Nagasaki Mayor Condemns Trump’s Nuclear Test Order

Nagasaki, Oct. 30 (Jiji Press)–Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki on Thursday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s order for the Defense Department to restart nuclear tests, describing it as “absolutely unacceptable.” “The act tramples on people’s grueling efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons,” the mayor of the southwestern Japan city, on which the United States dropped an atomic bomb 80 years ago, said at a press conference. The Hiroshima Prefecture Federation of A-Bomb Victims Associations issued a statement protesting Trump’s instruction, saying it “tramples on the feelings of Hiroshima for the abolition of nuclear weapons.” The group, based in the western Japan city of Hiroshima, which also suffered a U.S. atomic bombing in 1945, urged the Trump administration not to test nuclear weapons. Suzuki, the Nagasaki mayor, said that starting nuclear tests immediately means that Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told Trump during their meeting in Tokyo on Tuesday that she intends to nominate him for the prize, according to a senior U.S. administration official. Trump said in a social media post on Thursday, “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.” The U.S. president last month signed an executive order directing the Department of Defense to be known as the Department of War. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]