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Hiroshima’s view of missile threat,

Hiroshima, Japan — Hiroshima’s appeal of “never again” on the anniversary today of the world’s first atomic bomb attack has gained urgency as North Korea moves ever closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, showing its growing prowess with increasingly frequent missile launches.

When the U.S. dropped the bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, Toshiki Fujimori’s mother was carrying him, then just a year old, piggyback to the hospital. The impact of the explosion threw them both to the ground, nearly killing him.

“Obviously tensions are growing as North Korea has been pushing ahead with nuclear tests and development,” said Fujimori. “Nuclear weapons just are unacceptable for mankind.”

Many Japanese and others in the region seem resigned to North Korea’s apparent newfound capacity to launch missiles capable of reaching much of the continental United States.

But the threat lends a deeper sense of alarm in Hiroshima, where 140,000 died in that first A-bomb attack, which was followed on Aug. 9, 1945, by another that killed more than 70,000 people in Nagasaki. The two A-bomb attacks finally brought about Japan’s surrender, ending World War II. Japan brought the United States into the war when it launched a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.

“This hell is not a thing of the past,” Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said in his peace declaration at today’s ceremony. “As long as nuclear weapons exist and policymakers threaten their use, their horror could leap into our present at any moment. You could find yourself suffering their cruelty.”