Hiroshima marks bomb anniversary

CTV.ca News Staff

Hiroshima today marked 60 years since the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, with prayers for the dead and a call by the city's mayor for nuclear powers to abandon their arsenals.

The city's trolleys stopped and more than 55,000 people at Peace Memorial Park observed a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m. -- the instant of the blast.
The silence was broken by the ringing of a bronze bell, and a flock of doves was released into the sky.

Peace activists held a "die-in" outside the A-Bomb Dome, one of the few buildings left standing after the blast. They fell to the ground to dramatize the toll from the bombing that killed 140,000 people.

Thousands of paper lanterns symbolizing the souls of the dead were floated in a river next to the peace park.

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba vowed to never allow a repeat of the tragedy and pleaded for the abolition of nuclear weapons. He said the United States, Russia and other nations with nuclear weapons are "jeopardizing human survival."

"Many people around the world have succumbed to the feeling that there is nothing we can do," he said. "Within the United Nations, nuclear club members use their veto power to override the global majority and pursue their selfish objectives."

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi offered condolences for the dead in a speech.

"I offer deep prayers from my heart to those who were killed," he said, vowing that Japan would be a leader in the international movement against nuclear proliferation.

The bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, in Hiroshima killed roughly half the city's population at the time. On Aug. 9, a second atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 people.

Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending the Second World War in the Pacific.

Including those initially listed as missing or who died afterward from a loosely defined set of bomb-related ailments, including cancers, Hiroshima officials now put the total number of dead in this city alone at 242,437.

This year, 5,373 more names were added to the list.

Fumie Yoshida, who lost her father, brother and sister in the blast, said she chose not to attend the formal memorial. But she joined a small group of friends in the peace park to pay her respects.

"My father's remains have never been found," she told Associated Press. "Those of us who went through this all know that we must never repeat this tragedy. But I think many Japanese today are forgetting."

To this day, historians debate whether the bombings were necessary, with some saying even more would have died had the war raged on.