Nagasaki Hosts Pugwash Conferences Starting November 1
For the first time in a decade, the Pugwash Conference meets in Japan. Formerly called the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the Pugwash Conference was an offspring of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto released in 1955.
It's an international organization that brings together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the dangers of armed conflicts and to seek solutions to the world's security threats. Since 1957 when Japan's first Nobel Prize laureate Hideki Yukawa and those physicists who had taken part in the development atomic bombs met in its first conference, the organization meets periodically, and Nagasaki, one of the two A-bombed cities, hosts this year's conference attended by nearly 200 scientists from some 40 countries.
On the first day of the conference, the participants have an occasion to listen to an A-bomb survivor who lost his father in the blast and himself cremated his remains.
The Pugwash Conference this time invites high government officials from both Russia and the United States which hold the large part of nuclear weapons in the world and hear them discuss their outlook for the future of nuclear disarmament.
The conference will also discuss among others the problem of denuclearization in Northeast Asia and the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons.
The world holds 15,000 units of nuclear weapons and the international conference at the United Nations failed to document its agreement on nuclear disarmament. No clear way out is in sight for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.
The Pugwash Conference in Nagasaki will issue on the last day, November 5, a Nagasaki Declaration toward the total abolition of nuclear weapons. Coming from one of the only two A-bombed cities, the message from Nagasaki is awaited with much attention.
