Japan Marks 70th Anniversary of Nagasaki Bombing

He said the world till bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons. However, one US publication has made a rather freakish claim.

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group gathered at Hollingworth Lake on Thursday night (6 August 2015) to commememorate the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.

Three days later, a plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

During the remembrance ceremony at the epicentre of the Hiroshima attack today, the mayor of Hiroshima Kazumi Matsui urged the world leaders to ultimately abolish nuclear weaponry.

“President Obama and other policymakers”, he said, “please come to the A-bombed cities, hear the hibakusha (surviving victims) with your own ears, and encounter the reality of the atomic bombings”. “Certainly, you’ll be impelled to start out discussing a authorized framework, together with a nuclear weapons conference”.

“Some people may think that it hasn’t directly affected me, but it had long lasting effects, and I think that a lot of the things that are happening today are a direct result of those bombs”.

A ceremony, attended by PM Shinzo Abe, is being held at Hiroshima’s memorial park before thousands of lanterns are released on the city’s Motoyasu river.

The US undertook a frantic scientific effort, called the Manhattan Project, starting in 1941, to develop an atomic bomb.

In 2014, the Japanese Red Cross Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Hospitals treated some 10,687 atomic bomb survivors, ICRC said.

It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare.

The US was represented at the Hiroshima ceremonies yesterday by its ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, and undersecretary of state Rose Gottemoeller. “I just hope we never drop nuclear weapons again”, he said.

The bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy“, destroyed around 90 percent of the city, and was expected to have the force of around 20,000 tons of TNT.

Beyond Thursday’s commemorations, Japanese people – and Japan’s neighbors – are looking ahead to a statement that Abe is set to make August. 14, the day before the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II.

Given the enormity of their suffering, both countries remain deeply suspicious of Japan despite its post-war pacifism, enshrined in Article Nine of the Constitution which prohibits involvement in any conflict, except in self-defense.