Nagasaki marks 70th anniversary of atomic bombing

NAGASAKI, Japan (AP) – A ceremony is underway Sunday morning in Nagasaki to mark the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the southern Japanese city. The legislation would ease constitutional limits that restrict the military to self-defence, allowing Japanese forces to defend allies in limited circumstances.

But Abe told them the bills are essential to protecting the people’s “peaceful life” and “preventing war“, arguing that the deterrence provided through the alliance between Japan and the United States will be boosted by the bills.

The city’s mayor was expected to renew his call for a world without nuclear weapons.

Abe, in brief remarks, said that Japan, as the only country to experience nuclear attacks, would seek to play a leading role in realising a world without such weapons. This first usage of the horror bomb indiscriminately wiped out more than 100,000 civilian women, children and old people-and condemned many others to a very slow and painful death.

The ceremony in Hiroshima was attended by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and global Security Rose Gottemoeller, in addition to representatives from extra than 100 different nations. “No more Nagasakis. No more Hiroshimas”.

It will be turned back on after a two-year hiatus following the tsunami-sparked disaster at Fukushima in 2011. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, a second device detonated over Nagasaki.

About 74,000 people died in the initial blast from a plutonium bomb dubbed “Fat Man”, or from after-effects in the months and years following the bombing.

The twin bombings dealt the final blows to imperial Japan, which surrendered on August 15, 1945, bringing an end to World War II.

The number of hibakusha in and outside Japan – those with documents certifying they were atomic bomb survivors – stood at 183,519 in March this year, almost half of the peak of 372,264 in 1980, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.