by Faye Schulman
Hiroshima City police violently repressed a group of anti-war activists, a majority elders, labor activists, and students, on the morning of August 6th, the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings, as they held a protest sit-in in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome demanding an end to Japanese re-militarization, nuclear weapons, and the genocide in Gaza.
Defying the second year of a ban on banners and protests during the “Peace Memorial Ceremony,” elderly activists, a photographer, and a lawyer-observer, were violently dragged away by riot police. The highly orchestrated, state-sanctioned ceremony, this year including both Israeli and Palestinian delegations, occurred just 200 metres away in the Peace Park. This year, it was made abundantly clear that the “peace ceremony” was actually a war ceremony, as the city abandoned even “peacewashing” and resorted to violent suppression.
Various groups in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including hibakusha (victims and survivors of the atomic bombs and their descendants), have consistently been demanding an end to the genocide and apartheid in Palestine, many also before October 2023. Over 200 cities in Japan have called for an end to the genocide since October 2023. There are various factions in the Japanese Left and many opinions on how the memorial days should be commemorated. But the public rarely witnesses how Japan has weaponized “peace” and deployed a discursive arsenal of “peacewashing” the traditions of the radical hibakusha-led anti-nuclear anti-war movements.
Amid the historic nuclear war crisis, where both Israel and Trump attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, Japanese citizens are also enraged at recent a news leak that Japan demanded “nuclear threats” from the US against China during 2024 Keen Edge war exercises. The Japanese government continues to disguise their rapid re-militarization under the banner of “peace” as cover for their massive defense spending increases, including weapons trade with Israel; construction and testing of military infrastructure and strategy in Okinawa; and conversion of civilian infrastructure into military-use facilities.
While enforcing “acceptable” forms of anti-war sentiment — like floating lanterns or “praying silently for peace” — Japan is actively repressing, brutalizing, surveilling, and arresting activists demanding an end to the genocide in Palestine, re-militarization and military aggression in Asia led by the U.S.
We must pay close attention to how the most radical factions of the Japanese anti-war movement, including descendants of a-bomb survivors, are repressed by the police as the region moves closer and closer to a war with China risks the unimaginable threat of the use of nuclear weapons.
