Nagasaki commemorates 71st anniversary of atomic bombing

nagasaki peace park.jpg

Students of Nagasaki Municipal Yamazato Elementary School sing at Nagasaki Peace Park during a memorial ceremony for the Nagasaki atomic bombing, on Aug. 9, 2016.

NAGASAKI (Kyodo) — Nagasaki began marking Tuesday the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city, with Mayor Tomihisa Taue expected later in the day to urge international society to draw upon collective wisdom in order to realize a world without nuclear weapons.

Full text of Nagasaki peace declaration on 71st anniversary of atomic bombing

http://mainichi.jp/articles/20160809/p2g/00m/0dm/054000c

In his Peace Declaration to be delivered at an annual ceremony in the city’s Peace Park, at which representatives of 53 nations and the European Union, as well as the United Nations, will attend, Taue plans to urge the Japanese government to enshrine into law its three non-nuclear principles of not producing, possessing or allowing nuclear weapons on Japanese territory.

He will also urge the government to create a nuclear weapons free zone as a security scheme without relying on nuclear deterrence.

In his speech, Taue plans to touch on the significance of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Hiroshima visit in May and call on the leaders of all countries to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to see the reality of atomic bombings.

Three days after the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it dropped a second nuclear weapon on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. An estimated 74,000 people died from the bombing and its aftereffects by the end of the year.

The number of hibakusha — atomic bomb survivors with documents certifying they experienced a nuclear attack in 1945 — at home and abroad stood at 174,080 as of March — of which 32,547 lived in Nagasaki — and their average age was 80.86.

The Nagasaki city government has confirmed the deaths of 3,487 hibakusha over the past year, bringing the death toll to 172,230.

http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160809/p2g/00m/0dm/016000c