Home > Hiroshima mayor lashes out at U.S. on 59th anniversary of atomic bombing
Hiroshima mayor lashes out at U.S. on 59th anniversary of atomic bombing
by Open-Publishing - Friday 6 August 2004
by Shinya Ajima
HIROSHIMA - Hiroshima on Friday morning marked the 59th anniversary of the 1945
U.S. atomic bombing of the city. An estimated 40,000 people attended the ceremony
that started at 8 a.m. at the Peace Memorial Park in the downtown part of the
western Japan city that was devastated in the world’s first nuclear attack Aug
6, 1945, three days before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
In his peace declaration, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba voiced serious concern
over the "egocentric worldview" of the United States and moves in Japan to revise
the country’s pacifist Constitution.
"The egocentric worldview of the U.S. government is reaching extremes," Akiba said, criticizing the United States for its nuclear policies.
"Ignoring the United Nations and international law, the United States has resumed research to make nuclear weapons smaller and more usable," Akiba said.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also attended the memorial service.
Akiba demanded that the United States strive with other nuclear powers toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
In the declaration, he also demanded that the Japanese government reject moves to revise the war-renouncing Constitution.
"The Japanese government, as our representative, should defend the peace Constitution, of which all Japanese should be proud, and work diligently to rectify the trend toward open acceptance of war and nuclear weapons that is increasingly prevalent at home and abroad," he said.
"We demand that our government act on its obligation as the only nation to suffer atomic bombings," he said.
Article 9 of the Constitution stipulates that the Japanese people "forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes."
The mayor is a former House of Representatives member of the opposition Social Democratic Party, which is against revision of the Constitution as well as Japan’s dispatch of troops to Iraq for reconstruction work there after the U.S.-led war on the country.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly said last month that the article hinders the Japan-U.S. alliance. He apparently backtracked later, however, as the remark drew strong criticism from lawmakers in Japan.
The 59th anniversary comes at a time when concerns over nuclear issues have intensified globally.
Multilateral efforts are under way to deal with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, while Iran has come under pressure from the international community to allow inspections of nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
While expressing hope for the success of the 2005 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Hiroshima also expressed its intention of taking the initiative in achieving the complete abolition of nuclear weapons by bringing together cities, citizens and nongovernmental organizations from around the world.
The initiative, called the Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons, aims at adopting an action program incorporating an interim goal of "the signing in 2010 of a Nuclear Weapons Convention to serve as the framework for eliminating nuclear weapons by 2020," according to Akiba.
Among those attending the ceremony were Pakistani Ambassador Kamran Niaz and Russian Ambassador Alexander Losyukov.
U.N. Undersecretary General Nobuyasu Abe is also attending on behalf of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The city government of Hiroshima had asked seven nuclear nations - Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States - as well North Korea to send government delegates to the ceremony, but only Pakistan and Russia accepted.
The U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its aftereffects killed an estimated 140,000 people by the end of 1945.
This year, the names of 5,142 more people recognized as atomic-bomb victims by the city since Aug 6 last year were added to a memorial arch, bringing the total to 237,062. (Kyodo News)