Hiroshima’s 81st anniversary revives debate over Japan’s nuclear stance

Hiroshima marked the 81st anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing on August 6, and Mayor Kazumi Matsui said in his peace declaration that downplaying the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and accepting the use of force "risk cycles of violent retaliation that could ultimately result in another Hiroshima or Nagasaki," NDTV and The Hindu reported. About 50,000 people, including representatives of some 120 countries and regions, were due to attend, with a minute of silence held at 8.15 am, the time the bomb was dropped. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, attending her first ceremony as premier, pledged a realistic approach toward a world where nuclear weapons are never used, within the UN non-proliferation treaty framework, amid speculation that her government may ease Japan's three non-nuclear principles, the third of which bars bringing nuclear weapons into the country. A Hindustan Times opinion analysis argued that Japan is better understood as evolving into a normal deterrent power than as abandoning pacifism. The bombing killed 140,000 people, 91,105 survivors remain, their average age above 86.