Hibakusha Groups Urge Japan to Ratify Nuke Ban Treaty

August 6, 2018

Hiroshima- Representatives from seven groups of hibakusha atomic bomb survivors, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday, requested that the country sign and ratify a nuclear weapons ban treaty that was adopted at the United Nations in July 2017.

"Atomic bombs were created by the evil ideas of human beings," Sunao Tsuboi, the 93-year-old head of one of the groups of those who survived the U.S. atomic bombing of the western Japan city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II.

"We have to work on eliminating nuclear weapons," Tsuboi said at the meeting, held at a Hiroshima hotel.

In response, Abe said, "We're taking a different approach, but our country shares the treaty's target of abolishing nuclear weapons."

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been signed by a number countries, but Japan, the world's only nation attacked with nuclear weapons, has not.

"The important thing now is to patiently continue efforts to gain cooperation from both nuclear and nonnuclear states and take practical steps," Abe said, highlighting the importance of pursuing nuclear disarmament through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT.

Monday marked the 73rd anniversary of the nuclear attack that destroyed Hiroshima. The southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki was also flattened by a U.S. atomic bomb, on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the tragedy of Hiroshima.

An 83-year-old senior official of a group of Koreans who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima pointed to the aging of victims who returned to North Korea after the war.

Time is pressing for hibakusha living in North Korea, the official said, calling on Tokyo and Pyongyang to open talks on the issue early so that necessary medical support will be provided to the surviving victims.

Mitsunari Okamoto, Japanese parliamentary vice foreign minister, who was present at the meeting, said that Tokyo takes the issue as "an important one from a humanitarian point of view."

Still, he said, "Although we hope to discuss the matter properly (with North Korea), it is difficult to do this in the current situation." Jiji Press