This Tuesday, August 9, the Japanese city of Nagasaki commemorates the American atomic bombing that destroyed it 77 years ago. The atomic bomb, dropped at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945, killed 74,000 people. Three days and three hours earlier, on August 6, nearly 300 kilometers from Nagasaki, Hiroshima was also swept off the map by nuclear fire.
As the first of the two bombs, Hiroshima made a bigger impression. Teruko Yokoyama is a “hibakusha,” survivor in Japanese, who was irradiated in Nagasaki at the age of 4. For her it makes no difference: “First or second doesn’t matter, it has to be the last forever.” And this survivor immediately thinks of the Ukrainian context. “Russia says in Ukraine: ‘We will use a nuclear weapon’. That would be completely unacceptable, she complains. There is no way I want my grandchildren’s generation and their descendants to suffer the same.”
Among the 94 nations represented at the Nagasaki commemoration ceremonies on August 9, there is neither Russia nor Belarus. “I didn’t invite them,” Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue defended. On the other hand, the number of nations represented this year is increasing significantly. In the current context, ambassadors and countries jointly wish to express a wish with Nagasaki for peace,” he said. This desire for peace must be borne by the new generations, as the average age of the survivors is now approaching 85 years. “The nuclear weapons problem does not only concern Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” explains the elected official.
“We have relied on the survivors so far. But it is very important now that other citizens around the world carry the message that was only spread by the survivors.”
Tomihisa Taue, Mayor of Nagasaki
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And in the current situation, the Hibakusha must carry their message from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. “I want it to carry the thoughts of all the victims, the dead, and the survivors,” enthuses one survivor. Especially since the head of the Japanese government comes from Hiroshima. Those whose fight for the disappearance of nuclear weapons seems to be inextricably linked to their political actions “must get more involved, with more conviction,” they say. “He’s the Prime Minister of the only country that suffered the atomic bomb, he has to be on the front line, nobody else on the world stage can take that place,” she explains.
The Hibakusha do not understand that Japan, which will host the G7 summit in Hiroshima in 2023, has not signed the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which will come into force in 2021. Japan is the only country victim of nuclear strikes, depends on the American nuclear umbrella.
Japan: Nagasaki 77 Years Later – Report by Karyn Nishimura
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