Tens of thousands gathered at a peace memorial park in Hiroshima on Tuesday to mark the 68th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the city, as anti-atomic sentiment runs high in Japan.
The annual ceremony came as radioactive water leaks at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have stoked renewed fears about the plant’s precarious state, and underscored broader worries about atomic power following Japan’s 2011 nuclear crisis.
In Hiroshima, ageing survivors, relatives, government officials and foreign delegates observed a moment of silence at 8.15am, the time of the detonation which turned the city into a nuclear inferno.
“We offer heartfelt consolation to the souls of the atomic bomb victims by pledging to do everything in our power to eliminate the absolute evil of nuclear weapons and achieve a peaceful world,” Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said at the ceremony.
An American B-29 bomber named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, in one of the final chapters of the second world war. It killed about 140,000 by December that year. Three days later, the port city of Nagasaki was also bombed.
