ON the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber of the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Three days later, the U.S. dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.

These were the first, and so far only, times nuclear weapons have been used in warfare. To those who defend the U.S.’ actions, the bombs were instrumental to securing Japan’s unconditional surrender and the subsequent ending of World War II. Those who decry their use point to the immeasurable human suffering they caused. In Hiroshima, an estimated 80,000 people were killed as a direct result of the blast, and at least another 60,000 died by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. At least 70,000 are believed to have been killed in the Nagasaki bombing.

For decades, the Genbaku Dome, or Hiroshima Peace Memorial, and the hibakusha, the surviving victims of the atomic bombings, have been reminders of the devastating potentials of nuclear weapons. Japan’s Education Ministry on Tuesday announced it would recommend over 1,500 photographs and two videos taken after the bombing of Hiroshima for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

In a joint statement, the institutions that submitted the application said they “expect primary documents that transmit the horrors of war and the use of atomic weapons will be recognized throughout the world and used by various governments and citizens as they work toward never repeating such a mistake.”

Our collective memory needs such a reminder. With talk of the use of nuclear weapons tossed about recently in a seeming game of bluff and dare and some countries trying to neuter the nuclear nonproliferation regime, such a record testifying to the pressing need for nuclear arms control, if not complete elimination of such weapons of mass destruction, seems especially timely.

But the Japanese government’s push for the UNESCO Memory of the World Register to include those documents, worthwhile though it is, rings with suspicions of virtue signaling, at least to its neighbors, in light of its own actions.

While urging the rest of the world to remember the Japanese people’s suffering as victims of the nuclear attacks, the Japanese government has generally been mute about the ordeals Japanese aggressors imposed on their victims during the same war. Until now, the Japanese government has yet to offer a formal apology to the victims, and politicians have made constant efforts to whitewash Japan’s WWII atrocities.

More recently, the Japanese began to release nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean in disregard of neighboring countries’ concerns. With the horrific experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reflect on, Japanese politicians should be aware of the damaging potential of nuclear contamination. Instead, they have turned a deaf ear to their neighbors’ pleas for prudence.(China Daily)