Japanese PM recalls his ‘shock’ at seeing US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima

Seeing a world without nuclear weapons is an “ultimate goal,” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said on Saturday. The politician described what he called a shocking experience of seeing a video of the US bombing the Japanese city of Hiroshima and stated that he wanted to ensure that such tragedies could never happen again. 

Ishiba was speaking on the day after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a Japanese anti-nuclear-weapons organization founded by the survivors of the US attacks. Witness testimony provided by the group has demonstrated that “nuclear weapons must never be used again,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

The prime minister was participating in a debate with other party leaders in the run-up to the parliamentary elections later in October when he was asked about his stance on abolishing nuclear arms. “The ultimate goal is a world without nuclear weapons. I want to make that clear,” he replied.

The politician then recalled how he first saw footage of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing released by the US when he was a sixth-grade student at school. “I’ll never forget the shock I felt when I saw that video,” he said. 

“I want to make sure that something like [the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombings] never happens again,” Ishiba said. At the same time, he admitted that a world that is completely free of nuclear weapons would not be possible right now since nuclear deterrence does play a certain role in global security. 

“We are not going to rely solely on deterrence, but, in reality, deterrence is functioning,” the prime minister said. “I would like to have thorough discussions on how to achieve nuclear abolition and how to link it to this going forward.”

Last month, Ishiba said that Tokyo should “consider America’s sharing of nuclear weapons or the introduction of nuclear weapons into the region” in the name of better deterrence. Both the prime minister and his cabinet then sought to downplay those remarks as something that just should be discussed by the government and is more of a long-term endeavor. 

The US is the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 warplane dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, killing up to 126,000 people, mostly civilians. Another nuclear bomb was detonated above the city of Nagasaki on August 9, killing up to 80,000 people. The devastating attacks prompted Japan to surrender to the Allied powers a week later, which brought an end to the Second World War.

Japan marks the anniversary of the bombings at an annual event at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. This August, then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida refrained from even mentioning the US role in the attack and instead spoke about “Russia’s nuclear threat.”

Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO’s ever-increasing involvement in the ongoing Ukraine conflict could lead to a direct confrontation between Moscow and the US-led bloc and potentially to World War III. President Vladimir Putin has also recently suggested revising the national nuclear doctrine to allow a nuclear response to a conventional attack by a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear one. 

Senior diplomats from the US and the UK snubbed the ceremony altogether because its organizers declined to invite the Israeli ambassador. Earlier, Tokyo said that it would like to see West Jerusalem seeking a ceasefire in Gaza.