Fumio Kishida has spoken about “Russia’s nuclear threat” rather than recalling that Washington dropped an atomic bomb on the city in 1945
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has avoided mentioning the United States’ role in a speech marking the 79th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
The US is the only nation in history to have used nuclear weapons in warfare. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing up to 126,000 people, primarily civilians. Another nuclear bomb was detonated over Nagasaki on August 9, killing up to 80,000 people. These devastating attacks prompted Japan’s surrender to the Allied powers a week later, ending World War II.
During his address at a ceremony at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Tuesday, Kishida told attendees “79 years ago today, an atomic bomb deprived people said to number well more than 100,000 of their precious lives. It reduced the city to ashes and mercilessly deprived people of their dreams and bright futures. Even those who escaped death suffered hardships beyond description.”
However, the prime minister didn’t explicitly state which country was responsible for the nuclear attack on the city, leading to such “devastation and human suffering.”
“As the only country to have experienced the horror of nuclear devastation in war, Japan has the mission of… steadily building up efforts over time towards the realization of a world without nuclear weapons,” he said.
According to Kishida, the world currently faces “a critical point where the trend towards fewer nuclear weapons could undergo a reversal for the first time since the height of the Cold War.”
“The widening division within the international community over approaches to nuclear disarmament, Russia’s nuclear threat, and other concerns make the situation surrounding nuclear disarmament all the more challenging,” he said.
The entire speech bore significant resemblance to the address delivered by the Japanese prime minister a year ago, which also did not mention the US.
Tokyo has been an ally of Washington since the Americans occupied Japanese territory and drafted the country’s constitution following the nuclear bombings.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also disregarded the US role in the bombing of Hiroshima in his message commemorating the anniversary. “We must not forget the lessons of August 6, 1945,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter), adding that nuclear weapons “represent a real and present danger.”
Last week, US acting assistant secretary of defense for space policy, Vipin Narang, claimed that Washington should “prepare for a world where constraints on nuclear weapons arsenals disappear entirely” due to Chinese nuclear armament, Russian-North Korean cooperation, and alleged nuclear anti-satellite weapons development by Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated last month that Russia intends to modernize its nuclear arsenal and warned that the country would use all available means to defend itself if facing an existential threat. However, Putin expressed hope that “it will never come” to an actual nuclear exchange between Moscow and the West, despite escalating tensions over the conflict in Ukraine.