“Seventy years on, I re-emphasize the necessity of world peace”, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at the memorial service. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, a Hiroshima native, wrote in an article for CNN that progress in eliminating atomic bombs has been “much too slow”. At least 200,000 people were killed. Some argue the bombings were not necessary or justified.
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Children offer prayers Thursday after releasing paper lanterns to the Motoyasu River, where tens of thousands of atomic bombing victims died, with the backdrop of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.
The intense heat from the explosion incinerated the center of the city and the wooden structures in it. There was only one building left standing in one part of town and it remains today as a stark reminder of the devastation. She was 8 years old and living 2.4 kilometres away from the city.
The campaigns call on States, global organisations, civil society and other actors to: Acknowledge that any use of nuclear weapons would cause catastrophic humanitarian and environmental Harm, that there is a universal humanitarian imperative to ban nuclear weapons, even for states that do not possess them; I hope the Kenyan government take a stand on this issue. Ogura maintains that the killings of innocent Japanese people were war crimes.
Also speaking at the ceremony was Hiroshima’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui, who appealed directly to US President Barack Obama to strive towards a nuclear weapon free world.
America saw the attack as provoking shock and awe into a country that refused to surrender.
The event will feature many social justice organizations from in and around Southern California, including: Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, the American Society for Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, and Pax Christi.
It is more plausible that it was the beginning of the Cold War since the Soviet Union was planning to send troops to Japan the following week.
People ring a bell to mark the moment when an atom bomb exploded over Hiroshima 70 years ago during a commemoration ceremony at Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, August 6, 2015.
Mr Matsui called the nuclear weapons “the ultimate inhumanity and the absolute evil” that must be abolished.
He said: “Today Hiroshima has been revived and has become a city of culture and prosperity”.
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Some of the national attendants at this year’s anniversary included U.S Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and various representatives from all over the world including Britain, France and Russian Federation, reported CTV News.
