Japan on Sunday commemorated the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the final phase of World War II.

Considering the growing nuclear threat worldwide, the mayor of Hiroshima Kazumi Matsui called for the abolition of nuclear weapons and described the nuclear deterrence policy of G7 as “folly.”

“They must immediately take concrete steps to move us from the dangerous present to our ideal world,” he said as a peace bell rang on Sunday at 8:15 a.m. — exactly when on August 6, 1945, US bomber Enola Gay set off the world’s first atomic bomb dropped on a population center.

This year, the G7 summit took place in Hiroshima, which happens to be Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s home constituency

“Leaders around the world must confront the reality that nuclear threats now being voiced by certain policymakers reveal the folly of nuclear deterrence theory,” Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said at the ceremony which was also attended by Kishida.

At the memorial ceremony about 50,000 people, including aging victims who survived the bombing, gathered and observed a moment of silence.

Drums of nuclear war beating again: Antonio Guterres

The anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing was commemorated amid the growing threat of nuclear weapons propelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The issue poses a tricky balancing act for Kishida. Japan is traditionally an advocate of nuclear disarmament, in no small part because of the legacy of the attacks on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki three days later.

However, it also supports the partly nuclear-armed G7’s group stance that members with atomic weapons shall retain them for as long as they’re a necessary deterrent against other nuclear powers.

“World leaders have visited this city, seen its monuments, spoken with its brave survivors, and emerged emboldened to take up the cause of nuclear disarmament,” he said in remarks read by a UN representative. “More should do so, because the drums of nuclear war are beating once again.”

The American atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima was nicknamed “Little Boy.” It is thought to have killed as many as 140,000 people by the end of 1945. Three days later, the US dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. It is believed to have killed up to 70,000 over the next four months.

A few days after the bombings, on August 15, Japan made an official announcement that it was surrendering. Soon after, on September 2, Japan formally capitulated, bringing an end to World War II in Asia.

Whether using the bombs brought about a speedier, and possibly even more bloodless, end to the war or whether it was an ultimately unnecessary show of force remains a fierce debate among historians almost eight decades on

  • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As much as I would love to see nuclear disarmament, the unfortunate fact remains that bad actors will continue to keep their weapons; which will, of course, later be used as a threat against those who don’t have these weapons.

    • eran_morad@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ukraine wouldn’t suffer Russia’s belligerence if she still had nuclear weapons.

      • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s exactly it, and no country will risk disarmament now that Russia has proven how dangerous it is to live without nukes

              • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Did I say that the US wasn’t a bad actor? It’s just that Russia and China are too, unless you believe their propaganda.

                Russia’s war isn’t a ‘denazification operation’ btw

                • masterairmagic@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  China has not invaded any countries in my lifetime. Now they are the most powerful nation on earth, we’ll see how they rule.

                  If I make a list of the countries America has invaded/bombed, it will be a very long list.

                • Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  I’m pretty sure the article talks about what amounts to a warcrimes committed by the United States. The same United States that then spent the time between that warcrimes and now warmongering, funding death squads and drug barons, occupying countries to steal natural resources, etc.

                  Completely relevant to the context. Yes, China’s bad and Russia is bad, but holy fuck so is the states. I’m not a tankie but I’m not some useless twit that guzzles my own countries propaganda just because it tastes sweet. If anyone has to disarm, it’s all three. Maybe we can pick a country that doesn’t have active torture sites to be the beacon of truth and hold all the nukes.

                  Trying to claim whataboutism under a thread about Hiroshima, what a load of shit.

          • anteaters@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Only Russia is threatening to nuke other countries around the clock these days. Especially countries without nuclear weapons.

      • bobman@unilem.org
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        1 year ago

        Bad actors like North Korea.

        The US only used nukes to avoid a bloodbath from one of the most vile regimes in history.

        I don’t really get all this ‘memorial’ stuff for Japan. They were doing disgusting things during WW2 and needed to be put in their place. They were literally on par with nazi germany with their human rights abuses. The experiments they did on people are… horrifying.

        I’m glad we domesticated that animal and shudder to think what the world would look like if we haven’t. I feel bad for the innocent people who didn’t support the war, but I wonder exactly how many of them were caught in the blast.

          • bobman@unilem.org
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            1 year ago

            Not even remotely comparable. You should read up on japanese history during WW2 if you think otherwise.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Japan on Sunday commemorated the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the final phase of World War II.

    At the memorial ceremony about 50,000 people, including aging victims who survived the bombing, gathered and observed a moment of silence.

    The anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing was commemorated amid the growing threat of nuclear weapons propelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    However, it also supports the partly nuclear-armed G7’s group stance that members with atomic weapons shall retain them for as long as they’re a necessary deterrent against other nuclear powers.

    “World leaders have visited this city, seen its monuments, spoken with its brave survivors, and emerged emboldened to take up the cause of nuclear disarmament,” he said in remarks read by a UN representative.

    Whether using the bombs brought about a speedier, and possibly even more bloodless, end to the war or whether it was an ultimately unnecessary show of force remains a fierce debate among historians almost eight decades on.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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      It was ww2, the whole thing started with Nanking, then battle of Britain, the nasty shit in the Philippines, the Eastern front, all of it, dresden, then the firebombing of half of Japan.

      So yeah, but calling warcrime in ww2 is a bit like calling offsides in a preschool soccer match.

        • sci@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          (and almost 20 more when general MacArthur wanted to nuke China in 1950)

        • ActionHank@sopuli.xyz
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          I don’t get the “needed to” argument. They could have chosen military targets, but went straight for cities.

          • Hogger85b@kbin.social
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            They went for very military industrial complex cities as possible. There was no purely miltrry target big enough. But is it worse than the fire/bombing that went on against many cities in the war (e.g. Dresden, Tokyo, Coventry, London west end and mamy many more.)

            • ActionHank@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              Big enough for what though? Big enough to take advantage of the amount of destruction these weapons create? They could have chosen a single isolated, near coast warship. Or even just dropped it near coast on no target at all. The important thing would have been the show of force, in order to deter further attack. Knowing the US had that capability might have been enough to end the war. But we didn’t try to communicate that we had these weapons, instead we used them.

              • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                We baleeted 2 cities to prove there was literally 0 point in fighting, we could eliminate Tokyo, remove it from the earth at will.

                They still wanted to keep fighting.

                I think you’re applying a level of rationality to them that was not there, even after the war, there are testimonies from Japanese leaders where they simply did not believe they could lose because they were destined to win under heaven.

                They knew Americans couldn’t take the islands, they were too squeamish and couldn’t stand to lose that much blood, so Japan would remain no matter what.

                Removing cities finally convinced them they were completely outclassed and there was no point even trying to fight.

                • normalmighty@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  The problem is this is an argument of what ifs. Who knows if Japan would have reconsidered if the US had performed a public demonstration, or even just made the trinity test public before dropping Hiroshima, so the Japanese knew what was coming if they didn’t surrender. Maybe it would have done something, maybe it wouldn’t. We’ll never know for sure, and all this arguing about the collective psychology of a large nation 100 years ago is never going to reach a point of agreement.

        • Jeff@lemm.ee
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          Edit: I wasn’t saying anything about the bombing below only that if we had invaded the islands lots of American GIs would have died. Glad it didn’t happen for whatever reason(s).

          My grandpa went into the US Army in 1939 and not due to Pearl Harbor. As Europe wound down they started setting up who would invade and how many would die when we invaded the Japanese home islands. I probably wouldn’t be here if that happened.

          I recall reading but now can’t find it that the body bags manufactured for this invasion and then not used are the ones that were used for Korea, Vietnam, and even more recent.

            • Jeff@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Edited mine above as I don’t think that I did a good job of highlighting my sidebar to note the invasion didn’t happen for whatever reason(s) of which I’m thankful.

            • Hogger85b@kbin.social
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              If you think Us gave UK the tech during ww2 then I question your research. The UK had independent research with “tube alloys” following the Frisch peierls memo from university of Birmingham (the original UK one not Alabama)

              The UK pushed the us to use its industrial might to followup their work on uranium. The Brits were leaders on explosive lens (albeit from work of an eventual soviet traitor) among others. Los Alamos was a collaboration of UK, Canada and US plus a few other allies. The UK then used "what they learnt " at Los Alamos to carry out their “high explosives” project while locked out in late 40s early 50s and only once they showed independant build of a thermonuclear (fison fusion) bomb in 52 were they allowed back in the 1952 mutual defence agreement.

            • bobman@unilem.org
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              1 year ago

              “The war was already over and America just wanted to show off to Russia”

              Stop right there. If the war was ‘already over’, then why didn’t Japan surrender until after being nuked?

        • bobman@unilem.org
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          Believe it or not, the US nuked Japan to save lives. The other option was a direct invasion of the mainland which both sides expected to be a bloodbath.

          I’ll have sympathy for japan when they have a memorial day for all the people they experimented on during WW2. Funny how they don’t seem to care much about that.

    • Betty White In HD@lemmy.world
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      One that arguably worked to stop the Japanese from committing further crimes against humanity.

      The Japanese Imperial Army likely wasn’t going to stop any time soon otherwise.