City and County of Honolulu Official Press Release
HIROSHIMA, Japan – Mayor Rick Blangiardi on Wednesday joined hundreds of international representatives and thousands of Japanese citizens at the Hiroshima Peace Park for a solemn ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony is an annual vigil hosted by the City of Hiroshima that honors the roughly 140,000 souls who perished in the attack, as well as the countless others who survived the attack but suffered aftereffects from the blast for the rest of their lives. The ceremony is highlighted by a minute-long moment of silence that occurs at exactly 8:15 a.m., the time when the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima.
Participants in Wednesday’s ceremony included Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Hiroshima Prefectural Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki and Hiroshima City Mayor Kazumi Matsui.
“Today, conveying the ardent pleas for peace derived from hibakusha experiences is more crucial than ever,” said Mayor Matsui, using the Japanese word that refers to survivors of the atomic bomb. “We must all remember to think less about ourselves and more about each other. Thinking of others is how humanity has resolved much conflict and turmoil on our path to the present day.”
Mayor Blangiardi and other Japanese and foreign dignitaries laid wreaths at the monument commemorating victims of the bombing during the ceremony, and school-aged children from Hiroshima elementary schools delivered a message of peace that resonated with participants.
“It was a very solemn and very moving ceremony, as I anticipated, and it pointed out the uniqueness of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the only cities in the world that have suffered the devastating impacts of an atomic bomb,” said Mayor Rick Blangiardi. “These remarkable cities are still living with the effects of that tragic day all these years later, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony we attended this morning reinforced, in no uncertain terms, the importance of peace and understanding in our world today.”
Prior to Wednesday’s ceremony, Mayor Blangiardi participated in a reception for foreign dignitaries at the RIHGA Hotel in Hiroshima on Tuesday night that featured powerful testimony from an atomic bomb survivor who was seven years old on August 6, 1945.
Mayor Blangiardi is scheduled to participate in business meetings with officials from several large Japanese corporations in Tokyo on Thursday before returning to Honolulu in the evening.
