SEOUL, Aug. 7 (UPI) — Survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing urged Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday to abandon “unconstitutional” security bills — but Abe has said the legislation is necessary for peace.
The seven groups of atomic bomb survivors known as “hibakusha” met with Abe in Hiroshima on the 70th anniversary of the bombing and had told Abe to withdraw government security bills being negotiated in Japan’s parliament, The Japan Times reported.
Yukio Yoshioka, the 86-year-old chief of a liaison council of the peace activists said Japan must “not repeat our mistakes and make…a country where those killed in the atomic bombings cannot rest in peace.”
The activist said he was disgusted with the Japanese prime minister and that Tokyo was “trampling” on the wishes of the atomic bomb survivors.
In response to separate criticism, Abe said he would include a pledge to Tokyo’s nonnuclear principles in his Friday speech in Nagasaki.
“Maintaining the three nonnuclear principles is a matter of course. Our national policy remains unchanged,” Abe said.
Japan’s political debate on its wartime history also has drawn criticism from its neighbor South Korea, Kyodo reported on Friday.
A report that was presented to Abe on Friday focused on Japan’s colonization of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and its wartime activities in China — but the views in the report are a departure from previous statements from Tokyo, according to a Seoul official.
The 38-page report is to serve as a reference for Abe’s statement on Aug. 14, a day before the 70th anniversary of Japan’s wartime defeat.
Japan’s uneasy relations with neighbors South Korea and China regarding history has become a rallying point for Hiroshima survivors like Setsuko Thurlow, who said on Wednesday the Japanese government should confront the country’s past.
“Tragically, the current Abe administration is seeking to expand Japan’s military role in the region and forsake our much-cherished Peace Constitution,” Thurlow said in a statement.
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