European Council President Charles Michel (from left), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, President Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the memorial to the atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday.
Stefan Rousseau/AP
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European Council President Charles Michel (from left), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, President Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the memorial to the atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday.
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HIROSHIMA, Japan — As President Biden and the leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations gathered in Hiroshima, host country Japan attempted to use powerful symbolism of the summit’s backdrop. — the world’s first city to suffer a nuclear attack — to engage leaders to reach consensus on global challenges.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on his first visit to Asia, visited Hiroshima Peace Park on Sunday. In a statement, the G-7 leaders pledged in Hiroshima, a “symbol of peace”, to strive to achieve “comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine” as soon as possible.
On Friday morning, Biden and other G-7 leaders visited Hiroshima Peace Park and the iconic “atom bomb dome” near the center of the devastation, on August 6, 1945, killed about 140,000 people.
They also spoke to a survivor and visited a museum at the park, all aimed at communicating the inhumanity of nuclear war.
Hiroshi Harada, the former director of the museum is a “hibakusha,” as atomic bomb survivors are known, say the exhibits cannot tell the whole story.
“If we recreated the situation at that time,” he said, “nobody, including me, would be able to enter the museum.”
He notes that the exhibits can reproduce sight and sound, but not the smell.
“The smell that 140,000 citizens gave off as their bodies rotted and were thrown under the blazing sun was unforgettable, even nearly 80 years later,” he said.
Hirada, 6 years old in 1945, was preparing to flee the city when the United States bombed about a mile from where he was standing at Hiroshima’s train station.
On this August 6, 1945, photo released by the United States Army, a mushroom cloud rises about an hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan.
/US Army through Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/AP
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/US Army through Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/AP
On this August 6, 1945, photo released by the United States Army, a mushroom cloud rises about an hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan.
/US Army through Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/AP
“Of course, there were heat rays and explosions,” he recalls. “But I happened to be in the shadow of the station building, miraculously I survived.”
Hirada and others hibakusha, or survivors, share a lifelong ambition with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in parliament: to eliminate the world of nuclear weapons.
“I understand that he heard stories about the horrors of nuclear weapons from his grandmother as a child,” said Noriyuki Shikata, Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs.
A blanket of smoke covers the scene of destruction in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 7, 1945, the day after the atomic bomb detonation.
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A blanket of smoke covers the scene of destruction in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 7, 1945, the day after the atomic bomb detonation.
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With nuclear tensions growing between the US, Russia, China and North Korea, “it’s very difficult to get rid of nuclear weapons all of a sudden,” Shikata said. “But we can take various steps in further reducing the global stockpile of nuclear weapons and improving transparency around our nuclear programs.”
These measures are outlined in “Hiroshima Action Plan,” was referenced in the G-7 leaders’ statement on the nuclear issue.
hibakusha called on Japan to sign and ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, prohibits the use, possession, testing and transfer of nuclear weapons. But Japan has refused to do so, as it is protected by US nuclear weapons.
Japan’s dilemma is that it must “rely on nuclear weapons for its security, even if it also has the sort of moral imperative to argue for disarmament based on on experience having received nuclear damage,” he said. Toby DaltonCo-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Kyodo News poll Last month, out of 521 respondents directly affected by the bombing, more than two-thirds did not believe the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima would lead to a significant process in the elimination of nuclear weapons. core.
“Much hibakusha have been betrayed by our own government, many times,” said Keiko NakamuraAssociate Professor at the Nuclear Weapons Abolition Research Center at Nagasaki University.
In spite of hibakusha’s disappointed, she added, they welcome the opportunity that the G-7 meeting can deliver their message, and “they hope that one day the Japanese government will listen to the real voice of the Japanese government.” hibakusha and change their course.”
Speaking by phone after the G-7 leaders’ visit to Peace Park, Harada, the former museum director, noted that the leaders spoke to only one survivor and that the entire discussion Their comments have not been made public.
According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry, the leaders wrote the message in the guestbook at the museum.
Harada said that he has read the messages, “but they are very superficial. What we expect is not only the message but also their actions, after they return to their country.”
Takehiro Masutomo contributed to this report in Tokyo and Hiroshima.
