Hiroshima marks 74th anniversary of atomic bombing
Mayor urges government to sign treaty banning nukes
TOKYO — Hiroshima marked the 74th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city, with its mayor renewing calls for eliminating such weapons and demanding that Japan’s government do more.
In his address Tuesday, Mayor Kazumi Matsui urged leaders to work toward a world without atomic weapons.
“Around the world today, we see self-centered nationalism in ascendance, tensions heightened … with nuclear disarmament at a standstill,” Matsui said.
He urged younger generations never to dismiss the atomic bombings and the war as mere history, while calling on world leaders to visit the bombed cities.
Matsui also demanded Japan’s government sign a U.N. nuclear weapons ban treaty.
Japan, which hosts 50,000 American troops and is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, has not signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, an inaction pacifist groups protest as insincere.
“Japan is committed to serve as a bridge between nuclear and nonnuclear states … while patiently trying to convince them to cooperate and have a dialogue,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in his address. He vowed to maintain Japan’s pacifist and nuclear nuclear-free principles, but did not promise signing the treaty.
Survivors, relatives and other participants marked the 8:15 a.m. blast with a minute of silence.
The Hiroshima ceremony came hours after North Korea launched suspected ballistic missiles in its fourth round of recent weapons demonstrations.
The U.S. attack on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killed 140,000 people. The bomb dropped three days later on Nagasaki killed another 70,000 before Japan’s surrender ended World War II.