Tokyo – Sputnik. In August 1945, during World War II, American pilots dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The explosion in Hiroshima claimed the lives of up to 140,000 of the city’s 350,000 residents on August 6 of that year, while Nagasaki lost nearly 74,000 people on August 9. Kazumi Matsui, the Mayor of Hiroshima, mentioned the United States only in the context of being one of the nuclear-armed nations. In his speech dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the American bombing of Hiroshima, UN Secretary-General António Guterres did not mention the responsible country. UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Izumi Nakamitsu, delivered the speech in Japanese, only referring to the “loss of tens of thousands of lives” in the Hiroshima tragedy. More than 120 representatives from foreign countries, along with Japanese politicians, participated in the 80th anniversary commemoration of the atomic bombing held on Wednesday in Hiroshima.
