Memorial held in Hamilton today to remember the victims of Hiroshima

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Hiroshima yesterday to mark 70 years since the atomic bombing that helped end World War II but still divides opinion today over whether the total destruction it caused was justified.

TOKYO (AP) – A U.S. diplomat who attended this week’s 70th anniversary of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima said Friday that nuclear weapons should never be used again.

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About 55,000 people from 100 countries attended the ceremony in Hiroshima, including U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and Rose Gottemoeller, undersecretary of state for arms control.

“I don’t know why I’m still alive today”, said Tsuboi, who now serves as chairman of the Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organisations. A democratic-proselytizing US saying that “I nuked you to save you” to Imperial Japan is nearly like a religiously-oriented sexual predator saying “I raped you to change you” to a lesbian.

The U.S. dropped the bombs to avoid what would have been a bloody ground assault on the Japanese mainland, following the fierce battle for Japan’s southernmost Okinawan islands, which took 12,520 American lives and an estimated 200,000 Japanese, about half civilians. Japan, “through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations”, Tomiichi Murayama said in a “heartfelt” apology in 1995.

The U.S. atomic attack on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killed 140,000 people. “We have to continue our effort to achieve a world without nuclear weapons”.

While some historians say that they prevented many more casualties in a planned land invasion, critics counter that the attacks were not necessary to end the war, arguing that Japan was already heading for imminent defeat.

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, peace activists are holding a conference in nearby Santa Fe, as well as vigils at the gates of the top-secret national nuclear weapons research laboratory in Los Alamos.

At memorial ceremonies in Hiroshima on Thursday, Abe said Japan would submit a fresh resolution to abolish nuclear weapons at the UN general assembly later this year.

The bomb, referred to as “Little Boy“, destroyed 90 % of Hiroshima.

In the past year, 5,359 hibakusha, or survivors, passed away, bringing the death toll to 297,684, according to The Associated Press. Many others were killed in Nagasaki and in the days to follow.