(Adnkronos) – With a minute of silence, Hiroshima commemorated this morning at 8:15 a.m. local time the dropping by the United States on August 6, 1945, of the atomic bomb that killed about 140,000 people. Three days later, an identical bomb hit Nagasaki, killing about 74,000 people.
“Our country, the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings in wartime, has the mission to lead international efforts for a world without nuclear weapons,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
“The United States and Russia possess 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads and, in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and tensions in the Middle East, we are witnessing an acceleration of the trend towards military build-up,” lamented the city’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui. “Some leaders accept the idea that ‘nuclear weapons are essential for their national defense’, blatantly ignoring the lessons that the international community should have learned from historical tragedies,” he added during the ceremony, which was attended by representatives of 120 countries, organizations and regions.
