HIROSHIMA, Japan, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Around 45,000
Hiroshima citizens and peace wishers around the world observed a minute of
silence here at 8:15 a.m. Monday (2315 GMT), the time when U.S. dropped an
atomic bomb 62 years ago.
"Hiroshima was a hell where those who
somehow survived envied the dead," Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said at the
memorial ceremony. He called for non-proliferation measures to be taken around
the global to avoid such catastrophes.
"...the message born of that agony is a beam of light
now shining the way for the human family," Akiba said in a peace declaration.
The atomic bomb survivors "have continuously spoken of experiences they would
rather forget, and we must never forget their accomplishments in preventing a
third use of nuclear weapons," he said.
In an address at the ceremony, Prime Minster Shinzo
Abe vowed to stick to Japan's non-nuclear principles of not producing,
possessing or allowing the entry into its territory of nuclear weapons.
"I pledge afresh that I will continue to abide by
provisions of the Constitution, honestly aspire for international peace and
firmly maintain the three non-nuclear principles," he said.
On Sunday, Abe met several local groups of atomic
bomb survivors in Hiroshima and apologized for the controversial remarks by
former Defense Minster Fumio Kyuma which seemed to justify U.S. bombing, Kyodo
News said. Kyuma quit as defense minister in early July after saying in a speech
that "I understand the bombing brought the war to its end. I think it was
something that couldn't be helped."
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said in a message
read on his behalf by High Representative for Disarmament Sergio de Queiroz
Duarte that "We must do all we can to turn back the tide of nuclear
proliferation."
An nuclear bomb was detonated over Hiroshima at an
altitude of some 600 meters at the end of World War Two, killing an estimated
140,000 people in 1945. A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9,
1945 and Japan surrendered six days later.
