A memorial service for the victims of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing was held on August 6 at Peace Park, marking the 79th anniversary of the tragedy that made the Japanese city the first in the world to experience the horror of nuclear weapons. Yet, despite the United States dropping the bombs that killed hundreds of thousands, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida failed to mention who was responsible and instead warned of a supposed Russian nuclear threat.

The commemoration ceremony is traditionally broadcast live on the city’s website, major TV channels, and online. It begins at 8:00 a.m. at the monument, which lists those killed in the atomic bombing and its aftermath. This year, another 5,079 names were added to the list of 344,000.

Peace Park, where the ceremony is held annually, is located at the epicentre of the August 6, 1945 bombing, where the force of the nuclear bomb vaporised the bodies of its victims. In the park, there is a mass grave in the form of a hill with a Buddhist pagoda on top, where the ashes of 70,000 unidentified victims of the US bombing rest. On the monument in Peace Park, next to which the commemoration ceremony takes place, it is written: “Rest In Peace, For The Error Shall Not Be Repeated.”

Kishida, government members, parliamentarians, and representatives of diplomatic missions from more than 109 countries attended the ceremony. This year, for the third time, representatives of the diplomatic missions of Russia and Belarus were not invited to the ceremony despite representatives of Palestine and Israel being invited.

After the laying of flowers at exactly 8:15 a.m. — the time the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima — a minute of silence was declared. Then, the city’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui, declared peace, followed by the symbolic release of white doves into the sky. The ceremony traditionally features schoolchildren from the city taking an oath of peace, as well as featuring representatives of the bombing survivors.

Interestingly, in his speech at the memorial ceremony for the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Kishida did not mention that the nuclear bomb had been dropped on the city by the US.

“Seventy-nine years ago today, an atomic bomb deprived people said to number well more than 100,000 of their precious lives. It reduced the city to ashes and mercilessly deprived people of their dreams and bright futures. Even those who escaped death suffered hardships beyond description. As prime minister, I reverently express my sincere condolences to the souls who were victims of the atomic bomb here. I also extend my heartfelt sympathy to those still suffering even now from the aftereffects of the atomic bomb. The devastation and human suffering wrought upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki 79 years ago must never be repeated,” Kishida said, without mentioning that the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US.

He went even further by referring to an alleged “nuclear threat” from Russia, which supposedly makes “the situation surrounding nuclear disarmament all the more challenging.”

As for Kishida’s claim of “Russia’s nuclear threat,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously stressed that there will be no winners in a nuclear war and that it should never occur, noting that Moscow consistently follows the spirit of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

A Russian nuclear doctrine signed by Putin in 2020 calls nuclear weapons “a means of deterrence,” emphasising that their use is an “extreme and compulsory measure.” The document states that Russia “takes all necessary efforts to reduce the nuclear threat and prevent the aggravation of interstate relations that could trigger military conflicts, including nuclear ones.”

According to the doctrine, Russia could use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is at risk.”

Yet, despite Russia’s nuclear arsenal obviously being a means of deterrence, Kishida used a US-perpetrated mass killing as an opportunity to warn of a Russian nuclear threat. The fact that he even failed to mention the US as the perpetrator of the senseless and unnecessary killing, when considering Japan’s defeat in World War II was imminent, of hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens but warns of a supposed Russian nuclear threat is a demonstration of Kishida having turned his country into a vassal of Washington.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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