Japan Press Weekly

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2013 July 31 - August 13 [ANTI-N-ARMS]

Abe betrays the spirit of A-bombed nation

The Japanese government’s “stance contradicts the resolution that Japan would never allow anyone else to become victims of a nuclear bombing.” This is what Nagasaki City Mayor Taue Tomihisa said in a Peace Declaration he read out at a Nagasaki A-bomb victim memorial service on August 9. He was criticizing the government as “betraying the expectations of global society” regarding nuclear disarmament.

A-bomb survivors (Hibakusha), both at the memorial ceremony and later at a meeting with the prime minister, expressed their anger and frustration toward the government which shows no sign of reviewing the system to recognize Hibakusha as sufferers of A-bomb radiation-related diseases.

Their average age exceeds 78 now. Five Hibakusha organizations said, “We have little time left to live,” in their joint request submitted to the government.

Unlike the Japanese government, 80 countries endorsed a joint statement focusing on the inhumanity of nuclear weapons at the Preparatory Committee of the NPT Review Conference held in Geneva in April. Japan refused to sign the joint statement because of its wording that “nuclear weapons should never be used under any circumstances”.

At a press conference after the Nagasaki ceremony, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo was asked if Japan’s refusal to sign the statement and a Japan-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement contradict the move for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Abe answered, “No.”

Japan, under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, adopts nuclear deterrence whose logic justifies the nuclear threat. That is why Japan abstained from agreeing to the joint statement and takes a contradictory position in regard to nuclear disarmament.

Another reason Abe cited for having rejected the joint statement was the North Korean situation.

India, with which Japan is going to conclude a Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, possesses nuclear weapons and is not a signatory to the NPT. A nuclear agreement with that country, as the Nagasaki mayor pointed out in the Peace Declaration, will give North Korea an excuse to further develop its nuclear weapons program.

Prime Minister Abe’s attendance at the memorial services in Hiroshima and Nagasaki shows himself to be a leader inappropriate to represent the only country to have suffered from atomic bombings.

In fact, during the services, he never said anything about maintaining compliance with Japan’s pacifist Constitution.