NUCLEAR disarmament is not a pipe dream but an immediate priority to prevent current wars turning apocalyptic, crowds gathering in Hiroshima on the 79th anniversary of the first atomic bombing heard today.

Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki said advocates of nuclear deterrence — including the Japanese government which places itself under the “nuclear umbrella” of the United States, the only country ever to have used these weapons — ignore the fact that “as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will surely be used again someday. 

“Abolition is not an ideal to achieve far in the future — it is a pressing issue that we should desperately engage in at this moment.”

The city’s Mayor Kazumi Matsui said the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are “deepening distrust and fear among nations” and both had the potential to result in use of nuclear bombs.

Fifty thousand people gathered in the Peace Park to observe a minute’s silence after the Peace Bell sounded at 8.15am, when on August 6 1945 the US dropped the uranium-core atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people. Three days later the US dropped a plutonium-core atom bomb, Fat Man, on Nagasaki, killing a further 80,000.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attended but ducked the disarmament issue, saying only he would work to build momentum towards “realistic and practical measures.”

The Japanese Communist Party held a peace forum on the eve of the anniversary, with chairman Kazuo Shii calling for an East Asia Peace Proposal which would stress Japan’s adherence to its Peace Constitution — Article 9 of which bans the use of war as a means of settling disputes — to encourage dialogue to build “an East Asia free from the fear of war.

“The struggle to create a nuclear-free world and a peaceful Asia is deeply connected through Article 9 of the constitution,” he said, calling for a global grassroots movement for peace.

Japan should sign up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which has now been signed by 93 countries — and heed the 683 local governments that have passed resolutions backing it, amounting to 40 per cent of all municipalities in Japan, he added.