72nd Hiroshima Memorial Day

It is the 72nd Hiroshima Day on Sunday. Seventy-two years ago, an atomic bomb was dropped from an aircraft of United States Force and its explosion above the city caused 140 thousands of immediate deaths. It was the greatest weapon of mass destruction in human history actually used in a war. In the ceremony at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Sunday morning, the families of victims in the first nuclear war renewed their conviction that we did not need nuclear weapons on this planet.

Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has been issuing certification for the sufferers of atomic bomb, or Hibakusha, to guarantee them national treatment on their health or other difficulties in their life. The number of Hibakusha who possess that Hibakusha Note marked the lowest of 164,621 at the end of last year. Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb Victims added 5,530 names of the deceased in a year. Total deaths of Hiroshima atomic bomb amounted to 308,725.

In the memorial ceremony, Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, asked the listeners of his announcement of Hiroshima Peace Declaration to imagine what happened 72 years ago under the mushroom cloud made by unleashed “absolute evil.” He expressed that hell with sharp lightening, fierce radiation and heat, great blast and rumbling, uncountable roasted corpses and black-faced people whose melted skin was hanging on arms sticking around fire on the ground. “Civil society already knows that nuclear weapon does not work for security of a state and realizes the danger of controlling nuclear material,” insisted Matsui.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe insisted that accumulating efforts of taking steps forward to the world without nuclear weapon is the responsibility of us as an only country exposed to nuclear weapon in a war. “To achieve the world really without nuclear weapon, we need participation of both nuclear and non-nuclear nations. Maintaining three non-nuclear principles and urging the both parties, we will lead the international society,” told Abe in his speech.

However, hibakusha and most Japanese people were highly disappointed by weak effort of Japanese government for the world without nuclear weapon. Japan did not participated in the adoption of United Nations Treaty of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons last month with reasoning that major nuclear nations did not join. If he were truly willing to lead the international society, Abe should have adopt the treaty and persuade nuclear nations, including United States, to join it. World without nuclear weapon is nothing more than a political tool for him.