Tokyo: Japan yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki that claimed more than 74,000 lives, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came under fire for his attempts to expand the military’s role.
Bells tolled and tens of thousands of people, including ageing survivors and the relatives of victims, observed a minute’s silence at 11:02am, the moment the bomb from a US plane devastated the port city on August 9, 1945.
The function was attended by 75 countries including US ambassador Caroline Kennedy.
“As the only country attacked with an atomic bomb in war, I am renewing our determination to lead the global effort for nuclear disarmament,” Abe said.
Abe was criticised for failing to mention the three principles at a ceremony days earlier in Hiroshima. Nagasaki survivor Sumiteru Taniguchi, 86, lashed out at Abe’s government for revising the pacifist constitution.
“The security bills the government is trying to push through would jeopardise our movement for nuclear abolition and hopes of hibakusha (atom-bomb survivors),” he said. Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue also criticised the government.
“Worries and anxieties are now spreading among us that this pledge made 70 years ago may be now undermined,” he said.
Abe defended the security legislation as necessary for peace. “It will send a stronger message to the world that the Japan-US alliance functions perfectly and make an attack on Japan less likely,” he said. The changes would allow them to engage in combat -- in defence of an ally which comes under attack -- for the first time since the war.
In the now bustling port city of Nagasaki, about 74,000 people died in the initial blast near a major arms factory from a plutonium bomb nicknamed “Fat Man”. Thousands of others perished months or years later from radiation sickness.
The attack on Nagasaki came three days after the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a bomb, dubbed “Little Boy”, on Hiroshima in history’s first atomic bombing.
A wall of heat up to 4,000 degrees Celsius (7,200 degrees Fahrenheit) -- hot enough to melt steel -- incinerated that city.
About 140,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the Hiroshima attack, including those who survived the bombing but later died from radiation sickness.
Gums bled, teeth fell out, hair came out in clumps; there were cancers, premature births, malformed babies and sudden deaths.
The twin bombings dealt the final blows to imperial Japan, which surrendered on August 15, 1945 to bring an end to World War II.
This year’s memorials come days ahead of the scheduled restarting of a civilian nuclear reactor in southern Japan -- the first to go back on line for two years because of concerns following the disaster at the Fukushima atomic plant in 2011.
AFP
