Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue pressed the Japanese government to join the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the Aug. 9 ceremony commemorating the 73rd anniversary of the atomic bombing on this city.
He also voiced concerns about the recent trend of some countries trying to bolster their military capabilities through nuclear weapons.
The ceremony, held at Nagasaki Peace Park, was also attended by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and 71 ambassadors to Japan, including those of eight nuclear weapons states, and other dignitaries.
The attendees offered one minute of silent prayer from 11:02 a.m., the time the bomb was detonated over the city on Aug. 9, 1945.
Taue stressed the importance of striving toward a nuclear-free world by referring to the treaty, adopted last year, and the Nobel Peace Prize awarded also last year, to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
“These two developments are proof that the majority of people on this earth continue to seek the realization of a world free of nuclear weapons,” he said.
But he added that people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are strongly concerned that in excess of 14,000 nuclear warheads exist on earth, and that the trend has been re-emerging in recent years for some nations to assert what they view as the necessity of nuclear weapons.
The mayor appealed to nuclear states and allies under their nuclear umbrellas to shift to a security policy that does not rely on nuclear arsenals so that humankind will not repeat the mistake and create more hibakusha, the victims of nuclear weapons.
“I hereby ask that the government of Japan, the only country to have suffered from the wartime use of nuclear weapons, support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and fulfill its moral obligation to lead the world toward denuclearization.”
He mentioned that more than 300 Japanese local assemblies have urged the government to sign and ratify the treaty, illustrating the spread of support for the endeavor.
But the prime minister maintains the position of not joining the treaty despite his pledge to “continue with persistent efforts in order to bring about a world without nuclear weapons.”
Abe did not touch on the treaty when he attended the Hiroshima peace ceremony three days earlier.
The names of 3,511 people, whose deaths had been confirmed over the past year, were added to the official list of hibakusha, bringing the total to 179,226.