Mangano was joined by U.S. Marine veterans of the battle for Iwo Jima, as well as active duty Marines. On August 9, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 instantly.

“The longer discussion went on, the clearer it became that they were just trampling on the constitution and its renunciation of war and military strength”, Nihon Hidankyo said in a statement. By the absurd standards of World War II, the sum is small, amounting to about a quarter of one percent of 80 million or so total deaths.

“I think that Americans can still look at the decision and they can still say it was done for the right reasons”, he added.

Abe is pursuing unpopular policies on two issues linked closely in the public’s mind with the bombings: national defense and nuclear energy.

Japan marked the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on Thursday and Mayor Kazumi Matsui renewed calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima.

About 50,000 people attended the ceremony in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, including US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and worldwide Security Rose Gottemoeller and representatives of about 100 other countries.

“What more compelling argument could there be for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, especially as most of the bombs in the arsenals of nuclear armed states today are more powerful and destructive?” We should lose our imperial arrogance, apologize, negotiate to destroy all nuclear weapons worldwide and shut down the Military-Industrial Complex, once and for all.

We can not be sure they never will be used in war again, of course, but 70 years is already an impressive accomplishment.

Daniel, 55, toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and offered a silent prayer for victims of the 1945 wartime nuclear bombing, press reports said. Over the next few years, a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer in Los Alamos, N.M. worked to turn materials sent to them from the Manhattan Project into a functioning atomic bomb. The bomb devastated people for generations and it is the japanese who remembered this day in history today.

President Vladimir Putin of Russian Federation, which annexed the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine last year, said later that Russian Federation was ready to put its nuclear forces on alert over the crisis there.

“We are all growing older”, he said.