On Monday, 6th August, over 40 people gathered in Dublin’s Merrion Square, to mark the 67th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Approximately 80,000 people were killed directly by the bomb blast, with the death toll rising to 140,000 within a year.

The commemoration was addressed by the Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Clare Byrne, Patrick Comerford, President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and Mr Kojiro Uchiyama, Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission of the Japanese Embassy in Ireland.

Opening the commemoration, Cllr Byrne reaffirmed the commitment of the city of Dublin to Mayors for Peace, the organisation founded by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons, with the aim of ensuring that no other city should ever suffer the horrors experienced by their citizens. Dublin was the first Irish city to join Mayors for Peace, in 1994.

Patrick Comerford welcomed the recent reiteration by Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamonn Gilmore, of Ireland’s strong commitment to nuclear disarmament, and repeated Irish CND’s call for legislation to ban Irish state investments in companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry.

“While Irish foreign policy has always strongly endorsed nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, these commitments are not matched by Irish financial policies, he said. “The National Pension Reserve Fund, according to its 2011 report, has investments of at least €23 million in international arms companies that produce single-use components for the nuclear weapons industry. AIB, which is in majority state ownership, lent $28 million to a US company involved in the nuclear weapons industry in 2010. People are being refused mortgages; small businesses are being bled to death because their overdraft facilities are being called in. But Irish money is available to make nuclear weapons. This is outrageous.

“Other countries that play a leading role in support of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament – such as Norway and New Zealand – prohibit the investment of state funds in companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry, he continued. “There is a similar ban in Ireland on investments in companies engaged in the landmine and cluster munitions industries. Why is the government not ensuring a similar ban when it comes to the nuclear weapons industry?”

The Japanese Counsellor, Mr Uchiyama, spoke of the responsibility felt by Japan, as the only country to have experienced the devastation of an attack using nuclear weapons, to work for total nuclear disarmament, and stressed the importance of working with like-minded members of the international community, including Ireland, to achieve this goal.
Japanese harpist Junchi Morikami performed several pieces of traditional music at the ceremony, and poet Hugh McFadden read his poem, ‘Empire of Shadows’, the title work of his forthcoming anthology. After the laying of a wreath at the memorial cherry tree planted by Irish CND in 1980, a minute’s silence was observed by those present.

Read Patrick Comerford’s speech in full here.