Statement of the ILPS on the the 80th Anniversary of the US Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Read the Japanese version of the statement
Visit the Action Page for the 2025 Day of Action
Download the primer: Nuclear Weapons, US Imperialism, and the Fight for Just and Lasting Peace
“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Such were the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the US-commissioned Manhattan project to develop atomic bomb, after its first detonation in Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. On August 6, 1945, the United States incinerated Hiroshima by that nuclear weapon, and three days after, Nagasaki, killing over 200,000 people, completely destroying the two cities and leaving a crippling legacy of death and devastation.
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the barbaric bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle joins the Japanese people and all peace loving peoples in commemorating the event and in condemning the continuing nuclear proliferation threat from the US and its imperialist allies.
Not content, immediately after the end of World War II, the United States sought out the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific as a location to test and develop its newly proven and developed nuclear arsenal. After developing their own, testing was also done later by the UK, France, Russia, and the US itself in the French Polynesia, Kiribati, Johnson Atoll, Australia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia’s Nowaja Semlja, and other places, decimating indigenous communities, including entire nations in the Pacific, with far-reaching effects on human health, ecology, and global security, including radiation exposure, environmental destruction and long-term health consequences.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago are an exercise of unnecessary and excessive force. Historical evidence is clear that Japan would have surrendered soon anyway, even if the atom bombs had not been dropped as later admitted by many US civilian and military top brass themselves, including then Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Curtis LeMay and George Marshall, and Admiral William Leahy. The real objectives of the US in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to demonstrate US military superiority as the unrivaled postwar superpower, using its newest tool – nuclear weapons.
The US has constantly intimidated and blackmailed the whole world into submission using nuclear armaments. But the USSR frustrated the US design and ended monopoly of these weapons of mass destruction in 1949 and deterred the US from further using its atom bombs. As of 2025, nine countries are known to possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel (not formally acknowledged), India, Pakistan and North Korea, with a total of approximately 12,331 nuclear warheads globally, with the US and Russia holding more than 95%.
Despite many multilateral treaties passed to try and stop the growth of nuclear weapons, such as the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, multiple versions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the US has either not signed, has found loopholes around, or simply ignored these and continued its aggression and provocative threats of “nuclear readiness” against its rivals. The US has also threatened its rival countries that were suspected, sometimes baselessly accused, of developing nuclear weapons such as Libya, Iraq, Iran, and others.
Recently, and using “nuclear talks” as pretext, the US and Israel attacked Iran, presumably because Iran is the strongest opponent to the genocidal expansionism of the Zionist entity and because it is the main roadblock in the way of full US-led domination over West Asia. The US has no qualms in using double standard to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear program but not others like Israel as long as they do not stand against its imperialist will. Calls against the dangers of any new state obtaining nuclear weapons ring hollow if the calls are not directed principally against the US-led nuclear arsenal. As long as the US holds onto its nuclear arsenal, it is justified for other states to hold onto theirs.
Thus, instead of calling for the abolition of all nuclear weapons now, we instead call for the US to be disarmed of its nuclear weapons so that the historic nuclear threat it has posed to the world’s people and many states is no longer the leading factor of the nuclear arms race. The League calls on the people to build broad alliances and wage militant struggle to end US imperialism, the number one nuclear terrorist in the world, as a step towards ending the imperialist system as a whole and therefore the logic that gives rise to the existential threat to humanity that nuclear weapons are.
There can only be genuine just and lasting peace in the world if the imperialist system and structure that builds wars and weapons of mass destruction is exposed and destroyed. This can be done by building a broad, international, and anti-imperialist united front that respects the right of nations and peoples to self-determination.
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki and honoring the thousands of innocent lives lost, the surviving victims with their long-term suffering and their fading memories as silent witnesses to the horror of nuclear bombs under imperialist aggression, the ILPS calls on all the world’s peoples to intensify their struggle against US imperialism and its barbaric and terrorist policy of producing, maintaining, using and threatening to use nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. 80 years is enough.
Signed,
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
Leave A Reply
Related News
