Japan should play central role to push nuclear disarmament

August 6, 2015

EDITORIAL: Japan should lead global campaign to convince nuclear powers to disarm

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201508060068

August 06, 2015

If it is not raining in Hiroshima tonight and the game goes ahead, all players of Hiroshima Toyo Carp professional baseball club will wear a red number 86 on their jerseys as they play a home game at the Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium Hiroshima.

This will be the first time that all players of a Central League team have worn the same uniform number in an official game. This is an event called “Peace Nighter" (night game), designed to remind or inform people of the fact that Hiroshima was devastated by atomic bombing 70 years ago to the day--Aug. 6, hence the number 86.

The mother and the grandmother of Hajime Matsuda, the owner the Carp, are "hibakusha," survivors of the atomic bombing of the city.

What prompted Matsuda, 64, to organize this event as part of the club’s efforts to send out messages concerning peace and Hiroshima’s tragedy is a blog posting by a key player of the team. The player, who hails from the northern Tohoku region, said he had not known about “Aug. 6” until his marriage with a woman born in Hiroshima after joining the Carp.

Matsuda himself designed a special cap for the day, which features an image of a white dove on the team color of red, as well as a special emblem sewn on the sleeve of the jersey showing the figure 297,684, the number of people exposed to radiation from the A-bomb who have died as of Aug. 5 this year.

The idea that all players don number 86 on the day was conceived by Masaharu Jo, chief of program scheduling and development at local broadcaster RCC Broadcasting Co.

Four years ago, when he was working for the news section, Jo found that the ratio of children who knew the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, had declined significantly. According to a survey by the Hiroshima municipal board of education, only 33 percent of elementary school students and 56 percent of junior high school students knew the fact, down from 56 percent and 75 percent, respectively, 15 years earlier.

“I was shocked to find sharp falls in the ratios,” says Jo. “I thought the figures for other parts of Japan must be much lower than those for Hiroshima, where there is much enthusiasm about peace education and reporting on topics related to the atomic bombing.

“I wondered whether there were ways this ballpark can help send out at least basic information (about the atomic bombing) to people in both Japan and the rest of the world,” says Jo.

DOOMSDAY CLOCK AT 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

No nuclear weapons have been used in a war during the 70 years since the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the Cold War ended, the fear of a nuclear war faded in people’s minds.

But there still exist a sufficient number of nuclear weapons to kill all the people on this planet, with many of the warheads in a dangerous state of war readiness.

The situation concerning nuclear arms has deteriorated in recent years. Nations such as Pakistan, India and North Korea have carried out nuclear arms tests, while Russia has been engaged in nuclear-weapon saber rattling.

Two years after the nuclear attacks on the two Japanese cities, a U.S. science magazine started showing the so-called Doomsday Clock, a symbolic clock face indicating the time left until midnight, which represents the time of nuclear catastrophe.

In January this year, the clock was put forward, for the first time in three years, by two minutes to three minutes before midnight.

The clock was set backward to 17 minutes before midnight after the end of the Cold War. But the clock is now closer to the doomsday mark than at any time in the past except for 1953, when the clock was set to two minutes before midnight in the wake of hydrogen bomb tests by the United States and the Soviet Union.

Although the latest decision to put the clock forward also reflects the dangers posed by the effects of other human activities, such as global warming, it is nevertheless a strong warning about the moves by the United States and Russia to modernize their nuclear arsenals amid their intensifying enmity.

The 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which was held in New York from April 27 to May 22, ended without a final document being adopted. The discussion was marked by a bitter confrontation between the nuclear powers that are unwilling to part with their powerful weapons and the nonnuclear countries that are increasingly concerned about that stance.

RECOGNIZE NUCLEAR WEAPONS AS AN 'ABSOLUTE EVIL'

In the past several years, there has been a rapidly growing chorus of calls among nonnuclear states for an international treaty to ban nuclear arms altogether. A lack of significant progress in the efforts for nuclear arms reduction has made these countries increasingly concerned about a situation where their fates rest in the hands of nuclear powers.

In response to a request from the U.N. General Assembly for an advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons, the International Court of Justice in 1996 replied that "the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.”

In delivering a keynote speech for a symposium held in Hiroshima last month, Mohammed Bedjaoui, the presiding judge of the court when it handed down the advisory opinion, who later served as Algeria’s foreign minister, described nuclear arms as the “weapon of the devil.”

He also pointed out that in three international conferences on the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons the majority of states supported the “humanitarian approach” to nuclear disarmament, which is aimed at establishing international standards that define nuclear arms as inhumane weapons as well as a treaty to ban the possession and use of these weapons of mass destruction.

It is a big challenge to figure out how to persuade the nuclear powers, which turn their backs on the argument that nuclear weapons are by nature inhumane, to discard their nuclear arsenals to reach the goal of complete abolition of nuclear arms. But it is clearly time to start taking actions.

GLOBAL CAMPAIGN JAPAN'S RESPONSIBILITY

The question should not be whether nuclear weapons are strategically useful or not, according to Nobuo Hayashi, senior legal adviser for the International Law and Policy Institute in Oslo.

“As the mayors of Hiroshima and other people have repeatedly asserted in their speeches, nuclear weapons are an ‘absolute evil,’” he says. “The idea of nuclear deterrence holds hostage not only the peoples of the countries possessing nuclear weapons but also the peoples of third countries.”

Bedjaoui visited Hiroshima for the first time to attend the symposium. Even though he had read literary works about the atomic bombing, actually paying a visit to the city was a completely different and incomparable experience, he says.

The number of foreign visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is growing.

In the NPT review conference, the Japanese government urged political leaders, diplomats and young people of the world to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The government should follow up with concrete actions like making it a rule to suggest visits to these cities to all foreign dignitaries who come to Japan.

A large-scale campaign to popularize the notion that nuclear weapons are inhumane in nature would certainly enhance international calls for the abolition of nuclear arms, according to Steven Leeper, an American who was involved in Hiroshima’s administrative efforts to promote peace and served as chairman of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics may offer a good opportunity for such a campaign, he says.

The dates of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, should be remembered by all Japanese.

It is the responsibility of Japan as the nation that suffered nuclear attacks to make serious efforts to recognize and understand more deeply the inhumane nature of atomic bombs and promote that recognition and understanding internationally.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 6

Editorial: Japan should play central role in push for global nuclear disarmament

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/perspectives/news/20150806p2a00m0na014000c.html

Kazu Sueishi, 88, who was born in the United States and raised in Hiroshima, saw a white dot in the blue sky over Hiroshima 70 years ago immediately after a B29 bomber flew away. She was about to say to a person nearby, "What's that?" when she saw a flash. The white dot later turned out to be an atomic bomb. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Sueishi survived but was bedridden for about seven months after the bombing. She suffered a broken hip and could not stop bleeding from her gums. She also felt like she was choking and had the chills. Every morning, she thought, "Today is my turn to die."

Sueishi miraculously recovered and traveled to Los Angeles in 1957 to marry a second-generation Japanese-American man. At the time, treatment she underwent for illnesses related to her exposure to radiation were not covered by medical insurance in the U.S. Some legislators in the U.S. even said taxpayers' money should not be used to treat people from a former enemy. Her husband Masayuki experienced being detained by the United States because he was of Japanese descent.

Nevertheless, Sueishi has never had a grudge against the United States. She has talked about her experience of the atomic bombing to American people while serving as president of the American Society of Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors.

"Some people earnestly listen to what I have to say and tell me, 'We're sorry. Forgive us.' If you talk to Americans, they understand you. Mr. Obama calls for a world without nuclear weapons but his calls have hardly spread. I have no choice but to talk about my experiences with love even though people may soon forget my speech," says Sueishi.

However, we live in a harsh world. Talks between the United States and Russia on nuclear arms reductions have been deadlocked and President Vladimir Putin, who forcibly annexed Crimea into Russia, even threatened to use nuclear weapons and provoke other countries as if to say they should counter Russia with weapons. It has been reported that China, Pakistan and India are drastically expanding their nuclear armament.

North Korea is also believed to be developing nuclear missiles that can hit the United States. A domino effect of the nuclear arms race appears to be happening across the world. A U.S. think tank predicts that North Korea will have deployed 100 nuclear missiles by 2020, posing a direct threat to Japan.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is hollowing out. India and Pakistan have refused to sign the treaty while North Korea declared its withdrawal from the pact in 2003. Six countries including the United States and European countries have put the brakes on Iran's nuclear weapons development to a certain extent. Still, nuclear weapons believed to be held by Israel, which has also refused to sign the NPT, is a destabilizing factor in the Middle East.

Furthermore, the latest NPT Review Conference held this past May ended without adopting a final document, demonstrating that a perception gap between six nuclear powers and other countries has widened to an unprecedented level.

China blocked Japan from incorporating calls on world leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final document and attempted to link the issue to historical perceptions. While China acted in a high-handed manner, the move shed light on the failure of Japan's behind-the-scenes efforts to sufficiently form a consensus among parties on the matter.

This is the reality of nuclear disarmament after 70 years have passed since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One cannot help but wonder whether Japan's calls for nuclear disarmament are sufficiently heard throughout the world and whether the position of Japan, which relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella while calling itself the only country that experienced atomic bombing, is understood by other countries. Questions also persist as to what Japan should do to prevent the endless nuclear proliferation and nuclear arms race from devastating the world.

To answer these questions, Japan should more seriously and proactively work on nuclear disarmament. From the viewpoint of nuclear deterrence, it is not necessarily wrong for Japan to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to avoid a third atomic bombing. Still, it would be out of the question if Japan were to hesitate to make its assertions on nuclear disarmament to show consideration to U.S. nuclear policy. Rather, Tokyo should seriously consider trying to persuade Washington to reduce its nuclear arms and play a leading role in the international community over nuclear disarmament.

It is good news that not only the U.S. ambassador to Japan but also another high-ranking official of the U.S. government is attending ceremonies to mark the atomic bombing anniversary. However, U.S. President Barack Obama should offer prayers to those who fell victim to the atomic bombing if he wants to stick to his goal of achieving a world without nuclear weapons. The president should take the opportunity of next year's G7 summit meeting in Japan to visit the atomic-bombed cities. If a U.S. president is to overcome the perception gap between the two countries over the atomic bombing and visit these cities, it could give momentum to nuclear arms reductions and nuclear disarmament that remain deadlocked.

The average age of atomic bombing survivors, or hibakusha, has surpassed 80. People's memory of the atomic bombings is fading as 70 years have passed since the attacks. Hitomi Shirabe, 53, leader of the citizens group Peace Baton Nagasaki, is involved in activities to hand over hibakusha's experiences to future generations. She is now wondering how to convince the world of the need to get rid of nuclear arms after all hibakusha have passed away.

Shirabe says her group struggles to pass the story of the atomic bombings to younger generations. "A growing number of people -- not only younger generations but also older ones -- are reluctant to listen to vivid and horrific stories on the atomic bombings. Therefore, we include scientific information and specific experiences of hibakusha in our stories to stimulate our listeners' intellectual curiosity and help them acquire basic knowledge. We sometimes use picture-story shows when we think our words are insufficient to convey hibakusha's stories," she explains.

Just telling people about the tragic reality is not necessary appropriate. The fact that dolls that show the devastation caused by the atomic bombing are no longer on permanent display at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum apparently reflects such trends of the times. How to hand over hibakusha's experiences to future generations is a major challenge that Japan, the only atomic-bombed country, must face.