08/09/2007, 00.00
JAPAN
Send to a friend

Nagasaki warns against stopping anti-proliferation efforts

On the 62nd anniversary of the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan, city mayor slams nuclear programmes by Pakistan, India, North Korea and Iran. On August 9, 27,000 people died, including 8,500 Catholics. In the historic Urakami Cathedral a special mass is held each year for the victims.

Nagasaki (AsiaNews) – Nagasaki today marked with prayers and official ceremonies the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city, three days after that on Hiroshima, killing 27,000 people in an instant.

Thousands of people, including children and many survivors, bowed their heads and observed a minute's silence at 11:02 am (0202 GMT), the exact moment when ‘Fat Boy’, the world's second atomic bomb, was dropped on August 9, 1945.

The occasion gave Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue to warn against the breakdown of anti-nuclear efforts.

“We are facing a crisis in terms of the breakdown of the very structure of nuclear non-proliferation," he said during the ceremony.

Besides the five established nuclear states of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China, Taue lashed out at India, Pakistan and North Korea, which last October conducted nuclear tests, as well as Iran, which is pursuing a controversial civilian nuclear programme.

On that fateful morning 62 years ago, at 11.02 am, 30 people and two priests were inside Urakami Cathedral, the largest Catholic church in Asia at the time, for confession. The heat generated by the blast was so intense that the building and everyone inside burnt up.

Today like every year a special mass was held at Urakami Cathedral in remembrance of the victims of the tragic event. Some 8,500 of the city’s 12,000 Catholics perished that day.

Another 60,000 people died over the next year. At total of 143,124 people have died as a result of the bomb—about a thousand more die each year.

TAGs
Send to a friend
Printable version
CLOSE X
See also
Nepal celebrates the Buddha’s birthday by honouring two Japanese with a peace award
17/05/2011
To remember the past is to commit oneself to peace, say Archbishops of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
05/08/2005
Seventy-two years after the Nagasaki bomb, people pray to the Virgin Mary as US-North Korea tensions rise
10/08/2017 14:22
Nagasaki: 61 years after the bomb
09/08/2006
Nagasaki Christians remember the victims of the atomic attack 75 years ago
10/08/2020 09:33


Newsletter

Subscribe to Asia News updates or change your preferences

Subscribe now
“L’Asia: ecco il nostro comune compito per il terzo millennio!” - Giovanni Paolo II, da “Alzatevi, andiamo”