70th Anniversary Of Hiroshima Bombing

In Hiroshima a bell tolled at 08:15 local time – when US aircraft B-29 Enola Gay dropped the bomb that flattened the city centre.

70 years ago today a nuclear bomb was detonated on Hiroshima.

“Seventy years on, I re-emphasize the necessity of world peace”, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at the memorial service.

Abe addressed 40,000 people who attended the commemoration ceremony near the epicenter of the 1945 attack and called for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Lanterns were symbolically floated over the Motoyasu River in memory of the dead.

It also inspires many Japanese people to hope that country’s government will stop pushing security-related bills that many feel are in violation of the country’s pacifist constitution.

In a fresh controversy over the unpopular moves, defense minister Gen Nakatani admitted that the new security laws being debated in parliament could – in theory – allow for Japan to transport nuclear weapons to allies, but he quickly dismissed it as unlikely.

The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became known for cancers, premature births and malformed babies. Marking the deaths of 140,000 people who died in the bombing and from its subsequent effects, Mr Matsui said, “President Obama and other policymakers, please come to the A-bombed cities, hear the survivors with your own ears, and encounter the reality of the atomic bombings”. It was followed by another atomic bombing in Nagasaki, which killed up to 70,000 people.

At the time, and ever since, in the U.S. the bombing has largely been seen from a utilitarian point of view: The bomb was a tool to end a bad war and save American lives.

He called into question the military justification of the attacks, saying Japan was practically defeated after the Soviet Army’s victories in Manchuria. Thus, urgency to end the war was definitely not the driving force behind the detonation of the nuclear bombs. “Now is the time to start taking action”, he said in his annual speech.

U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and representatives from more than 100 countries, including Britain, France and Russian Federation, attended the ceremony.

My homage to all those who lost their lives in Hiroshima.

Despite the ferocity of the final months of the war, Japan and the US swiftly rebuilt their relationship and often refer to their alliance as the “cornerstone” of security in the region.

“We must not repeat our mistakes and make Japan a country where those killed in the atomic bombings cannot rest in peace”, said Yukio Yoshioka, 86, chief of a liaison council of hibakusha groups in Hiroshima.