06.08.2026 | Stephansplatz
Eighty-one years ago today, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. A single bomb killed 140,000 people, and three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, it also took the lives of 70,000 people.
I was born and raised in Nagasaki. At the time, my grandmother and grandfather were there. But they were young , so they had evacuated to more rural areas and survived. If either my grandparents’ evacuation had been delayed, or if they had happened to return to the city for some reasons, my mother might never have been born, and I might not be standing here today.
Having grown up in Nagasaki, the atomic ppbombing was not a story from the distant past for me, but an event of the “present”—one in which my beloved grandparents might have died, and I might never have come into existence.
When I was in elementary school, we often heard experiences of the bombing directly from survivors. A man, was drinking water from a river full of dead bodies and coated with oil as he had no other choice. A man, whose mouth was swelled due to radiation exposure and he underwent surgery without anesthesia. A woman, who had burn classmate bodies in the schoolyard̶every single story was hard to forget.
More than ten years have passed since I left Nagasaki, my home town, my grandfather has passed away, my grandmother is over 80, and as I live abroad myself, I gradually feel the atomic bombing are shifting from a personal experience to a historical event. I also sense that the voices of the generation that has so passionately insisted “No War”are gradually fading from the world.
While I feel it’s important to understand what the atomic bomb brought, I also regret that we have overlooked Japanese colonialism. During WW2, Japan occupied Korea and forcibly brought laborers from there and forced them to work under harsh conditions. It is estimated that 50,000 Koreans were exposed to the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and 20,000 in Nagasaki.
However, the Japanese government has never apologized to these Korean survivors. While they strongly emphasize its identity as a victim of the atomic bombings, they have never acknowledged its own role as a perpetrator or colonizer. Even until these days, they have never apologized to them.
By persistently maintaining this double standard, Japan frequently face tension with East Asian nations, and face incidents of hate speech and physical assaults. The divisions created by Japanese imperialism remain deeply inside East Asian people.
This double standard is also in the stance of Western nations toward Israel’s ongoing genocide on Palestine. Is there any greater insult to the survivors of atomic bomb and Holocaust than to see their anti war messages to justify ongoing genocide?
Israel attacks not only to Palestine but continues to strike Iran and Lebanon as well. They repeatedly engage in imperialistic act and carry out attacks that target civilians. As I mentioned earlier, what Japan gained from pursuing imperialism was a mass death, long-standing conflicts with the invaded regions, and dependence on the US̶all of which are far from the prosperity in the Asian region that Japan had sought.
And we must learn from Japanʼs past and, to ensure it is not repeated, speak out against Zionism and put an end to Israelʼs colonialism and imperialism. Although brutal ethnic cleansing and massacres have already taken place to an irreversible extent, we know that attacking neighboring countries in the name of imperialism leaves deep scars not only on the countries under attack but also on the aggressor nation itself.
Finally, I would be grateful if you would join me in one minute of silence, offering our condolences to the victims of the atomic bombings and the victims of genocide and massacres, and expressing our hope for peace.