It has been a “real and present” threat since Russia invaded Ukraine. The mayor of Nagasaki tried to warn of the nuclear risk on Tuesday, the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing that devastated this Japanese city.
On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was swept away by an infernal fire that killed 74,000 people, three days after the world’s first nuclear attack in Hiroshima. The two strikes carried out by the United States had precipitated the end of the Second World War and, to this day, Japan remains the only country to have been targeted by atomic weapons in time of war.
“Threats of the use of nuclear weapons are shaking the whole world”
However, on Tuesday Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue sounded the alarm. “In January this year, the leaders of the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China issued a joint statement affirming that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be conducted,” he said.
“But the following month, Russia invaded Ukraine. Threats of the use of nuclear weapons were made, shaking the whole world. The use of nuclear weapons is not an unfounded fear, but a real and present crisis,” said the mayor of Nagasaki. He warned that these weapons can be triggered as a result of errors of judgement, malfunctions or terrorist attacks.
Tensions between Ukrainians and Russians around a nuclear power plant
Nagasaki survivors, Japanese officials and foreign dignitaries held a silent prayer at 11:02 a.m., the exact moment the atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese port city.
On Saturday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered a speech in Hiroshima on the anniversary of the attack that killed around 140,000 people on August 6, 1945. He warned that “humanity is playing with a loaded gun” in the context of the current nuclear crises. Over the past few days, Russians and Ukrainians have accused each other of bombing the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, located in southern Ukraine.