Melissa Parke is Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. She formerly worked for the United Nations in Gaza, Kosovo, New York and Lebanon and served as Australia’s Minister for International Development.
It is the time of year when we remember those hot summer days in August 1945, when the United States attacked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the first nuclear weapons. The American military and many of the scientists responsible for building the bombs were satisfied with the results — inhumane as they knew them to be — and tried to keep the world from learning what had happened to the people beneath the now-iconic mushroom clouds photographed from the bombers above.
It was horrific. People near the hypocenters were instantly killed and turned to ash; others farther away were maimed by 4,000-degree heat waves and flying debris. Schoolyards were scattered with dead and dying children. Mothers cradled lifeless babies. Survivors wandered with their intestines exposed and skin hanging from their limbs. Most died without any relief from their suffering, since medical facilities and staff had been decimated. Then came radiation sickness, worsened by radioactive rain that many drank to quench their thirst. Within weeks, thousands suffered vomiting, hair loss and internal bleeding that led to death. By the end of 1945, the bombings had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki. Nine in ten victims were civilians, including 38,000 children.
Survivors, known as hibakusha, faced decades of elevated cancer rates and chronic illness, along with social stigma and poverty — hardships that fell hardest on marginalized groups such as the tens of thousands of conscripted Korean laborers in the two cities.
This terrible legacy gives Japan a unique moral authority to lead on nuclear disarmament. Many hibakusha became lifelong campaigners for the abolition of nuclear weapons, work recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024. But Japan’s political leaders have fallen short of that legacy when it comes to providing this leadership.
Under its security alliance with Washington, Japan sits beneath the so-called U.S. nuclear umbrella, meaning Tokyo accepts the potential use of American nuclear weapons in its defense. Unlike some U.S. allies in NATO, however, Japan does not host American nuclear weapons on its soil. In 1967, the government adopted what became known as the three non-nuclear principles, under which Japan pledged never to possess, produce or permit the introduction of nuclear weapons on its territory. But the government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has spoken of reviewing these principles — a move most experts read as an effort to weaken them, most likely by lifting the ban on hosting nuclear weapons. Japan’s defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, recently drew headlines by calling for a public debate on the role of nuclear weapons in the country’s defense — remarks widely seen as another attempt to soften public opinion, which remains strongly in favor of disarmament, ahead of a possible change to the principles.
Officially, the Japanese government says it supports disarmament, but only through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Since that treaty took effect in 1970, it has succeeded in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons but has made no real progress toward disarmament, despite a pledge by its five original nuclear-armed signatories — China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States — to negotiate the elimination of their arsenals.
Japan has another option: joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which complements the Non-Proliferation Treaty by offering a verifiable path toward eliminating nuclear weapons altogether. Yet despite strong public support for joining, Tokyo has refused even to send observers to the treaty’s meetings at the United Nations, wrongly believing this would undermine its alliance with Washington. That fear ignores the experience of other U.S. allies in the region — including the Philippines and New Zealand — which have joined the treaty while maintaining robust security ties with the United States. The treaty entered into force just five years ago, and already 100 countries, a clear majority of those eligible, have signed or ratified it.
It is time for Japan’s leaders to listen to their own citizens — especially the dwindling number of hibakusha — and live up to the responsibility they bear as leaders of the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack. Prime Minister Takaichi could start by ruling out any change to the non-nuclear principles and sending official observers to the treaty’s first review conference in New York later this year. Better still, she could sign the treaty itself at the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level meeting next month.
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