Hiroshima (AsiaNews / Agencies) - 64 years after the first nuclear attack in human history, the mayor of Hiroshima has demanded the complete abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020. At least 50 thousand people gathered in the city, hit by a U.S. atomic bomb on 6 August 1945, leaving a total of 140 thousand people dead and destroying the city completely. In the presence of Prime Minister Taro Aso and representatives from different nations, the mayor of Hiroshima, Tadakoshi Akiba, said that "the abolition of nuclear weapons is not only the desire of Hibakusha (survivors), but also the majority of peoples and nations on this planet. "
He praised the U.S. President, Barack Obama, who on several occasions (including in Cairo, in his speech to the world of Islam) has stressed the need for a world without nuclear weapons.
"We, the vast majority of the world - continued Tadakoshi Akiba - we call ourselves the 'Obamajority' and ask the rest of the world to join us to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020."
At 8:15, the exact time when the bomb fell on the city, in front of the bombed-out dome of the building preserved as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, participants stood for a long time of prayer and silence in memory of victims burned alive by heat waves or killed in the following months due to radiation. In the end hundreds of white doves were released into the sky.
Premier Taro Aso said that Japan will be on the "first line" in the international community to abolish nuclear weapons and for peace.
The anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb (followed a few days later, August 9, by the bomb on Nagasaki) comes at a time of great tension in the region: last May, the North Korea conducted underground nuclear tests and is not willing to stop its nuclear program which many fear is for the purpose of war.