On August 6, 1945 Hiroshima was torn apart by the US atomic bomb attack, in which about 140,000 people died by the end of the year.
The Japanese city of Hiroshima, the victim of the searing heat of the world’s first nuclear attack, observed the 78th anniversary of the US atomic bombing today.
Marking the day, Hiroshima mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons while the country’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that the road to a world without nuclear weapons was getting steeper amid looming threats due to growing geopolitical differences.
“World leaders have visited this city, seen its monuments, spoken with its brave survivors, and emerged emboldened to take up the cause of nuclear disarmament,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres weighed his remarks, read by a UN representative. “More should do so, because the drums of nuclear war are beating once again.”
About 20 days after the United States harnessed nuclear energy on July 16, 1945, following the ‘Trinity Test’, it dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, nicknamed ‘Little Boy’ which killed about 140,000 people by the end of the year.
Another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 and Japan surrendered a week later on August 15, ending World War II. The World War II had begun on September 1, 1939, after Germany invaded Poland.