The U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee that deals with disarmament and security issues adopted a Japanese-proposed resolution calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide with a majority support of 156 countries.

However, Japan could not get the backing of the U.S., Britain, and France. Last year, the U.S. and Britain served as co-sponsors of the resolution while France voted in favor of the resolution, but this year those three countries abstained from voting. Nuclear powers such as China, North Korea, and Russia voted against the resolution.

This year’s Japan-led resolution encouraged leaders of the world to visit the atom-bombed cities, but China opposed the idea, saying, “The atomic bombing was the direct result of Japan’s war of aggression.” It even brought up irrelevant historical issues to criticize Japan.

Sources have said that the reason that the U.S. abstained from voting was that the resolution emphasized the inhumane aspects of nuclear weapons.

How do Americans look at the atomic bombings of Japan? In July of 2015, a British research company, YouGov, conducted a poll of 1,000 Americans to see how they view America’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The survey results showed that overall 45 percent of respondents said the U.S. made the right decision to use atomic bombs to end the war, still exceeding 29 percent who said America made the wrong decision.

Compared to opinion polls taken immediately after the war, this year’s poll found that although fewer and fewer people are expressing support for America’s decision to drop atomic bombs, almost half the people in the U.S. still support America’s use of nuclear weapons. As the only nation in the world to have suffered nuclear attacks, it is important that Japan send a message to the world that America’s decision to drop its atomic bombs on Japan was wrong.

Japan Needs to Possess Deterrent Capabilities to Prevent Other Countries from Doing Wrong

It is necessary to take practical steps in efforts toward a nuclear-free word. We eventually should aim to abolish nuclear weapons on a global scale, but as evidenced by the opposition from China, North Korea, and Russia, nuclear powers will not let go of their nuclear arms so easily on the grounds of self-defense.

In the first place, the possession of nuclear weapons by the Capitalist Bloc, including the U.S., is different from the retention of nuclear arms by the Communist bloc such as China and North Korea. In the Capitalist bloc, the people from each country and international opinion makers check the use of nuclear weapons, but in the Communist bloc, there is the possibility that a dictator could use nuclear arms at his or her discretion. Surrounded by such communist, nuclear nations, Japan now faces an extremely dangerous security situation.

When considering the issue of nuclear armament, we need to adopt the view that Japan’s possession of appropriate military force is completely different from “starting a war,” and that it should be able to deter an aggressor country from doing evil in the event that it tries to use nuclear weapons as a tool for intimidation.