Japan marks anniversary of Nagasaki atomic bombing

More than 5,000 people bowed their heads Saturday in the Peace Park in Nagasaki to mark the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the southwestern Japanese city.

At the commemorative ceremony, Magasak Mayor Tomihisa Taue read the Peace Declaration, calling on world's nuclear powers to completely abandon nuclear weapons.

The United States and Russia "must take the lead in striving to abolish nuclear weapons," as the two countries possess 95 percent of the world's nuclear warheads," said Taue, adding that other nuclear powers should also "fulfill their responsibility to reduce nuclear arms with sincerity."

"As a nation that has experienced nuclear devastation, Japan has a mission and a duty to take a leadership role in the elimination of nuclear weapons," he said.

In his speech at the ceremony, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who arrived here early Saturday morning after attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games on Friday, reaffirmed Japan's three principles of not producing, possessing or allowing nuclear weapons on its soil.

On August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb was dropped by the United States on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima suffered the world's first atomic bombing. The attack, which occurred at 11:02 a.m., killed an estimated 74,000 people by the end of 1945, and many more later from radiation sickness.

Statistics showed that there were a total of 243,692 atomic-bomb survivors living in and outside of Japan by March 31 this year.

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