In Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Pope Francis Calls for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

By Akiko Kashiwagi and Chico Harlan, The Washington Post

24 November 19

uring visits to the two Japanese cities razed by atomic bomb blasts during World War II, Pope Francis on Sunday called for a “world without nuclear weapons” and said it was “immoral” to use such weapons for war or deterrence.

“We will be judged on this,” Francis said.

In Hiroshima, the pope met with bomb survivors and spoke vividly about the “black hole of death and destruction” atomic weapons could cause. And earlier, in a somber address in Nagasaki delivered in the driving rain, Francis spoke about the weapons more in policy terms, and expressed concern that a “climate of distrust” was endangering international arms control efforts.

“Peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction,” the pope said in Nagasaki, standing next to an enlarged black and white photograph from the aftermath of that bombing: a Japanese boy carrying his dead younger brother on his back.

Francis used the first papal trip to Japan since 1981 to emphasize one of his signature issues in cities that remain lasting symbols of atomic destruction, though both have been fully rebuilt in the decades since the 1945 attack. The two bombs, occurring three days apart, killed as many as 200,000 people, melted roof tiles, and caused skin burns three miles away.

After laying a wreath to the Nagasaki bombing’s victims, the pope said that the arms race creates a false sense of security, poisoning international relationships. He described nuclear weapons as wasteful and environmentally damaging.

“In a world where millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squandered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance and sale of ever more destructive weapons, are an affront crying out to heaven,” Francis said.

By saying that weapons shouldn’t be held for deterrence — a stance he first outlined in 2017 — Francis has gone farther than his predecessors. The only other pope to visit Japan, John Paul II, said during the Cold War that deterrence could be deemed “morally acceptable,” so long as it was a step toward disarmament.

For Francis, the antinuclear message is the centerpiece of his three-day trip to Japan, the second half of a journey that began in Thailand. Francis on Sunday also paid homage at a monument dedicated to 26 Christians, a mix of Japanese and foreigners, who were killed in 1597 — an event that signaled the bloody start of more than 250 years of Christian persecution by Japanese rulers. Today, Catholics make up 0.4 percent of the country’s population.

On Monday, in Tokyo, Francis is scheduled to meet with survivors from the country’s 2011 triple disaster, in which a 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a massive tsunami and meltdowns at a coastal nuclear plant.

His trip to Japan comes at a time of long standoffs over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and little progress in international arms control deals. In August, the Trump administration withdrew the United States from a Cold War era nonproliferation pact, citing complaints that Moscow was not complying — a step that some analysts say could raise the possibility for an arms race. Meantime, most major countries, including the United States, have not signed a major United Nations treaty that envisions the eventual elimination of nuclear arms.

Japan has also declined to sign that treaty, to the consternation of many bomb victims, citing the protection it receives from the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The mayors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima have called on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to reconsider that stance. Japan’s bishops have also called for the abolition of nuclear arms.

“We must never grow weary of working to support the principal international legal instruments of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, including the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons,” Francis said.

For those who have advocated against nuclear weapons, the pope’s address was a welcome one.

“It was just what I was hoping to hear from him,” said Kazuya Okubo, the head of Nagasaki City Peace and Atomic Bomb museum, after the pope gave the speech.

In Hiroshima, Francis heard testimony from an atomic bomb survivor who was 14-years-old at the time, working at a factory. She described how the factory collapsed, and how she found herself buried under timber and tiles, and when she made it out she saw fire and smelled what she described as “rotten fish.”

“There were people walking side by side like ghosts,” Yoshiko Kajimoto said, “people whose whole body was so burned that I could not tell the difference between men and women, their hair standing on end, their faces swollen to double size, their lips hanging loose, with both hands held out with burned skin hanging from them. No one in this world can imagine such a scene of hell.”

Kajimoto said that her father died one and a half years later, vomiting blood. Her mother died after 20 years of “suffering.” Kajimoto said she’s had many problems of her own: cancer, surgery to remove two-thirds of her stomach. Most of her friends, she said, have died of cancer.

Francis listened to the remarks quietly from his papal chair.

“I work hard to bear witness that we must not use such terrible atomic bombs again nor let anyone in the world endure such suffering,” Kajimoto said.