Memorial service held for school victims of A-bombing

Japan Policy & Politics, August 9, 1999

HIROSHIMA, Aug. 4 Kyodo

A memorial service was held Wednesday for some 1,000 pupils and teachers of national elementary schools in Hiroshima who died from the atomic bombing of the city in 1945. About 900 people, including former pupils and relatives of the victims, attended the ceremony at a monument in the Peace Memorial Park in the city. The names of five people who died in the blast were confirmed during the past year, bringing the total names in a registry to 1,028. Naofumi Awamura, 11, a sixth-year pupil at a local elementary school, pledged in an address at the ceremony to continue studying "so that the tragedy never occurs again." Akira Ishida, a representative of a committee which maintains the monument, said, "As the number of bereaved family members decreases throughout the years, it is moving to see young people carry on the tradition." Children from 80 elementary and junior high schools offered paper cranes to the monument. An estimated 140,000 died in 1945 as a result of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945 by the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay. at the U.S. Army, and Gen. James Jones, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, the officials said. -- Australia is seeking an injunction that would order Japan to halt immediately its experimental fishing program for southern bluefin tuna, a spokesman for Australia's attorney general said Tuesday. Spokesman Nicholas Harford confirmed Australia had lodged documents over the weekend with the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, Germany, seeking to halt the program, which Australia claims is contrary to international law. -- Prince Takamado and his wife Princess Hisako will make a private visit to Canada from Aug. 13 to attend a conference in Edmonton on communications technologies in the field of medicine, the Imperial Household Agency said Tuesday. The prince and princess will depart from Narita airport for Vancouver on Aug. 13 and are scheduled to arrive in Edmonton on Aug. 15. They will participate in the three-day First International Congress on Telehealth and Multimedia Technologies at the University of Alberta from Aug. 16 before returning to Japan on Aug. 19.