A Harvard University professor has triggered a furor at a U.N. disarmament conference by saying that the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives.
To protest professor Phillip Zelikow's statement, about 50 members of Japan's anti-nuclear groups and organizations representing 450,000 A-bomb victims staged a sit-in Wednesday in front of Hiroshima's memorial marking the Aug. 6, 1945, attack here.At the sit-in, 65-year-old bomb survivor Shizuko Abe read out an appeal to Zelikow to retract the statement.
"Those who used the weapon will forget the fear," said Abe, who was severely injured in the attack and has since had 18 operations on burns spread over the right side of her body.
"But for us who were victims, the fear does not go away. A dark shadow always follows us," she said.
Many participants at the conference, including Ryukichi Imai, an official of Japan's International Institute for Global Peace, and Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka con-demned Zelikow.
Zelikow made the statement Monday, the opening day of the four-day U.N. Conference on Disarmament to explore ways to stop the spread of nuclear arms and the possibility of a disarmament structure in the Asia-Pacific region.
"The role of nuclear arms is complicated," Zelikow was quoted as telling the opening session.
"The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki perhaps saved between 1 and 2 million Japanese lives," he said, according to the Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shim-bun.
"It is possible to take this approach if one thinks of starvation and the Battle of Okinawa (toward the end of World War II)."
Okinawa, the southernmost part of Japan, was the only part of the country to be invaded, with enormous loss of life.
The atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima killed about 140,000 people and a second bomb on Nagasaki three days later took the lives of about 70,000.
The twin bomb attacks and a Soviet declaration of war prompted the government to accept unconditional surrender.
Some historians in Japan and abroad have said that an Allied invasion of Japan's home islands would have killed millions of civilians, had Emperor Hirohito and his generals decided to pursue the war to its bitter end.
Many, however, have also condemned the use of the atomic bombs and reject any attempt to justify the attacks.
Zelikow was absent from sessions Tuesday and Wednesday, without informing the U.N. organizers.
"We regret his behavior, although participants are free to make any statement," said Tsutomu Ishiguri, a senior official at the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs.