Hiroshima on Saturday marked the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing, with Mayor Kazumi Matsui calling on world leaders to do more to abolish nuclear weapons and to follow US President Barack Obama’s historic visit to the city in May with trips of their own.
At a memorial ceremony, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe echoed Matsui’s call and also urged young people to visit to observe the harrowing reality of the atomic bombing. Abe also reiterated Japan’s role in combating nuclear proliferation as the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons.
Read more: Three atomic bomb survivors to attend Hiroshima event for Obama visit
In the Peace Declaration read at the city’s annual memorial ceremony, Matsui urged the leaders of all nations to visit Hiroshima, which was devastated by an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki, which was obliterated by another atomic strike three days later by the United States, in order to “etch the reality of the atomic bombings in each (leader’s) heart.”
A peace bell tolled at 8:15 a.m. (2315 GMT on Friday), the time a US warplane dropped the bomb. About 50,000 participants including ageing survivors and dignitaries held a moment of silence at a memorial ceremony in the western Japanese city.
Read more: Obama pays tribute at Hiroshima nuclear memorial
Obama this year became the first incumbent US president to visit Hiroshima, and he urged nuclear powers, including his own, to have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without nuclear weapons.
Mother and child after the Hiroshima bombing 1945. Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt. pic.twitter.com/qZ2YO3mIZ0
— History in Moments (@historyinmoment) July 12, 2016
“The president’s words showed he was touched by the spirit of Hiroshima, which refuses to accept the ‘absolute evil’,” the mayor, Kazumi Matsui, told the crowd, referring to the weapons.
The United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killing thousands of people instantly and about 140,000 by the end of that year.
US forces dropped another atomic bomb on the southern city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9. Japan surrendered six days later.
“I once again urge the leaders of all nations to visit the A-bombed cities,” Matsui said as cicadas buzzed away under the mid-summer sun.
“As President Obama confirmed in Hiroshima, such visits will surely etch the reality of the atomic bombings in each heart.”
At the ceremony, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged his determination to work toward the world free of nuclear arms.
“We must not have the tragic experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 71 years ago repeat itself,” Abe said.
“It is the responsibility of those of us who live in the present to keep on working without ceasing toward that aim.”
US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he would consider letting Japan and South Korea build their own nuclear weapons, rather than rely on the United States for protection against North Korea and China.
Read more: Nanjing more worthy of remembrance than Hiroshima, says China
