As Nagasaki commemorates the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing, Mayor Suzuki Shiro advocates for peaceful resolutions to global conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The Mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki is to plead for peaceful solutions over conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. This took place at a ceremony marking 79 years since the US atomic bombing of the city.
Mayor Suzuki Shiro outlined key points from “The Peace Declaration” that he would read at next Friday’s ceremony. The city was bombed on August 9, 1945, during World War Two. The drafting of the peace declaration is guided by the committee of atomic bomb survivors and experts. Additionally, they will also guide the annual event.
Join us for a poignant ceremony reflecting on the city’s painful past and the voices of atomic bomb survivors, highlighted by a moving poem from Fukuda Sumako.
The three-day Festival started on August 5, 1947. On August 6, a ceremony was held in the area that was to become the Peace Memorial Park eventually. Then-mayor Shinzo Hamai read the first Peace Declaration. Hereby, all the cries against war and all the genuine search for peace are finally coming to an end. The sorrow welling up from deep in the hearts of the people of Hiroshima took form in this document.
History of “The Peace Declaration”
What has since become the Peace Declaration, by the Hiroshima mayor every year at the August 6 Peace Memorial Ceremony, contents change with the times. The words “against atomic and hydrogen bombs”, first appeared in then-mayor Tadao Watanabe’s 1956 Peace Declaration. Therefore, it took place a year after the first World Conference Against A –and H-Bombs. Thus, in 1971, 26 years after the end of World War II, then-mayor Setsuo Yamada used his Peace Declaration. There, he made it transparent that peace education was indispensable to hand down the meaning of war and peace to the next generation.
In 1982, then-Mayor Takeshi Araki incorporated it into his Peace Declaration. He made a call to the cities of the world to answer the proposal for peace solidarity. It was made at the Second UN Special Session for Disarmament in June of that year. Mayors for Peace, originally an appeal by cities, has grown in solidarity with many cities from all over the world.
Don’t miss this powerful event that champions peace and remembrance.
By the recent reports, he will call on the Japanese government to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
He will further ask the government to acknowledge people who were out of the range of areas. Once, these areas were set by the government regarding radiation exposure survivors of the atomic bomb.
Suzuki said he intends to firmly express that all members of society need to take action, feeling this very problem as their own.
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