Today was the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Prime Minister Kan attended this morning’s memorial ceremony, along with representatives from 68 countries.
"Japan suffered the Hiroshima and Nagasaki situations, and now this,' Yoko Ono told AFP in an interview. 'Right now it's horrible and of course we have to abolish it,' she said of Japan's atomic energy programme. 'This is not just something that happened to Japan, it happened to the world. We're all in it together, not just Japan."
The Day Hiroshima Turned Into Hell:
66-years ago, Hiroshima was turned into a burning inferno as the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M. on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War II.
Keijiro Matsushima was 16 years old when he witnessed the attack which claimed roughly 100,000 lives in one day. He recalls how August 6, 1945, was a beautiful day, with a blue sky. Matsushima had returned to school only a week earlier, after he and his peers were mobilised to work for a year and a half in a factory producing military uniforms. The bombing of Tokyo and other cities in Japan during World War II caused widespread destruction and hundreds of thousands of deaths, nearly all civilians, predominantly women and children.
When he looked back at his books, the bomb exploded. "There was a very strong flash and a heat wave. The whole world turned into something orange. I felt like I was thrown into an oven for a moment". Later, he learned that temperatures on the ground near the hypocentre, 2km from his school, had reached at least 3,000 degrees centigrade. (source Al-Jazeera)
