TOKYO (UCAN): On August 6, Japan marked 76 years since the world’s first atomic bomb attack, with low-key ceremonies and disappointment over a refusal by Olympics Games organisers to observe a minute’s silence.
Survivors, relatives and a handful of foreign dignitaries attended this year’s main event in Hiroshima to pray for those killed or wounded in the bombing and call for world peace.
Covid-19 coronavirus [SARS-CoV-2] concerns meant the general public were once again kept away, with the ceremony broadcast online instead.
Participants, many dressed in black and wearing facemasks, offered a silent prayer at 8.15am, the time when the first nuclear weapon used in wartime was dropped over the city, by an American B-59 bomber.
An estimated 140,000 people were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima, which was followed three days later by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
Hiroshima’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui, warned that “experience has taught humanity that threatening others for self-defense benefits no one.”
He called for leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to “achieve a deeper understanding of the bombings.”
‘If it were not for the pandemic, many people who would have attended the Tokyo Olympics could have had visited this park and seen the exhibitions’
Yoko Sado
“In accordance with the will of the hibakusha [a Japanese term referring to persons affected by the atomic bombs], I demand the immediate signing and ratification of the TPNW [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons], then constructive participation in the first meeting of states parties,” Asahi Shimbun reported Matsui as saying.
International Olympic Committee chief, Thomas Bach, made a trip to Hiroshima before the Games began to mark the start of an Olympic truce that urges a halt to fighting worldwide to allow the safe passage of athletes. But Games organisers stopped short of granting a request from bomb survivors and the city for athletes to join a minute of silent prayer on the morning of August 6.
In a letter, Bach said the Olympic closing ceremony would include time to honour victims of tragedy throughout history.
“His letter didn’t say anything about our request,” Tomohiro Higaki, from Hiroshima’s peace promotion division, told AFP, adding, “It is disappointing, even though we appreciate that Bach visited Hiroshima to learn the reality of bomb victims.”
Bach’s visit itself was controversial, with more than 70,000 people signing a petition opposing the trip and accusing him of seeking “to promote the Olympics … even though it is being forced through despite opposition”.
Forty-three-year-old Yoko Sado, who was strolling around the Peace Memorial Park with her seven-year-old son, said the pandemic had robbed Hiroshima of a chance to spread a message of peace.
“If it were not for the pandemic, many people who would have attended the Tokyo Olympics could have had visited this park and seen the exhibitions,” she told AFP.
“I’m a bit disappointed … It would have been a great opportunity,” Sado said.
This year’s ceremony is the first since an international treaty banning nuclear weapons entered into force last year when a 50th country ratified the text.
The treaty has not been signed by nuclear-armed states, but activists believe it will have a gradual deterrent effect.
