With a renewed appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide, the victim of the atomic bombing was thought of 74 years ago in the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue today called on his country’s right-wing conservative government to join the 2017 United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at a memorial ceremony.
This had already been demanded three days earlier by his colleague in Hiroshima; the city had also fallen victim to a US nuclear bomb. But Japan’s right-wing conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not return to the treaty in his speech on Remembrance Day. Japan, which feels threatened by the nuclear weapons and missile program of North Korea, is under the nuclear shield of its current security partner USA.
70,000 killed directly
At 11:02 (local time), the time when the „Fat Man“ nuclear bomb dropped by a US bomber exploded over the city on August 9, 1945, the participants of the memorial service held a minute’s silence. In Nagasaki alone, about 70,000 people were killed by direct action and 75,000 others were injured.
Three days earlier, the US had already devastated Hiroshima with a lower explosive atomic bomb. Under the impact of the devastation, the Japanese Empire surrendered on August 15, 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the world’s first atomic bombed cities to be known worldwide as a symbol of peace.
