By Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Gensuikyo)
We, of the people of Japan, the A-bombed country strongly protest against your nuclear policy formulated in the newly released “Nuclear Posture Review”, which brings the US much closer to the actual use of nuclear weapons by modernizing your nuclear arsenals and developing new nuclear weapons.
Trying to justify that nuclear weapons are necessary for the security, the NPR sets out sustaining and modernizing the nuclear triad (SSBNs, ICBMs and strategic nuclear bombers), as well as the development of law-yield nuclear warheads and sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs). Besides it does not even exclude the first nuclear strike.
As the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused by the A-bombings of the USA showed, any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences. The world opinion determined not to allow this calamity to be ever repeated led to the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in the United Nations last year. The policies laid down by the NPR run counter to this worldwide development in favor of a world without nuclear weapons.
The redeployment of SLBMs will increase the danger of nuclear weapons being brought into the territory of this A-bombed country. We resolutely oppose the bringing of nuclear weapons into Japan in any form.
We call on you and your Administration to cancel all nuclear build-up plans and nuclear strike policies formulated in the NPR. We urge you to sincerely endeavor to achieve a “world without nuclear weapons”, which the United States once vowed to pursue, beginning with joining in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
