Peace Declaration (1979)

Hiroshima has the inescapable duty of appealing and campaigning ceaselessly for peace. And ever since that scorching flash of August 6, Hiroshima's deep desire for peace has moved her to call on the peoples of the world again and again for the total abolition of nuclear weapons and the renunciation of war.

So far a number of efforts for the cause of peace have been made at the international level. The United Nations in particular took an important positive step last year, when it held a Special General Assembly on the question of Disarmament for the first time in its history. This special session urged an historical conversion to the reduction of weapons, aiming at the abolition of nuclear weapons as the ultimate objective. In response to this, the Disarmament Committee has concentrated its combined wisdom on preparations for the next Special General Assembly on Disarmament, to be held three years from now.

Elsewhere, strategic arms limitation talks are now in progress between United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Immense energy has also been devoted to Middle East peace negotiations.

Nevertheless, in spite of these efforts, the reality of international politics finds some nations still absorbed in boundless arms expansion based on a competition for superior nuclear capability, so that they are acquiring an infinite destructive power.

A series of nuclear tests, carried through so far without any regard for the protests of the people of Hiroshima, has presented the world once more with the problem of global radiation exposure. Thus the fears and warnings of Hiroshima's citizens have turned out to be more than justified.

All nuclear weapons testing should be halted immediately. Not one single human being should be permitted to become a new victim of radiation.

The problems of the A-bomb survivors and of those exposed to nuclear radiation now demand an urgent solution as an international issue.

The Japanese Government has therefore begun consultations to work out a basic structure of thinking on the measures to aid the A-bomb survivors and to re-examine its present measures. We place much of our hope for the future on this effort.

Peace means not only the prevention of war, but also the coexistence and shared prosperity of mankind on a basis of love and reason, transcending the barriers of hatred.

We have to face up to the fact that the nations of the world, in their folly, have wasted the earth's limited resources on the expansion of armaments. By this very process they have hastened the spread of hunger and poverty.

It is now high time for us, on the basis of Hiroshima's unchanging desire for peace, to combine our efforts to alter the current of history towards the construction of a new world, and to lay the foundation of humankind's prosperity.

We pray devoutly for the repose of the souls of the A-bomb victims; and with the same sincerity we pledge all our efforts to an unceasing search for peace, for we believe that the disaster of Hiroshima is an awesome warning to humanity in the nuclear age.

August 6, 1979

Takeshi Araki
Mayor
The City of Hiroshima