Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 09-08-2018
Nagasaki in Tokyo has marked the 73rd anniversary of the world’s second atomic bombing on Thursday with the United Nations’ chief and the city’s mayor urging global leaders to take concrete steps toward world nuclear disarmament.
The bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, was the second U.S. nuclear attack on Japan, killing 70,000 people, three days after the bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 140,000.
They were followed by Japan’s surrender, ending World War II.
The Associated Press reports that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the first United Nations chief to visit Nagasaki, says fears of nuclear war are still present 73 years after the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings and that they should never be repeated.
Guterres raised concerns about the slowing effort to denuclearize, saying existing nuclear states are modernizing their arsenals.
The peace and nuclear disarmament movement, started by survivors of the atomic bombings, has spread around the world but frustration over the slow progress led to last year’s adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Japan, despite being the only country in the world to have suffered nuclear attacks, has not signed the treaty, because of its sensitive position as an U.S. ally protected by its nuclear umbrella.
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