U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy has visited the Japanese city of Nagasaki, site of the Aug. 9, 1945, American atomic bomb attack that killed 70,000 people and helped prompt Japan's surrender in World War II.
The daughter of U.S. President John F. Kennedy toured Nagasaki's Atomic Bomb Museum on Tuesday and met with some atomic bomb survivors. At the city's Peace Park she was to help plant an American dogwood tree, one of 3,000 offered as a gift of friendship to Japan.
Full Story"No more Hiroshimas!" ''No more Fukushimas!" Those slogans are chanted together at rallies by Japanese who want both an end to nuclear power in the island nation and an end to nuclear weapons around the world. But many in this city, where the world's first atomic-bomb attack killed tens of thousands, are distressed by efforts to connect their suffering to the tsunami-triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
Like the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945, the March 2011 Fukushima disaster unleashed radiation that will affect the region's health for decades. Hiroshima medical experts, the world's most renowned on radiation-related sicknesses, are being called on for advice on how the meltdowns may have harmed people who lived near the power plant along the northeastern coast of Japan.
Full StoryNagasaki on Friday marked the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing by the United States during World War II that turned the Japanese city into an inferno.
Tens of thousands gathered to remember the more than 70,000 people who died instantly in the blast, or of the after-effects in the months and years after the bombing, which hit Nagasaki at 11:02 am local time (0202 GMT).
Full StoryJapan marked the 68th anniversary Tuesday of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima with a somber ceremony to honor the dead and pledges to seek to eliminate nuclear weapons.
Some 50,000 people stood for a minute of silence in Hiroshima's peace park near the epicenter of the early morning blast on Aug. 6, 1945, that killed up to 140,000 people. The bombing of Nagasaki three days later killed tens of thousands more, prompting Japan's surrender to the World War II Allies.
Full StoryA rare photo showing the mushroom cloud from the Hiroshima atomic bombing in two distinct parts, one above the other, has been discovered in the city, a museum curator said Wednesday.
The black-and-white picture is believed to have been taken about half-an-hour after the bombing on August 6, 1945, around 10 kilometers (six miles) east of the hypocentre.
Full StoryTens of thousands of people marked the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Monday, as a rising tide of anti-nuclear sentiment swells in post-Fukushima Japan.
Ageing survivors, relatives, government officials and foreign delegates attended the annual ceremony at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park commemorating the U.S. bombing of the western Japanese city nearly seven decades ago.
Full StoryJapanese-born artist Masami Teraoka remembers the bombing of Hiroshima as the day when he saw two suns rising -- one in the east as usual, the other an orb burning eerily in the west.
"Two suns, that's for sure. That's my memory," he explained from a Sydney gallery where his confrontational images of geishas ripping condom packets open with their teeth and naked women frolicking with priests are being exhibited.
Full StorySpeeding was fingered as a possible cause Monday of what is believed to be Japan's most expensive ever road accident when up to $4 million-worth of supercars ended up in a crumpled heap on a highway.
Eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini -- plus a Toyota Prius -- were among the vehicles involved in the crash, which witnesses said happened when a speeding car slid across a wet road surface.
Full StoryThe Japanese city of Hiroshima marked the 66th anniversary of the bombing on Saturday, as the nation fights a different kind of disaster from atomic technology — a nuclear plant in a meltdown crisis after being hit by a tsunami.
The site of the world's first A-bomb attack observed a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m. Saturday (2315 GMT Friday) — the time the bomb was dropped on Aug. 6, 1945, by the United States in the last stages of World War II.
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