About 90 atomic bomb survivors and residents protested in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima on the 12th, as the government weighs writing an exception into the non-nuclear principles it has pledged to keep.
The protest came as the administration of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi prepares to revise the three security-related documents by the end of the year. The revision would spell out an exception to “not bringing in,” one of the three non-nuclear principles, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
The three principles commit Japan to not possessing, not producing and not allowing the introduction of nuclear weapons. The government is considering putting into the documents the substance of past parliamentary answers. Those answers said Japan would exceptionally allow introduction if it judged that Japan's safety could not be protected without permitting port calls by US nuclear-armed vessels.
Kunihiko Sakuma, head of the Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, told the crowd the principles have been repeatedly confirmed as national policy by parliamentary resolutions. “It is truly sad as an atomic bomb survivor that it would be reviewed, and it must never happen,” he said.
Speaking to reporters, Sakuma was blunter. “An exception clause is unthinkable. It is confusing the public,” he said, raising his voice.
Jiro Hamazumi, secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, voiced his concern at a joint press conference in Tokyo. The conference was held by NGOs and others taking part in a review conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which opens in New York at the end of the month.
“Japan stands at a very major turning point. It will have a very large impact on Japan's participation in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as well.”Jiro Hamazumi, secretary general of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations