,000 people, and a second bombing, over Nagasaki three days later, killed another 70,000.

The bombings prompted Japan’s surrender in World War II.

While some historians say that they prevented many more casualties in a planned land invasion, critics counter that the attacks were not necessary to end the war, arguing that Japan was already heading for imminent defeat.

The decision to drop the bomb was highly popular with Americans at the time, who were tired from years of war. Fifty-six per cent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Centre in February said using the atomic bomb on Japanese cities was justified, compared to 79 per cent of Japanese respondents who said it was not.

US President Barack Obama made it an early focus of his foreign policy, warning in a historic 2009 speech in Prague that “as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the centre cannot hold”.

The number of hibakusha in and outside Japan – atomic bomb survivors with documents certifying that they experienced the bad bombing 70 years ago – stood at 183,519 in March this year, almost half of its peak of 372,264 in 1980, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.