Japan's Nagasaki mayor urges gov't to dispel concerns over controversial security bills

Tomihisa Taue, mayor of Japan's Nagasaki city, on Sunday urged the Japanese government to dispel public's concerns over the government-backed security bills by conducting "careful and sincere deliberations" on the bills.

Addressing here at the 70th anniversary of U.S. atomic bombing on the city, Taue warned that the pacifism nature of the Japanese war-renouncing Constitution is "wavering," referring to the controversial bills that, if enacted, will allow Japan to engage in armed conflicts overseas for the first time in 70 years since the end of World War II.

"There are widespread unease and concerns that the (peaceful) oath which is engraved onto our hearts 70 years ago and the peaceful ideology of the Japanese Constitution are wavering," said the mayor, urging the government and the Diet to listen to the voices of unease and concerns.

The security legislation, which is pushed by the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is considered by over 90 percent of Japanese constitutional experts as "unconstitutional " since the Japanese supreme law bans the country from engaging combats abroad.

Recent polls also showed that the majority of Japanese population are opposed to the bills and the supporting rate for Abe's cabinet dived around 10 percentage points immediately after the ruling bloc rammed the bills through the Diet's lower house in July.

Meanwhile, the mayor emphasized that the peaceful path Japan has pursued in the past 70 years should never be changed for the sake of Nagasaki.

He also asked Japanese young generation not to push aside wartime experiences told by the old generation since what the elders experienced could in the future happen to the Japanese young generation.

For his part, Abe, avoiding mentioning the security bills in his speech, said Japan will make efforts to reach the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and he reiterated Japan's three non- nuclear principles that he failed to touch in Hiroshima in a similar commemorating event.

"As the only country in the world to have experienced the horror of nuclear devastation in war, Japan will look for a world free of nuclear weapons abiding by the three non-nuclear principles of no possessing, no producing and no permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan," Abe said at the Nagasaki event.

However, Japan's Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said only one day before Thursday's Hiroshima event commemorating the atomic bombing that the security bills theoretically allow Japan's Self- Defense Forces to help its allies transport nuclear weapons for logistics support.

Opposition lawmakers criticized the remarks by saying the prime minister is flip-flopping on the issue as on one hand, Abe claimed to create a world free of nuclear weapons and on the other hand, he is trying to push forward bills that allow Japan to transport nukes.

Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only cities in the world that suffered from nuclear bombings. The United States dropped two nuclear bombs on the two cities on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 in 1945 respectively in a move to accelerate Japan's surrender in WWII.

Japan was a major aggressor that launched wars of aggression against China, Southeast Asian countries and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces on Aug. 15, 1945, days after the atomic bombings. Endi