Japan and Australia could potentially collaborate in areas such as victim assistance as a preliminary stage before joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), said Melissa Parke, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). 

On a recent trip to Japan, Parke visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as Tokyo’s Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall, which commemorates the tuna fishing vessel Lucky Dragon No. 5 whose 23-member crew was exposed to radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1954.

What role can Japan, as the only country to have experienced the horrors of atomic warfare, play in achieving nuclear disarmament? Parke, who is from Australia, shared her insights with The Asahi Shimbun.

A former federal parliament member and minister for international development, Parke, 57, assumed the post of executive director of the ICAN in September last year.

The interview took place during her visit to the exhibition hall in Tokyo.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

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Question: What are your impressions after viewing the exhibits in this museum?

Parke: I think it plays a really important role by connecting all of the different things that have happened around nuclear weapons issues. 

You have to wonder if the fact of the fishermen getting sick and being diagnosed with radiation sickness led to the hibakusha in Hiroshima and Nagasaki being recognized as victims.

Because previously, they had been subjected to a lot of discrimination, because people didn’t know. They just thought these people had some terrible contagious disease, when in fact it was radiation sickness.

And it also showed that there are victims of colonialism and nuclear weapons testing encompassing the whole globe. This is an issue that should unite people against nuclear weapons, and against the practices of nuclear armed states.

It’s a unifying message from here, and I think it really brings everything together very beautifully. And we really do see from the maps here, the way that the fish and the currents are carrying the radiation around, that we are all connected to each other.

Q: What did you learn during time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and now here in Tokyo?

A: I think coming here has been really good to tie all these issues in together, especially with regard to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and the nuclear weapons testing going on around the world. All of these issues, and all of the victims and the survivors are connected.

This visit has really given me a perspective on the whole issue of the evolution of nuclear weapons, I think from a much more grounded and a much more comprehensive perspective. And I think there’s no substitute for actually meeting people.

Now, I would have loved to have met Matashichi Oishi (one of the fishermen of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru who was exposed to radioactive fallout and died in March 2021).

But I had the great fortune to meet hibakusha in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Beautiful people with a very great burden on their shoulders, and a great anxiety over who is going to tell their stories when they are not here anymore. And you’ve got, I think, a really great burden on young people to do that, to step up. And a lot of them are. They are amazing. But again, it just highlights that governments need to step up.

Governments need to show leadership. It shouldn’t be all on the shoulders of the victims, and the survivors, and civil society. It’s got to be political leaders actually showing leadership.

Q: Only A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been recognized as genuine hibakusha, making them eligible to receive medical support from the government, not those fishermen. A penny for your thoughts.

A: You see, those kinds of injustices are still going on. Because those families of those fishermen, even though they’ve all passed away now, must face the fact that succeeding generations will still be suffering the health effects. So it’s an issue that is still continuing and represents another area where governments need to step up and provide compensation as well as acknowledge and recognize their suffering.

Q: You stopped in front of the Australian map at the exhibition. Do the Australian nuclear test survivors have any health care support from the government? Are they recognized as victims of the nuclear tests?

A: It’s ironic that it is the indigenous peoples of Australia who were the main victims of the British nuclear weapons testing in Australia. And they’re the ones who have resisted every aspect of the nuclear cycle in Australia ... uranium mining, obviously the testing, although they weren’t actually, like the Pacific Islanders, told anything about it ... and because they have an understanding that we’re all connected with each other and with nature ... so, what you do to one place and person, you’re basically doing to the whole.

I think there’s starting to be some recognition now. It’s now a live discussion in Australia about compensating and environmental remediation. And I think that’s an aspect where Japan and Australia could potentially collaborate to work together on environmental remediation and victim assistance as part of the participation with the TPNW as a preliminary stage before joining the treaty, hopefully.

Q: For the third Meeting of States Parties of the TPNW, a ruling party lawmaker in Japan proposed holding a working group session on victim assistance in Hiroshima or Nagasaki even though the Japanese government itself has not even attended the conference in the capacity of observer status. What do you think about that?

A: Well, Kazakhstan is the president of the third Meeting of States Parties, and Kazakhstan and Kiribati are joint co-chairs of the working group. So it would be their decision as to where they hold their meetings.

I know that the Kazakh government is very keen for there to be at least one meeting in Kazakhstan, so that people can go and visit Semipalatinsk where the Russian nuclear weapons tests were carried out.

As for other locations, that was certainly something that the hibakusha could suggest. 

Q: The Marshall Islands have not signed or ratified the TPNW due to the U.S. pressure. Do you think they will ever be able to ratify the treaty?

A: I think it’s very sad for the Marshall Islanders that they’re not being given appropriate compensation for a start, or acknowledgement, and that they’re being actively pressured not to sign the treaty. And it’s the same situation in a sense with Japan. Not that there’s the same U.S. pressure, but there’s a sense of anxiety here about, or fear of upsetting the Americans, which I think is not well-placed.

The Americans are the ones who did this, so they should understand that you, Japan and the Marshall Islanders, they need some recognition of what happened to them appropriately, and not some minuscule amount of compensation and waving away, which is what is happening at the moment.

Q: Finally, what role do you think Japan can play?

A: Well, Japan is in the unique position of being the only country to have experienced the dropping of atomic weapons in wartime. So it is in a position to provide moral leadership on the elimination of nuclear weapons.

And unfortunately, it can’t provide that moral leadership on disarmament while it retains a reliance on nuclear weapons in its defense policy. I think Australia and Japan are in a very similar position. And I think this is why if they work together, it would be easier than working alone.

Both have strong alliances with the United States, but both have traditionally been leaders in the area of nuclear disarmament. At least Australia has observed the meetings of state parties, which Japan hasn’t done yet.

I hope Japan will start to engage with the treaty, because it has a lot of experience and expertise to contribute. And I think the Japanese leadership should take the burden off of the hibakusha and the young people, and put it onto themselves to lead.

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Melissa Parke worked as an expert in international law at the United Nations from 1999 to 2007, serving in various locations such as Kosovo, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. She has been the executive director of ICAN since September last year.