Catholic bishops of Japan urge abolition of nuclear weapons

The Roman Catholic bishops of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the only cities to have endured war-time nuclear bombings - are urging world leaders to abolish nuclear weapons.

And on 5 March, a group of nine churches in Britain launched a similar campaign to the Japanese bishops that calls on the British Government to make a commitment to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons, thereby building a safer future for all.

Nagasaki Archbishop Mitsuaki Takami and Hiroshima Bishop Joseph Atsumi Misue released a joint statement on 26 February ahead of a nuclear security summit scheduled for April in Washington, D.C. and a review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York in May.

"We, as the bishops of the Catholic Church of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which is the only country in the world to have suffered nuclear attacks, demand that the president of the United States, the Japanese government and the leaders of other countries make utmost efforts to abolish nuclear weapons," the statement said.

Takami was born in March 1946, in Nagasaki, the second city to suffer from an Atomic-bomb attack in August 1945 during the Second World War. He was in his mother's womb when the Japanese city was bombed days after Hiroshima experienced the first nuclear attack.

The church leaders said that the sin of the atomic bombings in the two cities "should be borne not only by the United States" but "also the other countries, including Japan, which have kept on waging wars throughout their history".

The church leaders are requesting that the United States "limit the purpose of retaining nuclear weapons to deterring others from using such weapons only". They are demanding this "at least as a first step toward the elimination of nuclear weapons" in the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, the guideline for the U.S. nuclear policy.

They are urging Japan, which has a bilateral security treaty with the United States, to "demonstrate and implement what Japan itself will do toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons." They said that Japan "an extremely passive attitude" to U.S. nuclear arms reduction policies, because the country is under the protection of a U.S. nuclear umbrella.

In Britain nine churches have allied in a campaign entitled "Now is the Time", joining the World Council of Churches and others in pressing for governments to put all bomb-grade material under international control and for a commitment to making the use and possession of nuclear weapons illegal through a new Nuclear Weapons Convention.

The alliance includes the (Anglican) Church of England, the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the United Reformed Church, the International Affairs Department of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Scotland and the Archbishop of the Church in Wales.

Link: http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=opentogod.stories