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AFP
Hiroshima
Japan on Thursday marked 75 years since the world’s first atomic bomb attack, with the coronavirus pandemic forcing a scaling back of ceremonies to remember the victims.
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.
But the general public was kept away, with the ceremony instead broadcast online.
Participants, many of them dressed in black and wearing face masks, offered a silent prayer at 8:15 am (2315 GMT Wednesday), the time the first nuclear weapon used in wartime was dropped over the city.
Speaking afterwards, 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.
“We must never allow this painful past to repeat itself. Civil society must reject self-centred nationalism and unite against all threats,” he said.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged in his address to “do my best for the realisation of a world without nuclear weapons and peace for all time”.
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07/08/2020
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