Hiroshima: return of nuclear threat to worried conflicts

Russia was dismissed from the commemoration of the bombing of August 1945 in the Japanese city martyrdom. In question: the declarations of Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Ukraine.

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The ceremony of the 77 e anniversary of the atomic bombing on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, took place this year against a backdrop of the return to nuclear weapon and the will of the first Japanese Minister, Fumio Kishida, to act for the disappearance of these weapons. Organized as usual in front of the cenotaph erected in memory of the 140,000 victims of the bombing, the ceremony, Saturday August 6, brought together 3,000 people, including Hibakusha (survivors) and the representatives of 98 countries.

Russia and Belarus were not invited due to the conflict in Ukraine. The Russian ambassador, Mikhail Galouzine, had nevertheless made the trip on August 4 and placed a wreath on the monument. If he praised “the positive attitude of Russia to the reduction of nuclear weapons”, he “regretted” for not having been invited to the ceremony.

His country was the target of criticism from the mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui. In his traditional declaration for peace, the latter denounced the attitude of “some [who] come to threaten to use nuclear weapons”, in reference to the declarations of Russian President Vladimir Putin, shortly after the attack on ‘Ukraine, February 24. Also present, UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, was worried about the “strong nuclear connotations” which “quickly spread, from the Middle East to the Korean peninsula via the invasion of Ukraine by Russia “. For Mr. Guterres, humanity “plays with a loaded pistol”.

a paper crane

As for Mr. Kishida, he deplored that the dynamics of reduction of the arsenals be stopped. The question is close to his heart for personal reasons. His family is from Hiroshima, a city of which he is also a deputy. And, in his youth, he was made aware of bombing by his grandmother. The struggle for the disappearance of nuclear weapons therefore appears inseparable from its action. Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2017, he struggled for the arrival in Hiroshima, in May 2016, of Barack Obama, first president in practice to pay tribute to the victims of the atomic bomb.

Since his arrival at the head of the government in October 2021, Fumio Kishida continued his mission. Despite the skepticism of his entourage, fearing that he would be positioned on a question with uncertain results, the Prime Minister went on the 1 ^er August in New York at the opening of the conference of Revision of the non-proliferation treaty (TNP). For him, this agreement signed in 1968 has the double advantage of having already contributed to the reduction of arsenals and to bring together both countries with nuclear weapons and those who do not.

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