A ceremony dedicated to the memory of victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic bombings was held in Yerevan at the Peace Covenant Memorial, initiated by the “Hikari” center. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. About 50,000 people including aged survivors participated in the ceremony.
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The event was one of many planned across the state this week by peace and faith groups to remember the 1945 bombings that killed about 200,000 people, mostly civilians.
Matsui addressed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was at the ceremony, saying that “a nuclear-weapon-free-world would manifest the noble pacifism of the Japanese constitution”.
On August 6th, 1945 the United States dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima in a bid to bring a decisive conclusion to the Second World War. He was the first sitting USA president to visit Hiroshima.
Obama in May became the first sitting USA president to visit Hiroshima, and Matsui quoted part of the speech Obama delivered at the same venue in which he said “those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them”.
Matsui said Obama’s speech was evidence that the thoughts of Hiroshima had reached him. In subsequent years, radiation sickness would double the number of deaths to almost 300,000.
Meanwhile, several books containing full transcript of President Obama’s speech at his visit to the sight of the first city bombed on May 27 are seeing good sales in Japan.
The people in this photo – all women and young children – lived in Nakajima-honmachi, the place that is now the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park.
But Tomomi Inada, Japan’s new defence minister and an Abe ally, said on Wednesday she did not believe Japan should consider possessing nuclear weapons.
United States forces dropped another atomic bomb on the southern city of Nagasaki on August 9.
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Note to readers: Orval L. Gearhart Jr.is a retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army Air Corps, and a B-25 pilot who served in the Pacific Theater during World War II. The co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization, he told Sputnik that the most important thing is to prevent another nuclear attack from ever happening again. North Korea has performed four tests of nuclear weaponry in the last decade, including one conducted earlier this year. (Yuya Shino) A boy floats a candle-lit paper lantern on the river on Saturday during 71st anniversary activities commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
