Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group remembers atomic bomb victims on annual Hiroshima Day

Victims of the atomic bombs dropped in Japan during World War Two have once again been remembered by the Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group.

The group gathered at Hollingworth Lake on 6 August, Hiroshima Day, as it has done each year since its foundation in 1981, to commemorate those who died after atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US forces in 1945.

Hiroshima was the first city to be targeted by a nuclear weapon in warfare during the morning of 6 August 1945, when the US Army Air Force dropped the 'Little Boy' atomic bomb on the city. A second bomb – 'Fat Man' – was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.

Their use 76 years ago remains the only time nuclear weapons have been deployed in armed conflict.

A white shadow was chalked onto the pavement – a reminder of those who disappeared in the first blinding flash, leaving behind only an imprint of their shadows on the pavement where they stood.

 

 

The group also read an account of a child forced to leave his big sister trapped under the beams of their burning house in the knowledge that the flames would soon engulf her, as well as a moving poem by James Kirkup, musing on the identity of one of the white shadows, forever now only a victim, not a person.

In previous years, the group has floated paper lanterns – as in Hiroshima itself – in memory of the hundreds who jumped into the river in a vain attempt to find relief from their atrocious burns.

This year, Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group cast white flowers into the water in their memory.

 

 

Group secretary, Pat Sanchez said: “Even today, when we hear huge numbers quoted for one disaster or another, the numbers who died either immediately or in the years following the bombing seem impossible to believe.

“It is calculated that by the end of 1945 340,000 people died as a result of the first use of just two nuclear weapons. Thousands more died in the years that have followed, after a lifetime, often tragically shortened, marked by suffering, disease and discrimination.

“We long for the day when nuclear weapons, already illegal under international law, will no longer threaten our safety and our peace, when the world can heave a collective sigh of relief, when the wish of the Japanese 'hibakusha' [atomic victims] for 'No more Hiroshimas' and 'No More Nagasakis' has finally become reality.”