by Our Foreign Desk

NAGASAKI marked the 70th anniversary of the US atomic bombing yesterday, as survivors warned against Japan’s renewed militarisation.

With the solemn tolling of a bell, the city observed a minute’s silence at 11.02am, the minute the US B-29 bomber Bockscar dropped its terrifying and deadly payload on August 9 1945.

The bombing of the defenceless city killed some 40,000 people instantly and the same number from the lingering effects of radiation.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended the event along with representatives from 75 countries, including US ambassador Caroline Kennedy.

Mr Abe said Japan, as yet the only country to suffer atomic bombing, would seek to play a leading role in disarmament.But the PM was criticised by survivors — known as hibakusha in Japan — and Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue.

Hibakusha representative Sumiteru Taniguchi, now 86, said that legislation recently pushed through parliament by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party “will lead to war.”

The new laws “reinterpret” Japan’s post-war constitution, which limits the armed forces to self-defence only, to allow them to be sent overseas to defend its allies — among them the US.

“We cannot accept this,” said Mr Taniguchi, after describing in graphic detail the horrors of the atom bomb, including the terrible burns to his back.

Mr Taue noted the “widespread unease” about the legislation, which has passed the lower house of parliament and is now before the upper house.“I urge the government of Japan to listen to these voices of unease and concern,” he said.

A message from UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon echoed the calls of Mr Taue and others to abolish nuclear weapons.

“I wholeheartedly join you in sounding a global rallying cry: No more Nagasakis. No more Hiroshimas,” Mr Ban said in a message read by acting UN high representative for disarmament affairs Kim Won Soo.

Speaking in Rome, Pope Francis called the bombings “a tragic event that still arouses horror and revulsion” and “a permanent warning to humanity” to reject war and ban weapons of mass destruction.