The dwindling witnesses to the world's first atomic bombing marked its 75th anniversary Thursday in Hiroshima.
FILE - In this Sept. 8, 1945, file photo, an allied correspondent stands in a sea of rubble before the shell of a building that once was a movie theater in Hiroshima, western Japan, a month after the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the U.S. to hasten Japan's surrender.
His speech highlights what survivors feel is the hypocrisy of Japan's government, which hosts 50,000 American troops and is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Tokyo has not signed the nuclear weapons ban treaty adopted in 2017, despite its non-nuclear pledge, a failure to act that atomic bombing survivors and pacifist groups call insincere.
Thursday's peace ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was scaled down because of the coronavirus pandemic. The fewer than 1,000 attendees was one-tenth of those attending in past years. "Japan's position is to serve as a bridge between different sides and patiently promote their dialogue and actions to achieve a world without nuclear weapons," Abe said. Nuclear policies are divided amid a harsh security environment, so it is necessary to create common ground first, he said."The only way to totally eliminate nuclear risk is to totally eliminate nuclear weapons," he said in his video message from New York for the occasion.
On the 75th anniversary, elderly survivors, whose average age now exceeds 83, lamented the slow progress of nuclear disarmament.
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