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Japan that is observing the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Thursday has appealed for a nuclear weapons-free world.
According to Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, peace should prevail and has supported US President Barack Obama's call to free the world from atomic and nuclear weapons.
"We support President Obama and have a moral responsibility to act to abolish nuclear weapons," said the mayor, who also employed the slogan from Obama's election campaign last year "Yes, we can".
Akiba's words also reflected Obama's when the US president said in his call for a nuclear weapons-free world in April that the US, as the only country to ever use nuclear weapons in war, "has a moral responsibility to act".
"I pledge again that Japan will firmly abide by the three non-nuclear principles and lead the international community to achieve the goal of the abolition of nuclear weapons and everlasting peace," Prime Minister Taro Aso who was also a part of the anniversary ceremony.
Thousands has assembled in Hiroshima for a minute of silence at 8:15 a.m., the moment in 1945 that a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in war.
An estimated 140,000 people had died there by the end of that year.
A second atomic bombing happened three days later on Nagasaki, the last city to be subjected to nuclear warfare. About 70,000 people died soon after the blast there, and Japan surrendered on Aug 15, 1945.
