Japan Marks 78th Anniversary of Hiroshima Atomic Bombing
Today, Sunday, Japan marks the seventy-eighth anniversary of the tragedy of the victims of the first atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima in the history of mankind, carried out by the United States.
Funeral Ceremony in Peace Park
On Saturday, a rehearsal was held in the Peace Park, where today, on Sunday, a funeral ceremony will be held with the participation of high-ranking government officials and ambassadors of foreign states. This year, about 7,000 people will take part in it, including representatives of more than 100 countries and international organizations, while the city authorities refuse to invite the diplomatic missions of Russia and Belarus for the second year in a row.
Debate on Nuclear Weapons Abolition
Hiroshima hosted a debate on the issue of abolition of nuclear weapons on Saturday with the participation of Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow, who leads the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Setsuko Thurlow was 13 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, as she criticized the city’s vision adopted at the G7 summit in May of this year, justifying nuclear deterrence rather than advocating the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
International Response and Diplomatic Efforts
The agency quoted Kyodo, “This is the opposite of the invitations we are asking for from the world.” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cited his constituency in Hiroshima as one of the forum’s successes, saying that for the first time he was able to invite heads of state from the nuclear club to the Atomic Bomb Memorial Museum. In 2016, Barack Obama was the first leader of the nuclear club and the only one to visit the museum until this year, when Kishida was Japan’s Foreign Minister in the government of Shinzo Abe. Does this mean that the experience we had is something shameful and disgusting?”
The Tragedy and Aftermath
On August 6, 1945, pursuant to an executive order issued by then US President Harry Truman, the United States dropped a 4.5-tonne uranium bomb called “The Kid” on the city of Hiroshima, where it was selected for the “Aioi” target. the bridge, which is one of 81 bridges that connect the seven branches of the Ota River Delta, is also located at an elevation of 1980 feet. At 8:15 a.m., a bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay but narrowly missed its target and fell at a distance of 800 feet. At 8:16 a.m., in just an instant, 66,000 people were killed and 69,000 injured in an explosion equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT. The Fat Man bomb was then dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, as those were the only atomic attacks in the history of the war.
The Devastation and Long-Term Effects
The vapors produced by the explosion were a mile and a half in diameter, as it caused complete destruction of an area a mile in diameter and severe destruction of an area a mile in diameter, and all the fuel was completely burned out in an area of a mile and a half in diameter, besides that, what was left of the blast zone was glowing or reddish. The intense heat caused the flames to spread over three miles in diameter. The first effects of the bomb were a blinding light with heat waves coming from the fireball, as the diameter of the fireball reaches 370 meters and its temperature reaches 4 thousand degrees Celsius, burning everything and dissolving glass and sand into shards of molten glass, killing all people on their way, the bodies were cremated. One of the most famous examples of firepower is the presence of the shadows of unidentified victims imprinted on the walls and sidewalks of the city, and bombs claimed the lives of up to 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, in addition to the death of nearly half that number in the same day that and explosions. From wounds or consequences of burns, blows, radiation burns and their fatal complications, malnutrition and radiation poisoning, from 15 to 20% of the victims died. Since then, a large number of people have died from leukemia (231 cases) and solid cancers (334 cases) as a result of exposure to radiation from the bombs, with most of the civilian deaths in the two cities.
End of the War
Six days after the Nagasaki bombing, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied forces on August 15, signing a document of surrender on September 2, officially ending the Pacific War and then World War II. Germany signed a document of surrender on May 7, ending the war in Europe, and the bombing forced Japan to accept three non-nuclear principles after the war that prevented it from having nuclear weapons.
Source: RT+agencies