Emperor Naruhito, his family mourn A-Bomb cictims in Nagasaki
Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Empress Masako, and their daughter, Princess Aiko, offered prayers on Friday ( September 12) for the victims of the US atomic bombing of the southwestern city of Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II.
Led by Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki, the family visited Nagasaki Peace Park. They offered white flowers and bowed deeply at a monument marking the epicenter of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing.
The family arrived at Nagasaki Airport on a special flight from Tokyo's Haneda Airport earlier Friday. It is Princess Aiko's first visit to the prefecture and the first for the Imperial couple since the Emperor's ascent to the throne in May 2019.
They later visited the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and viewed the exhibited artifacts and photographs taken around the time of the bombing. They also met and spoke with four hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors.
Among the hibakusha was Shigemitsu Tanaka, 84, co-chair of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Nihon Hidankyo. It was the family's first meeting with an official from Nihon Hidankyo since it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Princess Aiko asked Tanaka what he wanted to pass on to the next generation.
The Imperial couple and the princess also met two young people working to preserve the memories of the bombing.
The family is slated to meet with people living in a special elderly nursing home for atomic bomb survivors, located in the city, on Saturday.
On Sunday, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako will attend the opening ceremony for the National Cultural Festival and the National Arts and Culture Festival for Persons with Disabilities, both to be held in the city of Sasebo in the prefecture. They will return to Tokyo on Sunday night.
This year, which marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako have made trips to several other locations in Japan to console the souls of victims of the war.
In April, they visited the remote Tokyo island of Iwoto in the Pacific, widely known as Iwo Jima, where Japan and the United States engaged in fierce battles in the late stages of the war.
In June, they traveled to the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa, where more than 200,000 people died in the savage ground battles between Japan and the US-led Allied powers toward the end of the war, and to the western prefecture of Hiroshima, whose capital, the city of Hiroshima, was flattened by a US atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, three days before the devastation of Nagasaki.
Underscoring the importance of passing lessons of the war on to young generations, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako brought their daughter to Nagasaki with them, as they did for their visit to Okinawa.
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
