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Nagasaki mayor urges Obama to visit Japanese cities subject to US atomic bombings in 1945

Other News Materials 9 August 2015 14:09 (UTC +04:00)
Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue has called on U.S. President Barrack Obama and the leaders of other nuclear powers to visit places of WWII atomic bombings in Japan
Nagasaki mayor urges Obama to visit Japanese cities subject to US atomic bombings in 1945

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue has called on U.S. President Barrack Obama and the leaders of other nuclear powers to visit places of WWII atomic bombings in Japan, TASS reported.

"I am calling on U.S. President and the leaders of other countries to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see personally what happened there 70 years ago," Taue said on Sunday as he read out the Declaration of Peace at a remembrance ceremony for the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.

"It is necessary to exert every effort to free the world from nuclear weapons," the mayor of Nagasaki said addressing the world leaders. "We have the strength to safeguard peace without nuclear weapons and war," he added.

Tomihisa Taue also voiced concern over a new Japanese law, which expands the powers of Japan's self-defense forces.

"After the war, Japan embarked on a peaceful path but today more and more people have an impression that the ideology of peace fixed in the Japanese constitution may shake," the Declaration of Peace said.

A minute of silence was announced in Nagasaki at 11:02 local time exactly at the time when a US B-29 strategic bomber dropped a "Fat Man" atomic bomb on the city on August 9, 1945. Prior to that, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and representatives of public organizations had laid wreaths of white and yellow crown daisies to the memorial in the Peace Park located in the city centre.

Prior to the commemorations, a Japanese choir sang a song urging the world community not to repeat the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the second time.

"I visited Hiroshima on August 6 where I swore that we would firmly adhere to three non-nuclear principles with an aim to avert the recurrence of the horrors of nuclear weapons use. We will continue leading the world community to a nuclear free world," the Japanese prime minister said in a statement circulated by his office prior to the ceremony.

Nagasaki became the second Japanese city after Hiroshima to be subject to the U.S. atomic bombing in August 1945.

The death toll continued rising in Nagasaki years on. The number of victims grows from year to year. The list expands constantly as more people die of atomic disease. The figures are updated annually on August 9. In 2014, the number of A-bombing victims reached 165,409 people.

The U.S. Armed Forces dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the end of WWII (1938-1945) for the officially declared purpose to speed up the capitulation of Japan. Those atomic attacks became the only examples of combat use of nuclear weapons in human history. The United States is still refusing to admit its moral responsibility for the atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities and keep justifying them by the military need.

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