Hiroshima's mayor slams Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 77th anniversary of atomic bombing

On Saturday, the city of Japan, Hiroshima, commemorated the 77th anniversary of the  nuclear attack by the US. According to the Kyodo News report, during the memorial service in the western city, Mayor Kazumi Matsui stated that dependence on nuclear deterrence is growing globally even as civilian lives are being sacrificed as a result of Russian aggression. He urged the world to " immediately render all nuclear buttons meaningless."  

It is to mention that Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui, whose city this year did not invite the Russian ambassador to the ceremony, was more critical of Kremlin's military actions in Ukraine. "In invading Ukraine, the Russian leader, elected to protect the lives and property of his people, is using them as instruments of war, stealing the lives and livelihoods of civilians in a different country," he said.

As the city observed the anniversary of the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb, bells rang around Hiroshima, The Canberra Times reported. Furthermore, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended the memorial ceremony with thousands of people who gathered in the Peace Park in the city's centre to pay tribute to the victims of the attack. The nuclear attack on Hiroshima claimed 1,40,000 lives.

UN Chief: 'Nuclear weapons are nonsense'

Guterres asserted that nuclear weapons guarantee no safety and they only cause death and destruction. Calling nuclear weapons "nonsense", he said: “Three-quarters of a century later, we must ask what we've learned from the mushroom cloud that swelled above this city in 1945." 

Meanwhile, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for a nuclear-weapons-free world and pleaded with humanity to avoid repeating the tragedy of employing nuclear weapons, Kyodo News reported. The Prime Minister declared that Japan will make an effort to link the "ideal" of a world free of nuclear weapons with the "reality" of a security environment that is deteriorating. 

In addition to this, at around 8:15 a.m. (local time), a minute of silence was held in memory of the time on August 6, 1945, when a uranium bomb launched from a US aircraft exploded over the city, killing approximately 140,000 people. 

Representatives from 99 countries, including the European Union, attended the event; however, Russia and Belarus, which are supporting Moscow in the conflict in Ukraine, were not invited, Kyodo News reported. 

The mayor also emphasised the necessity for immediate action by nuclear weapons nations in the statement in order to forge trusting relationships and take meaningful measures toward the realisation of a nuclear-free world. Matsui noted, “To accept the status quo and abandon the ideal of peace maintained without military force is to threaten the very survival of the human race." 

To personally confront the effects of unleashing nuclear weapons, the mayor pleaded with the heads of nuclear countries to travel to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the second Japanese city decimated by an American atomic strike in 1945. 

According to the Kyodo News report, a second atomic bomb was detonated on Nagasaki three days after the "Little Boy" bomb, obliterated Hiroshima. Six days later, Japan surrendered to the Allied forces, bringing World War II to a conclusion. As per the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, there were 118,935 officially acknowledged survivors of the two nuclear strikes, often known as hibakusha, as of March, a decrease of 8,820 from a year earlier. Their age was 84.53 on average. 

(Image: AP)