Hiroshima, Nagasaki to Urge Trust-Building, Nuclear Abolition

Hiroshima/Nagasaki, July 31 (Jiji Press)–The mayors of Hiroshima in western Japan and Nagasaki in southwestern Japan plan to underline the importance of trust-building and action toward peace while urging the abolition of nuclear weapons in their annual peace declarations amid deepening global divisions, outlines released Friday showed. In this year’s peace declaration to be read out at the annual ceremony on Thursday, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui will express concern over imperious actions by major powers, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the tense situation in the Middle East in mind. After the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference failed to adopt an outcome document at a meeting in May, Matsui will ask world leaders how long they will continue to disappoint civil society seeking nuclear abolition. “We want this year’s declaration to be a strong appeal, both domestically and internationally, aimed at making the abolition of nuclear weapons the norm in the international community and thereby prompting a shift in policy among those in power,” he told a press conference Friday. This year’s Nagasaki peace declaration will express concern over growing global tensions and urge leaders worldwide to swiftly restore multilateralism and the rule of law, according to the outline. At the Aug. 9 annual peace ceremony, Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki will criticize the concept of nuclear deterrence by quoting remarks by the late storyteller Katsuji Yoshida, who worked to share his experience as a hibakusha atomic bomb survivor. He will also call on the Japanese government to attend a review conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, scheduled for November, and to uphold its three nonnuclear principles of not possessing nuclear weapons, not producing them and not allowing them into the country. “We will call on people to take action while empathizing with others’ positions and suffering and trying to understand each other,” Suzuki said at a press conference. Hiroshima was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II. Nagasaki suffered the same fate three days later. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]