Flowers and origami cranes are offered May 4 at the newly completed cenotaph in Nagasaki for prisoners of war who died in the city s 1945 atomic bombing. (Shoma Fujiwaki)
NAGASAKI A cenotaph featuring flying cranes, a symbol of peace, was unveiled here May 4 in memory of prisoners of war who perished in the city’s atomic bombing.
About 200 prisoners, mostly British and Dutch, were being held at the Fukuoka POW Camp No. 14 Branch just 1.7 kilometers from ground zero.
Eight POWs are believed to have died that day, Aug. 9, 1945, and many more were injured.
The camp was established on the site of a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ shipbuilding yard factory not far from Nagasaki train station in 1943.
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Keiko Shinozaki, director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, stands beside “A Message from Nagasaki” at the museum’s entrance on April 10. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
A signboard, “A Message from Nagasaki,” went up on April 10 last year at the entrance to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.
The museum had decided to step up campaigns to rid the world of nuclear weapons in 2020 as Japan marked the 75th anniversary of its atomic bombings. But it was forced to temporarily close its doors the same day due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The message cites nuclear weapons, environmental problems and the novel coronavirus as three “global issues.”