Oath of Peace by Nuclear Sufferer

Following commemoration in Hiroshima three days ago, Nagasaki held a ceremony for praying peace on Tuesday. While Mayor of Nagasaki, Tomihisa Tagami, praised United States President, Barack Obama, to have visited Hiroshima for the first time as incumbent President, a man who experienced atomic bombing in Nagasaki seventy-one years ago criticized Obama’s recognition on dropping the bomb. He unequivocally elaborated that new security legislature by Shinzo Abe administration was unconstitutional.

Toyokazu Ihara, 80, was blown away by a bomb around his house 6.5 kilometers from the ground zero, when he was cutting branch of trees to collect firewood. Although he faded away, he could avoid serious injuring. After working for labor union in electric power company, Ihara became a member of Nagasaki City Assembly. As the president of Association of Friends for Nuclear Sufferers Certification, he led anti-nuclear movement in Nagasaki.

In his speech titled Oath for Peace, Ihara revealed actual situation under the mushroom cloud. “It was incredible pandemonium under the atomic cloud, where seventy-four thousand of people, including not only the Japanese but compulsorily mobilized Chinese or Koreans and the Americans in custody, were indiscriminately killed and all the creatures like insects, birds or plants died,” said Ihara. His mother, sister and brother died, bleeding from gum, losing hair and suffering in groan.

Ihara quoted Obama speech in Hiroshima earlier this year that he expressed drop of atomic bomb “death fell from the sky.” “As knowing that uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, I have a sentiment that it could be an experiment for two kinds of atomic bomb,” said Ihara. Tokyo Shimbun introduced his speech as “Atomic bomb did not fall, but United States dropped it.”

Ihara also demanded the Japanese to remind of history as an assailant on Asian nations. Based on that notion, he expected to pave the way to peace by legislating “three non-nuclear principles” and creating non-nuclear weapon zone in Asia, with basic concept of Constitution of Japan that renounced war as a way to settle international conflict.

To Japanese government, Ihara required abolition of unconstitutional new security legislature. He also proposed not relying on nuclear umbrella of America and urging America and Russia to declare no preemptive use of nuclear weapon. Firmly believing that arms cannot maintain peace, Ihara demanded solidarity of the world for elimination of nuclear weapons, saying “Nagasaki must be the last.”