HIROSHIMA - The Japanese city of Hiroshima on Wednesday marked the 63rd anniversary of the world's first atomic attack as its mayor hoped the incoming US president would work for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Some 45,000 people, including Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, gathered at a memorial to the dead within sight of the A-bomb dome, a former exhibition hall burned to a skeleton by the bomb's incinerating heat.
They stood up and offered silent prayers at 8:15 am, the exact moment in 1945 when a single US bomb instantly killed more than 140,000 people and fatally injured tens of thousands of others with radiation or horrific burns.
Delivering a speech at the memorial, Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba noted the United States was one of the only three countries which opposed a Japan-submitted UN resolution calling for the abolition of nuclear arms.
"We can only hope that the president of the United States elected this November will listen conscientiously to the majority, for whom the top priority is human survival," he said.
Akiba also said the effects of an atomic bombing on the minds of survivors have been underestimated for decades.
With the average age of survivors now over 75, he said the city would launch a two-year scientific study of the psychological impact of the experience.
"This study should teach us the grave import of the truth, born of tragedy and suffering, that 'the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished'," the mayor said.
Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, which killed another 70,000 people in the southern port city.
Japan surrendered in World War II on August 15. The nation has since been officially pacifist and turned into one of the closest US allies, hosting more than 40,000 US troops.
bur-mis/mtp