Annual Commemoration of the Hiroshima Bombing, 6th August 2023
The annual commemoration for the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, and for all those affected by nuclear testing and weapons, will take place on Sunday, 6th August, at 1.10 p.m. at the memorial cherry tree in Merrion Square Park, Dublin 2. This is the 78th anniversary of the bombing.
His Excellency Mr Norio Maruyama, Japanese ambassador to Ireland, and Cllr Danny Byrne, representing the Lord Mayor of Dublin, will speak at the ceremony, and there will be a short reflection from the vice-president of Irish CND, Adi Roche (CEO, Chernobyl Children International). There will be short contributions of poetry and traditional music and the laying of flowers at the memorial tree.
An estimated 80,000 people were directly killed by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, with casualities reaching 140,000 within a year. Approximately 14,000 nuclear weapons remain in the world today, with just under 2,000 ready to fire within minutes. While this is less than the Cold War peak, it is still enough to destroy life on earth as we know it many times over.
In recent weeks, the movie Oppenheimer has raised general awareness of the destructive force of even the rudimentary nuclear weapons used in 1945, and of the moral conflict over the use of such weapons which troubled many of those involved in their development. At the same time, the dark shadow of the real possibility of nuclear war has been emphasised in the form of explicit threats from both Russia and North Korea - chilling reminders that there is still much to be done before the world is free from the menace of nuclear annihilation.
We warmly invite you to join us at the ceremony on 6th August, and look forward to seeing many of you there. Even if you are not in a position to join us in person this year, please do join us in spirit to stand in solidarity with the victims of these horrific weapons of mass destruction, and to affirm our determination to work for their elimination, the only way to ensure that the ghastly events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will never be repeated.
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