GENEVA – Survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have played a big part in preventing the use of nuclear weapons since 1945, creating a “taboo” with their tireless efforts to achieve a world free of such weapons, the head of a Nobel Peace Prize-winning group says.
Melissa Parke, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, also said in an interview with Kyodo News that the group is “deeply concerned” about the possible review of Japan’s non-nuclear principles.
Atomic bomb survivors, also known as hibakusha, “were instrumental in creating the nuclear taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, by telling the world what happens to people under the mushroom cloud,” Parke said ahead of Jan. 22, the fifth anniversary of the implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
“It is this taboo that has prevented the use of nuclear weapons in conflict since 1945, not the unproven theory of deterrence,” she said in the online interview.
ICAN played a major role in establishing the U.N. treaty and won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Japan, the only country to have been attacked with atomic bombs, and nuclear weapons states are not among the 99 countries and regions that have signed or ratified the U.N. nuclear ban treaty.
“It is because the hibakusha have had the courage to relive their trauma over and over again by telling the world about what happened to them when the U.S. attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that we know what happens to people when they are attacked with nuclear weapons,” Parke said.
Their testimonies have shown “how uniquely inhumane” the weapons are and the hibakusha helped ICAN make the strongest argument for the elimination of nuclear weapons, she said.
“With nuclear tensions in the region and the world at their highest since the Cold War, and possibly ever, now is not the time to weaken Japan’s opposition to producing, possessing or introducing nuclear weapons.” Parke said.
“ICAN calls on the Japanese government to commit not only to preserving its remaining non-nuclear principles…but to go further and end Japan’s endorsement of the use of nuclear weapons in its defense,” she said.
Since the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Japan has upheld the principles of not possessing, producing or permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons into the country, while remaining under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
But Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is considering reviewing the third principle, as it is seen as weakening the effectiveness of U.S. nuclear deterrence, according to government sources.
Parke urged the Japanese government again to participate as an observer in the treaty review conference, to be convened in November, as “a signal of its intention to join the treaty.”
She said the expiration in February of the so-called New START Treaty, the last remaining limitation on the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, “must not be used as an excuse to accelerate the new arms race.”
“At times of high tension among nations…arms control and disarmament measures are all the more important to the international security environment,” she said, calling on the two nuclear powers to take measures to rebuild and retain mutual trust and confidence.