Around 50,000 people – including representatives from 91 countries such as the U.S., Britain, France and Russian Federation – attended Saturday’s ceremony, during which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan will “continue to make various efforts to bring about “a world free of nuclear weapons”.
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“Today, we renew our determination, offer heartfelt consolation to the souls of the atomic-bomb victims, and pledge to do everything in our power.to abolish nuclear weapons and build lasting world peace”, said Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui. By the year-end the death count had risen to 140,000, and in later years more than double the number succumbed to radiation.
The atomic bomb is a mistake of humankind. United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on August 6, 2010 will become the first UN chief to attend the anniversary ceremony commemorating the August 6, 1945 atom bomb attack on Hiroshima, which was followed three days later by the Nagasaki bombing.
Washington argued the attacks were necessary to bring about a quicker end to the war. Japan announced its surrender in World War II on August 15. Many of their stories came to global media attention only after President Obama’s historic visit to the Hiroshima memorial on May 27 of this year, some of them documented in a New York Times piece. “We must re-imagine our connection to one another as members of the human race”.
“It’s a time to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 in which many innocent lives were lost in this horrific act of war”, said Terumi Kuwada, a former president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians.
Abe, after lying a wreath of flowers, reiterated Saturday that Tokyo will continue working to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
In an ideal world, “our legislators would cut back on or eliminate nuclear weapons”, said Peterson.
But his moving tribute and brief conversations with elderly survivors, which included an unexpected embrace with one of them, profoundly impressed most Japanese.
U.S. forces dropped another atomic bomb on the southern city of Nagasaki on August 9.
“We think that Hiroshima Day is a very appropriate time to remember the horrors and insanity of nuclear weapon policy”, said Bach, who is also a member of the Massachusetts Peace Action group, which is coordinating the week of remembrance events.
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USA Today editorial: “The bombings, as horrendous as they were, saved the lives of millions of civilians and soldiers who surely would have died had the US gone ahead with an invasion of Japan”.
