World Faces 'Loaded Gun' on Hiroshima's 77th Anniversary
“We must ask: What have we learned from the mushroom cloud that swelled above this city?”
"Humanity is playing with a loaded gun" UN head Antonio Guterres said in Hiroshima on Saturday, the 77th anniversary of the United States atomic bomb attack on Japan.
"Tens of thousands of people were killed in this city in the blink of an eye. Women, children and men were incinerated in a hellish fire," he said.
"Nuclear weapons are nonsense. They guarantee no safety - only death and destruction," Guterres said.
"We must ask: What have we learned from the mushroom cloud that swelled above this city?"
"Crises with grave nuclear undertones are spreading fast -- the Middle East, to the Korean Peninsula, to Russia's invasion of Ukraine," Guterres said, repeating warnings he made this week at a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference in New York.
The United States dropped the world's first atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, obliterating the city and killing 140,000 people. Three days later, the US dropped a second atomic bomb on the people of Nagasaki, killing 74,000 more.
The US remains the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons in war.
\u201cNever forget: on Aug 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That & the Aug 9th bombing of Nagasaki murdered around 200,000 innocent civilians & continued to take additional lives yrs after. Never forget that these were war crimes & we did it.\u201d— James J. Zogby (@James J. Zogby) 1659876599
Thousands packed into the Hiroshima Peace Park in the center of the city to mark the anniversary of the bombing.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also spoke at the memorial: "I must raise my voice to appeal to the people around the world that the tragedy of nuclear weapons use should never be repeated. Japan will walk its path toward a world without nuclear weapons, no matter how narrow, steep or difficult that may be."
A silent prayer was held at 8.15 am, the moment the bomb was dropped.
\u201cOn this 77th anniversary, we remember the horrific impact of the bombing of Hiroshima, and three days later Nagasaki. As the only country to unleash this life-destroying weapon, the U.S. has a moral responsibility to lead the fight for a world free of the threat of nuclear war.\u201d— Ed Markey (@Ed Markey) 1659827560
\u201cToday in 1945, the United States committed a war crime without precedent in human history. It dropped the first atomic bomb, one of only two ever used in war, on the city of Hiroshima, killing a third of its inhabitants. The bombing would define the stakes of the Cold War.\u201d— Progressive International (@Progressive International) 1659786776
\u201c\ud83d\udd6fOn this day 77 years ago, the US detonated an atomic bomb on #Hiroshima, obliterating the city and killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians.\n\n77 years after that fatal day, there is finally a plan to end nuclear weapons, the historic Vienna Action Plan. #nuclearban\u201d— ICAN (@ICAN) 1659780839
\u201cThe bombings of Hiroshima and, days later, Nagasaki, killed over 200,000 people. In Japan, the news did little to change the political calculus \u2014 records from the time reveal that it was the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on 9 August that turned the tables.\u201d— Progressive International (@Progressive International) 1659786776
\u201c77 years ago today the first atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, instantly killing tens of thousands of the city's inhabitants. \n\nSetsuko Thurlow, then 13, was one of the city's survivors. In 2017 she jointly accepted the #NobelPeacePrize in Oslo on behalf of @nuclearban.\u201d— The Nobel Prize (@The Nobel Prize) 1659776485
