Japan is marking 75 years since the world's first atomic bombing.

Survivors, relatives and a handful of foreign dignitaries attended the annual peace ceremony held in Hiroshima on Thursday to remember those killed or wounded in the U.S. bomb attack.

But the general public was kept away due to the coronavirus outbreak, with the ceremony instead broadcast online.

Participants offered a silent prayer at exactly 8:15 a.m., the time first nuclear weapon used in wartime was dropped over the city.

In his address, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui warned against the nationalism that led to World War II and urged the world to come together to face global threats, like the coronavirus pandemic.

He also called on world leaders to more seriously commit to nuclear disarmament.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been criticized for his attempts to revise a key pacifist clause of Japan's constitution, pledged in his speech to do his best "for the realization of a world without nuclear
weapons and peace for all time."

The bomb attack on June 6, 1945, killed around 140,000 people.

Some of them died instantly while others suffered radiation sickness and burns before succumbing to their injuries.

Three days later on August 9, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, where 74,000 people were killed.

Japan surrendered six days later, ending the war and its nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.

<Photo: Yonhap News>

Please send comments to tbsefmnews@gmail.com
copyright © tbs. Unauthorized redistribution prohibited.