Greenpeace: Hiroshima anniversary a reminder that peace is the best self defence

Three days later, Gackenbach flew over the city of Kokura in support of dropping the second atomic bomb.

“You are an inspiration to the world, which has a responsibility to honour your experience by ensuring a world free of nuclear weapons“.

Mr. Matsui described nuclear weapons as an “absolute evil”, and urged the world to put an end to them forever.

“We must be attacked by a hundred bombs, we thought”, she said.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland.

Hiroshima mayor Matsui used Thursday’s ceremony to criticize Abe’s security plans, saying leaders should stick with the “pacifism of the Japanese constitution”.

In the past year, 5,359 hibakusha, or survivors, passed away, bringing the death toll to 297,684, according to The Associated Press. In a matter of seconds, 60 kilograms of highly enriched Uranium released the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT, resulting in the death of an estimated 70,000 people in the immediate aftermath, and around twice that many over time due to injuries and radiation sickness.

About 50,000 people attended the ceremony in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, including U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and global Security Rose Gottemoeller and representatives of about 100 other countries. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has collected their stories and drawings, along with artifacts from the bombing, like the famous burned tricycle once owned by a 3-year-old boy named Shinichi, the subject of the children’s book Shin’s Tricycle. Those who survived suffered from cancer and other diseases.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivers his speech during the the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan Thursday, August 6, 2015.

In 2014 Red Cross hospitals in Japan treated just over 10,000 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors. The anniversary comes as Japan is divided over Abe’s push to pass unpopular legislation to expand the country’s military role internationally. Six days later, World War II was over.

Tens of thousands of people gathered today in Hiroshima to commemorate the atomic bombing that helped end World War II but still divides opinion today over whether the total destruction it caused was justified.

Critics who see the measures as a derailment of Japan’s pacifist constitution lambasted Abe at a meeting after the commemoration ceremony.