Japan’s Nuclear Concerns

From Girish Modi, Decatur, GA

Japan has been vocal about its concerns about the nuclear arms race around the world. It is worried, particularly to North Korea’s missile testing in recent years. Both Japan & Germany cannot have offensive weaponry as they were forbidden to have such weapons when WWII had ended. Still, both countries have developed deadly weapons in the name of self-defense and provided with America’s blessings military hardware to Ukraine and training for its war against Russia.

Both Germany & Japan also have protection against nuclear attacks from America. That’s why American missiles with nuclear warheads are deployed in many European and Pacific-Asian countries.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only two cities in the world where America dropped two atomic bombs in 1945 that killed over 140,000 people in each city. Japan is still reeling from this devastation and has erected a silly-looking memorial called the “peace memorial” just like America has created a memorial at the World Trade Center site to remind people of terrorist attacks.

Japan widely politicizes this memorial and holds an annual ritual. Thousands of Japanese visit the memorial and pay homage as if it is a shrine. Japan also brings world dignitaries to the site and has them place wreaths.

What is ridiculous is that a woman who had survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima was talking about her childhood memory to the world leaders last week at G7 conference. But Japan will not ask an American president to apologize for the devastation of two cities. When Obama visited the Hiroshima site in 2016, he too was not asked for an apology. Maybe because Japan owes its economic success post-WWII to America and cannot lose it as an ally.

Japan also wants to denuclearize the world and it had discussed this topic at the G7 conference. But its real motive is to denuclearize North Korea, Iran, and Russia only but no other powerful countries like America, Great Britain, France, Israel, or India whom it considers friendly nations. Hence, Japan is wasting its time in telling the world about the riddance of nuclear weapons, because it wants reassurance from America that it will provide a nuclear umbrella over Japan from perceived aggression from North Korea and Chin, even though it had tried to colonize these countries before WWII. Thus, for Japan nuclear concern is phony.