“The use of nuclear weapons is not an unfounded fear, it is a real and present crisis,” Tomihisa Taue said on the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.
Nuclear weapons have posed a “real and present” threat since Russia invaded Ukraine, the mayor of Nagasaki said Tuesday, August 9, marking the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing that devastated the Japanese city.
On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was swept away by an infernal fire that killed 74,000 people, three days after the world’s first nuclear attack in Hiroshima. The two attacks carried out by the United States brought about the end of World War II, and to date Japan is the only country to have been the target of nuclear weapons in wartime.
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However, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue sounded the alarm on Tuesday. “In January this year, the leaders of the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China issued a joint statement reiterating that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” he said. “But the following month, Russia invaded Ukraine. Threats to use nuclear weapons were made that shook the world. The use of nuclear weapons is not an unfounded fear, but a real and present crisis,” the mayor of Nagasaki said.
He warned that these weapons could be triggered by miscalculations, malfunctions or terrorist attacks. Nagasaki survivors, Japanese officials and foreign dignitaries offered a silent prayer at 11:02 am, just as the atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese port city.
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On Saturday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gave a speech in Hiroshima to mark the anniversary of the August 6, 1945 attack that killed around 140,000 people. He warned that “mankind is playing with a loaded gun” in the context of the current nuclear crises. In recent days, Russians and Ukrainians have accused each other of bombing the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, in southern Ukraine.