Today, 79 years after the death and destruction in Hiroshimacaused by the atomic bombdropped by a US warplane, the governor of Hiroshima, Japan, made an impassioned appeal to world leaders to get rid of nuclear weapons.
“As long as nuclear weapons exist, they will certainly be used again someday,” Hidehiko Yuzaki said in his address at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, according to Deutsche Welle.
“Abolishing nuclear weapons is not an ideal to be achieved far into the future,” he said. “No, this is a pressing and real problem that we desperately need to address right now, because nuclear problems involve an immediate risk to human survival.
Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui used his speech at the same event to highlight how current conflicts have normalized the use of military force as a means of solving problems.
Matsui said Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and Israel-Hamas’ war in Gaza were “taking the lives of countless innocent people and disrupting normal life.”
“These global tragedies deepen mistrust and fear among nations, reinforcing the public assumption that to solve international problems we must rely on military force, which we must reject.”
About 50,000 people attended the ceremony in Hiroshima, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
They observed a moment of silence with the tolling of the peace bell at 8:15 a.m. when an American B-29 bomber dropped the bomb over the city.
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