Japan: Nagasaki commemorates 75 years of atomic bomb

(ANSA) - TOKYO, AUGUST 09 - Three days after the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the nuclear horror of Hiroshima, the city of Nagasaki today recalled the similar fate suffered after the United States dropped the atomic bomb, an accident that cost the life of over 70 thousand people, mainly civilians, effectively decreeing the end of the Second World War.
    A minute of silence was observed at 11:02 local time (4:02 in Italy) inside the Peace Park, in the southwestern city of the archipelago. Also on this occasion, due to the coronavirus emergency, participation in the ceremony was reduced to about 500 people, including the 'hibakusha', the survivors of the nuclear catastrophe, whose average age is now 83 years.
    Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue has once again urged the Tokyo government to ratify the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, adopted in 2017 by 43 nations but not by Japan, the only country in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack.
    For his part, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, present at the event, without providing details, replied that the government will provide a contribution to the reduction of nuclear weapons at the global level, despite not having the study to join the treaty.
    The other 3,400 added this year, bringing the total of victims caused by the Nagasaki bomb to 185,982, compared to Hiroshima's 324,129.
    According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), the 9 countries in the world with nuclear arsenals: China, North Korea, France, Great Britain, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States, at the beginning of 2020 possessed a total of 13,400 nuclear warheads (ANSA).