The Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui (Center), and other Japanese officials at the commemoration ceremony of the victims of the atomic bomb attack, photo: AA / Abaca Press / Profimedia Images
A silent prayer took place on Wednesday morning in Japan, marking 80 years since the United States launched an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, BBC reports.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba participated in the ceremony with officials from all over the world and the mayor of the city, Kazumi Matsui.
Matsui warned of a “accelerated global tendency of military arming … [și] The idea that nuclear weapons are essential for national defense “, saying that this represents a” flagrant defiance [a] the lessons that the international community should have learned from the tragedies of the past ”.
World War II ended with the surrender of Japan, shortly after launching bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three days later.
The bombs killed over 200,000 people – some following the immediate explosion, others due to burns and radiation diseases.
The inheritance of these weapons continues to haunt the survivors today.
Survivors of nuclear bombardments in Japan received the Nobel Peace Prize
“My father was severely burned and blinded by the explosion. The skin hangs off his body-he couldn't even hold my hand,” a Hiroshima survivor. He was six years old when the bomb hit his city, killing his father and two younger brothers.
Naito shared his story with a group of students from Hiroshima, who transforms his memories of tragedy in art.
In 2024, Nihon Hidekyo, a Japanese organization of the survivors of atomic bombs, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to eliminate the nuclear weapons.
In a speech held on Wednesday, Mayor Matsui said that the Treaty of Nuclear not, aiming to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, is “on the verge of becoming dysfunction.”
He also appealed to the Japanese government to ratify the Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons – an international agreement that prohibits nuclear weapons and entered into force in 2021.
Over 70 countries have ratified the treaty, but the nuclear powers such as the US and Russia have opposed, invoking the role of discourage nuclear arsenals.
Japan also rejected the ban, claiming that its security is consolidated by American nuclear weapons.
“We live next to nuclear weapons that could delete humanity on the face of the earth.”
The problem of nuclear weapons is one that divides the Japanese society. On the streets leading to the Memorial Park of Peace, there were small protests that demanded the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Satoshi Tanaka, another survivor of the atomic bomb, who suffered from several types of cancer due to radiation exposure, said that, seeing the bloodshed in Gaza and Ukraine, his own sufferings are in thought.
“Seeing the rubble mountains, the destroyed cities, children and women panic, all bring me the memories of what I have lived,” he told the BBC. “We live next to nuclear weapons that could delete humanity on the face of the earth several times.”
“The most urgent priority is to determine the leaders of the countries with nuclear weapons.
