AN exhibition opened Monday at the United Nations headquarters in New York to show the devastation from the 1945 US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a monthlong nuclear disarmament conference is under way there.
The exhibition, organized by Nihon Hidankyo, Japan’s leading group of atomic bomb survivors, features photos and materials related to the nuclear attacks in the closing days of World War II. It will run through 1 June.
Jiro Hamasumi, 80, secretary general of the group, said, “I want to share the wish that no one else will ever have to experience the suffering we endured.”
The exhibition was first held at the 2005 conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At this year’s event, about 50 panels with English explanations are displayed in the UN headquarters’ lobby, showing the damage to the two Japanese cities after the bombings, injured children receiving medical treatment and the effects of radiation. Items exposed to the bombings are also on display, including a clock that stopped at the time the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
The panels also highlight the Nobel Peace Prize that the group, also known as the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, received in 2024. One of the panels is on the speech at the Nobel award ceremony given by Terumi Tanaka, the 93-year-old co-chair of the organization, in which he called for “a human society free of nuclear weapons and war”. Steve Chapman, a 65-year-old San Francisco resident who visited the venue during a UN tour, looked at a photo of an injured child and said the exhibition showed how important it is to be aware of and to remember the damage caused by the atomic bombings.
Kyodo
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