Nagasaki marks 72nd anniversary of A-bombing with call to join nuclear ban treaty

Nuclear arms are not only weapons of mass destruction, they may pollute the subterranean environment,  water supplies, and air.  It is in Japan's interest to eliminate the storage of these weapons and materials from it's lands.

Need to talk to North Korea about this.

why would abe listen to him?

Again, the current generation anti-war pacifists think abolishing nuclear weapons to achieve a "world without nuclear weapons" will guarantee world peace.

Have we forgotten that throughout the 20th century up until 1945, there existed a "world without nuclear weapons"? And were those decades peaceful? Hardly.

There were hundreds of wars. For example, in World War I began in 1914. There were no nuclear weapons. Throughout the 1930s Japan waged an undeclared war in the Pacific region. In 1939, there were no nuclear weapons and another world war began. In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into the war in the Pacific and Europe. All those wars were fought with conventional, non-nuclear weapons and total war with those weapons were thinkable. And you can go even earlier than the 20th century.

But since 1945, why has there not been a major, all-out, total war, i.e, World War III, involving the U.S., Soviet Union, China, UK, France? Or an all out war between India and Pakistan? Or an all-out attack against Israel?

Those nations have nuclear weapons and they know if they are ever used, it will result in Total Mutual Assured Destruction.

As a result nuclear weapons have made total war unthinkable, unwinnable and encouraged peaceful coexistence between those nations. Nuclear weapons have forced those nations to settle their differences through dialog. There exists a "World Peace" among the nations possessing nuclear weapons.

Have we forgotten the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo during World War II where those cities were totally wiped out and hundreds of thousands civilians killed......with conventional bombs.

In fact all the wars fought since 1945, in Korea, Vietnam, Middle East were fought with conventional weapons. Wars fought with conventional weapons are thinkable.

Where were the anti-war protesters when a MOAB (which is non-nuclear) was used recently in Afghanistan?

Abolish nuclear weapons and you remove the threat of mass destruction and those nations capable of waging total war will resort to conventional non-nuclear weapons. Conventional weapons will makes total all-out war thinkable once again.

North Korea will thumb its nose at that toothless treaty and will continue its threats.

If the U.S., et al, caves in to the left wing pacifist protesters to abolish its nuclear arsenal, the U.S., along with a spineless UN, will have no choice but to appease to a nuclear-armed North Korea and give it what it wants: a "peace treaty" and withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea (and eventually Japan and Okinawa) and agree to a unification of the two Koreas under North Korean communist rule.

Is this the desired result? Surrender South Korea's democratic government and freedom in order to appease North Korea's threat of nuclear war?

unification of the two Koreas under North Korean communist rule.

The past I checked Russia and China are communist as well. Should we place them on the hit list as well?

Open your eyes. Anything less than dialogue will result in catastrophic destruction. So instead of doing arm chair sleuthing, try and empathize with who suffers the most from governments that can not get along. And that's the common man.

That's not just a 'statue'.

That statue was build in Musashino/Tokyo, the studio and the original 1/1 statue are preserved in Inokashira-Zoo.

Japanese public broadcast NHK avoided expression that Abe Government was criticized.

Problem about independency of public broadcast is not only Poland.

But since 1945, why has there not been a major, all-out, total war, i.e, World War III, involving the U.S., Soviet Union, China, UK, France? Or an all out war between India and Pakistan?

Correlation is not causation. The world is a completely different place from what it was before 1945, or ever before that. We are all connected now, for better or worse. Our dependency on each other supports our environment and our economies. We have cheap and fast travel, and instantaneous communication. We simply cannot afford another full-scale war, nuclear weapons or not.

That said, humans are fully capable of the biggest and most self-destructive follies, and a full scale war can never be ruled out - at least not in our lifetimes. So, rather than ensuring safety, nuclear weapons just help to ensure that the next global war will be more disastrous than ever. With weaponized viruses and toxins, EMP weapons, killer robots, killer satellites and more, I doubt that nuclear weapons have that much of a dissuasive effect.

Abolish nuclear weapons and you remove the threat of mass destruction and those nations capable of waging total war will resort to conventional non-nuclear weapons. Conventional weapons will makes total all-out war thinkable once again.

And nuclear weapons will cause untold loss of life and destruction to the planet.

I'd rather be a pacifist than a nuclear hammerhead. Dialogue is the way forward. If that makes me a communist (something which Kim is not, btw); so be it.

Anybody ordering the use of nuclear weapons should besr the responsibility of such a great burden by offering up their own life before taking thousands if not millions of others and decimating the planet for generations into the future!

Halwick - North Korea is not a Communist country. Far from it.

More realistically it's a brutal, despotic, fascist, regime wrapped in a cloak of extreme militarism.

Abe's speech today again full of nought. Playing the old "As the only country to have been bombed by atomic weapons" card, trying to appeal to (appease) the masses, whilst refusing to join the nuclear weapons prohibition movement.

Weak as.

Abe's speech today again full of nought. Playing the old "As the only country to have been bombed by atomic weapons" card, trying to appeal to (appease) the masses, whilst refusing to join the nuclear weapons prohibition movement.

Yep. That balancing act is going to go askew, pretty sharpish.

Beware of those who would try rationalise nuclear weapons. Look at the two madmen ready to press their respective red buttons - there is nowt rational about it.

@toasted. only two?

I support Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ban nuclear ban treaty and against Abe administration Japan!

-...to nuclear ban treaty-

It is a shame and frankly an atrocity by alternative means to twist history. far more Japanese died horrible deaths from naplam attacks in 1944 than died from the A bombs. Far fwewer Japanese died here than would have been killed form an Ameircan invasion. these bombs saved lives and ended the misery on both Japan and the world,

It would also be good to remind that the necessity of the bombing have been questioned even before it occurs. Defenders of the bombing never mention the reasons for that.

@Charles Ford

Where is the twisting of history ? This is a ceremony about the bombing of Nagasaki, so of course they talk about it... It's not a competition about who had the most deaths...

Far fwewer Japanese died here than would have been killed form an Ameircan invasion. these bombs saved lives and ended the misery on both Japan and the world,

That's the official line, which is basically a highly debatable and completely unprovable propaganda claim. The original official line, right after the bombing, was that the US had destroyed a military base called Hiroshima. A quote from Truman:

"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians."

So, after the first bald-faced lie doesn't work, they come up with a second lie, one that can't be so easily disproved because it's a conjecture. The sad fact is, the US wanted to try their new toys, and wanted to scare Russia. All this "saving lives all around" is just a lie that helps people sleep better at night.