JAPAN: Nagasaki marked the 60th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on the city in a ceremony yesterday dominated by emotional appeals to abolish nuclear weapons.
Mayor Itcho Ito said the city "strongly resented the trampling of the hopes of the world's people" by the nuclear powers.
"The nuclear weapon states, and the United States of American in particular, have ignored their international commitments, and have made no change in their unyielding stance on nuclear deterrence," he said.
With prime minister Junichiro Koizumi sitting in the audience of 6,000 people in the Peace Memorial Park, Mr Ito urged Japan to "uphold the peaceful ideals of our constitution, move out from under the US "nuclear umbrella" and "take a leading role in nuclear abolition".
Many survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fear that Japan is preparing under US pressure to abandon its so-called "peace constitution", which was written during the postwar American occupation and "renounces war forever".
The bomb's aging survivors were represented by Fumie Sakamoto, who led a minute's silence for the victims at 11.02am, the time the 'Fat Man' bomb detonated on August 9th, 1945.
The blast killed an estimated 70,000 people; thousands more have since died from cancers and other bomb-related diseases, bringing the total number of victims to 137,339.
Ms Sakamoto said she was 15 when the bomb detonated about 1.8km from her house, "taking nearly all those around me". She was thrown 10m through the air before fleeing to nearby woods for safety. "People, clothes ripped and torn, nearly naked, with gaping chest wounds, whose hearts were exposed and could be seen still twitching, people burned so badly one could not tell their front from back - the wood was full of such people."
Although Nagasaki was a major military hub in 1945, many survivors believe the city was the target of a US military experiment to determine the impact of the world's first plutonium bomb, which was more powerful than the uranium bomb that levelled Hiroshima three days earlier.
"There was no need to bomb us," said Ms Sakamoto. "We were defeated."
The original bomb target was the industrial city of Kokura, but clouds forced the B-29 bomber to divert and drop its lethal payload over Nagasaki's Urakami cathedral, the largest in east Asia.
Charles Sweeney, the pilot, was a Roman Catholic, who said afterward he "just wanted the war to be over" so he could get home to his family. Japan surrendered on August 15th.
Mayor Ito also appealed to US citizens to demand an end to the development of nuclear weapons. "We understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of the horror of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Yet, is your security actually enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated subcritical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new 'mini' nuclear weapons?" he asked.