60 years after A-bombings, nukes no longer taboo in Japan (6min)

Japan Saturday (August 6) marked the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima -- the first time nuclear weapons were used in warfare. The American aerial attack, followed three days later by a plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki, prompted the Japanese to surrender and ended World War II. For Japan -- the only victim of nuclear war -- the attacks scarred the national psyche -- creating what many call a "nuclear allergy." But, six decades later Japan has become a nuclear energy nation and taboos concerning possible nuclear weapons are receding.

Each year on August 6 in the Hiroshima Peace Park at precisely 8:15 a.m., an invocation begins for silent prayer; followed by a tolling bell marking the exact moment an atomic weapon was dropped from above Japan's industrial city.

At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more than 100,000 civilians were killed outright. Hundreds of thousands of survivors suffered radiation poisoning -- many succumbing over the next weeks, months or even years.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand as testaments to the horrors of atomic warfare and propelled a devastated Japan to become known as the Switzerland of Asia -- a pacifist and strongly anti-nuclear nation. Since 1956, it has been national policy not to possess, manufacture or allow nuclear weapons in the nation.

By that time, Japan, however, was snugly under the U.S. nuclear defense umbrella as a new ally of Washington. And that alliance included secret agreements -- in defiance of Japanese policy -- overtly or tacitly permitting American nuclear weapons on outlying Japanese islands or on U.S. warships in Japanese ports.

Japan went on to become a nuclear energy power, building dozens of plants to provide electricity for the resource-poor nation. And by the 1970s, Japan was secretly examining whether it made sense to have its own nuclear weapons.

More recently, however, that thinking is changing. Policymakers in Tokyo are concerned about new possible threats from North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs and China's rising power.

So now the idea of creating a nuclear defense -- which was taboo just a decade ago -- is being debated in mainstream political, academic and media arenas.