tokyo. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui delivered a speech yesterday at the ceremony marking the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city, criticizing Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons, without mentioning that the United States was responsible for said crime against humanity that left some 140,000 dead.
The Secretary General of the United Nations Organization (UN), Antonio Guterres, did not mention the United States as the only power that has used this weapon of mass destruction against the civilian population, without it having been brought to trial in international courts to date. .
Some 140,000 people died on August 6, 1945, and 74,000 in Nagasaki three days later, when the United States dropped nuclear bombs on those two Japanese cities days before the end of World War II.
All the Japanese politicians who spoke at the funeral ceremony in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing remembered Russia, but never mentioned the United States in their speech.
Only the TBS television channel, when beginning the live transmission from the Peace Memorial Park, where the ceremony was held, indicated that Washington was responsible for the nuclear bombardment.
However, neither the mayor Matsui of Hiroshima mentioned it in the traditional declaration of peace, nor the governor of the prefecture, Hidehiko Yuzaki, nor the premier Kishida. At the same time, in his speech there was a place for Russia.
“Japan, as the only nation that has suffered atomic bombing in war, will continue efforts for a world free of nuclear weapons,” said the Japanese premier.
“The path to achieve this is becoming increasingly difficult due to the deep divisions in the international community over nuclear disarmament and the atomic threat from Russia,” he lamented.
“Given this situation, it is even more important to regain international momentum towards achieving a world free of nuclear weapons,” Kishida added.
The Japanese leader, whose family is originally from Hiroshima, insisted that the “devastation in cities attacked with nuclear weapons can never be repeated.
“Leaders around the world must face the reality that the threats now being expressed by certain policymakers reveal the folly of nuclear deterrence theory,” Matsui said, adding that “they must immediately take concrete steps to bring us from the dangerous present to our ideal world.”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a statement on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing in which he criticized that “some countries are recklessly brandishing the nuclear saber again, threatening to use these tools of annihilation.
“In the face of these threats, the global community must speak with one voice. Any use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable,” Guterres said.
At the ceremony in Hiroshima, thousands of people, including survivors, known as hibakushasfamily members and dignitaries from a record 111 countries prayed for the fatalities and injuries, and called for world peace.
For the second consecutive year, Hiroshima does not invite Russia or Belarus to the ceremony due to the war with Ukraine.
The participants, many of them dressed in black, observed a minute’s silence at 08:15, the exact time the US bomber Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb that killed about 140,000 people.
