01-07-2025
Anti-nuke group ICAN honors children killed by WWII A-bombs
GENEVA (Kyodo) -- A Nobel Peace Prize-winning nongovernmental organization launched an online memorial Tuesday for children who died in the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the attacks in the closing days of World War II.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said, quoting authorities of the Japanese cities, that an estimated 38,000 children were killed in the bombings on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 of 1945.
The new platform, called the Children's Peace Memorial, provides profiles of 426 such children "to remind the world of the horrific impacts of nuclear weapons," and encourages visitors to make paper cranes and send them to countries that have not yet joined the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The Geneva-based organization said the memorial highlights the urgency of universal adherence to the treaty, which entered into force in 2021, but has not been joined yet by many countries such as Japan.
One of the 426 victims is Yasuyoshi Amano from Hiroshima, who was inside his junior high school building, located some 900 meters from ground zero, at the time of the attack.
The 13-year-old suffered several injuries, especially a "gaping wound under his ear that bled profusely," the website said. Two days after the bombing, his mother and grandmother realized they could not save him.
ICAN has stressed the urgency of preserving the testimony of atomic-bombing survivors, or hibakusha, noting that their average age is 86.
"We must eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us," it has said.
The atomic bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed an estimated 140,000 and 74,000 people, respectively, by the end of 1945, according to the cities.
