Sixty years after the atomic bombing that killed thousands in the blink of an eye and devastated his home city of Hiroshima, Sunao Tsuboi is worried Japan may again be headed down the path of militarism. The survivor of the world’s first atomic bombing has vowed, like many other Hiroshima residents, to keep the city a bastion of pacifism.

“Everything I hear these days makes me really upset,” said Tsuboi, 80, who was a university student when the bomb exploded over Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945.

Tsuboi, who was about 1 km (0.6 miles) from ground zero – the point where the bomb detonated – was hurled 10 metres (30 feet) through the air and suffered burns over much of his body. “I get a strong feeling that Japan is leaning to the right, that we’re going down a road that we’ve been down before,” he said, his face still visibly scarred from the burns.

Japan’s ruling party, in its latest call for a more assertive security stance, this week proposed that the military should not be limited to a self-defence role but should take part in international efforts to secure peace overseas.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has made annual visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine for war dead, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, and a school textbook written by nationalist historians has stirred criticism of a whitewash.

Thousands died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing, with the toll rising to some 140,000 by the end of 1945 out of the city’s estimated population of 350,000. More have succumbed to cancer and other radiation-related ailments since then.

On Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the Hiroshima attack, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, bringing to an end the military aggression that had culminated in its entry into World War Two.

Proposals laid out in a draft for a new constitution by Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) mark a drastic departure from the principles of the pacifist constitution, unchanged since it was drafted by the postwar Occupation authorities.

<B>Secure peace overseas</B>

A key section of the constitution, Article 9, renounces the right to maintain a military or wage war, though Japanese governments have interpreted it as allowing forces for defence, the now-240,000 member Self-Defence Forces. “We must by all means save Article 9. It may be idealistic, but it’s something that the world should strive to achieve,” said Tsuboi, who heads a group of Hiroshima victims.

Recent administrations have stretched the constraints of the constitution to allow non-combat support for the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but many members of the conservative LDP have long chafed at the limits of the US-drafted document.

Faced with the threat of North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes, Japanese public opinion has shifted away from once-overwhelming opposition to revising Article 9, although those backing a change still fall short of a majority. Some politicians have even broken a decades-old taboo to suggest Japan should possess nuclear arms.

“Japan is clearly leaning to the right and the trend has become very strong,” said Motofumi Asai, a former diplomat who is president of the Hiroshima Peace Institute.

In Hiroshima, now a modern, bustling city of 1.2 million, the mood is different.

“In places like Tokyo, pacifism is no longer ‘fashionable’. But in Hiroshima, it’s still very much alive,” Asai said. “In Hiroshima, people have a strong sense of identity as victims of the A-bomb. They feel they have to be a beacon of pacifism and of efforts to abolish nuclear weapons.” The Peace Memorial Park and the A-bomb Dome – the ruined shell of a building that was near ground zero – have become synonymous with the city and serve as reminders of the bombing 60 years ago this week.

Faced with the passing of the generation who experienced the bombing, most schools in Hiroshima have «peace studies» courses to keep memories of the tragedy alive. Students learn about it by listening to survivors’ accounts. “We should stick with Article 9,” said 16-year-old Madoka Tamura, a student at the private Notre Dame Seishin High School. “Someone has to give up weapons, because otherwise others won’t.” Some of her classmates said Japan may need a military for self-defence but should keep to its pacifist principles.

“As a country which suffered war and as one of only two cities to have suffered an atomic bombing, we need to have a strong desire for peace,” said Haruka Daimyoji, 17. “If the military were to get out of control, we are the ones to stop it.” Others said debate on the constitution and the military’s role was fine as long as politicians recognised the consequences of war. “They should first visit the peace museum, and then think about it,” said Keitaro Nomura, president of Hiroshima Junior Chamber, an organisation of young business executives.

<B>George NISHIYAMA</B>