2023-08-06 00:26:30
Sunday, 08/06/2023, 00:26
In the face of worldwide concerns regarding an increasing nuclear threat, the Japanese city of Hiroshima commemorated the victims of the atomic bombing 78 years ago. At a commemoration ceremony marking the anniversary of the dropping of a US atomic bomb, Mayor Kazumi Matsui on Sunday hailed the visit of G7 leaders to Hiroshima Peace Park for their May summit as proof that the “spirit” of Hiroshima has reached them.
At the same time, Matsui urged policymakers around the world to abandon the theory of nuclear deterrence. “They must take concrete steps immediately to take us from the dangerous present to our ideal world,” Matsui said. At 8:15 a.m. (local time), the time when the US bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb called “Little Boy” on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the participants in the ceremony in Hiroshima observed a minute’s silence .
Tens of thousands of Hiroshima residents died immediately when the American atomic bomb was dropped, and an estimated 140,000 people died by the end of 1945. Three days following dropping Hiroshima, the US dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Shortly therefollowing, the Japanese Empire capitulated. Today, Hiroshima is a symbol of war – and of peace.
In Austria, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Sunday. A “peace campaign for a world without nuclear weapons, without war and without nuclear power plants” will take place at 6 p.m. on Stephansplatz in downtown Vienna, followed by a lantern march to the pond in front of the Karlskirche. In the run-up to the anniversary, Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) and opposition leader Andreas Babler (SPÖ) had urged a world without nuclear weapons.
Austria is one of the driving forces behind the Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty (TPNW), which came into force two years ago. The deal bans the possession, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, but is largely symbolic because it has not yet been endorsed by any of the existing nuclear powers. It is also an open secret that the US is putting massive pressure on its allies not to join the treaty. This also applies to Japan, which is dependent on Washington’s support given its regional rivalry with nuclear power China.
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