Nagasaki mayor urges Obama to visit Japanese cities subject to US atomic bombings in 1945

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue has called on U.S. President Barrack Obama and the leaders of other nuclear powers to visit places of WWII atomic bombings in Japan.

“I am calling on U.S. President and the leaders of other countries to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see personally what happened there 70 years ago,” Taue said on Sunday as he read out the Declaration of Peace at a remembrance ceremony for the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.
“It is necessary to exert every effort to free the world from nuclear weapons,” the mayor of Nagasaki said addressing the world leaders. “We have the strength to safeguard peace without nuclear weapons and war,” he added.
Tomihisa Taue also voiced concern over a new Japanese law, which expands the powers of Japan’s self-defense forces.
“After the war, Japan embarked on a peaceful path but today more and more people have an impression that the ideology of peace fixed in the Japanese constitution may shake,” the Declaration of Peace said.
A minute of silence was announced in Nagasaki at 11:02 local time (05:02 Moscow time) exactly at the time when a US B-29 strategic bomber dropped a “Fat Man” atomic bomb on the city on August 9, 1945. Prior to that, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and representatives of public organizations had laid wreaths of white and yellow crown daisies to the memorial in the Peace Park located in the city centre.
Prior to the commemorations, a Japanese choir sang a song urging the world community not to repeat the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the second time.

“I visited Hiroshima on August 6 where I swore that we would firmly adhere to three non-nuclear principles with an aim to avert the recurrence of the horrors of nuclear weapons use. We will continue leading the world community to a nuclear free world,” the Japanese prime minister said in a statement circulated by his office prior to the ceremony.
Nagasaki became the second Japanese city after Hiroshima to be subject to the U.S. atomic bombing in August 1945.
The death toll continued rising in Nagasaki years on. The number of victims grows from year to year. The list expands constantly as more people die of atomic disease. The figures are updated annually on August 9. In 2014, the number of A-bombing victims reached 165,409 people.

The U.S. Armed Forces dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the end of WWII (1938-1945) for the officially declared purpose to speed up the capitulation of Japan. Those atomic attacks became the only examples of combat use of nuclear weapons in human history. The United States is still refusing to admit its moral responsibility for the atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities and keep justifying them by the military need.
Earlier this week, Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin criticized the United States for attempts to hush up the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“I have no doubt that the barbarity and overproportion of what was done is obvious to the US authorities. But instead of right comprehension of history, they want to bury it in oblivion,” Naryshkin told a round table meeting, devoted to the 70th anniversary of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that took place at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Naryshkin said the interests of peace and security were not the root cause behind the US behavior. It is a matter of “national prestige”, he explained.

“The incumbent US authorities are not trying to conceal the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is impossible, but the hypocrisy and cynicism of the US leaders who ruled the country at that time,” Naryshkin said.
“Their behavior is casting a shadow over the modern US policy, which has certainly inherited the ideology of exclusiveness; immunity from mistakes and arrogance of power,” the speaker of the lower house of Russian parliament said.

Naryshkin also suggested establishing an international tribunal on the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The atomic bombings of Japan have never been considered by any international war tribunal so far. However, crimes against humanity have no period of limitation,” the Duma speaker said.
“One thing is certain in my view: the method, which the United States chose back in 1945, did not rest on considerations of humanism or was dictated by any military need,” Naryshkin who heads the Russian Historical Society said.

“Japanese militarists committed plenty of atrocities against civilians in China, Korea and other Asian countries during WWII. The verdicts passed by the Tokyo and Khabarovsk tribunals gave a civilized reply to their conduct. But civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not responsible and had nothing to do with those crimes,” Naryshkin stressed.

http://tass.ru/en/world/813324