Threat of nuclear conflict hangs over 75th anniversary of Nagasaki attack
- Nagasaki was flattened in an atomic inferno on August 9, 1945 – three days after Hiroshima – twin nuclear attacks that rang in the nuclear age
- Remembrance ceremonies come as worries linger over the nuclear threat from North Korea, tensions between the US and China
The Japanese city of Nagasaki on Sunday marked its 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombing, with the mayor and dwindling survivors urging world leaders including their own to do more for a nuclear weapons ban.
At 11:02am, the moment the B-29 bomber Bockscar dropped a 4.5-tonne plutonium bomb dubbed “Fat Man”, Nagasaki survivors and other participants stood in a minute of silence to honour more than 70,000 dead.
The threat of nuclear weapons being used is increasingly becoming real
Terumi Tanaka, 88, who survived the Nagasaki bombing when he was 13 at his house on a hillside, remembers the moment everything went white with a flash of light, and the aftermath.
“I saw many people with terrible burns and wounds evacuating … people who were already dead in a primary school-turned shelter,” Tanaka told AFP in a recent interview, saying his two aunts died.
Atomic bomb survivors “believe that the world must abandon nuclear arms because we never want younger generations to experience the same thing”, he said.