COVENTRY residents remembered those who lost their lives in the Hiroshima nuclear bombing last Sunday by joining forces with representatives from the city at a special service.
The remembrance at Coventry Cathedral included messages of greeting from the Lord Mayor Coun Jaswant Singh Birdi to the people of Hiroshima and the telling of the story of Sadako.
Sadako was two years old, and two kilometres away from the atomic bomb when the USA dropped it on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, but survived without a scratch despite many of her neighbours dying.
People made cranes of peace using origami and there was a reading of Coventry Cathedral’s Litany of Reconciliation.
And a £1,500 donation was handed out to Coventry students who will be representing the UK at the UNESCO-associated schools programme 70th-anniversary conference in Kyoto in September.
The UNESCO programme shares lessons of peace, reconciliation, citizenship, international understanding and sustainability.
The cash was given to the students from the Coventry Lord Mayor’s Peace Committee, who also organised the Hiroshima service, and was raised through the committee’s publishing work.
Committee chair Paul Maddocks, who is also a member of the Coventry Society, said: “It is a huge prestigious honour that Coventry Students are representing all UK schools in Kyoto.
This is another part of Coventry’s great contribution to the worldwide work of peace and reconciliation.”
The only two nuclear bombs ever used in warfare were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing 266,400 instantly and many more through radiation poisoning.
In 2021 Coventry City Council sent a certificate of continuing friendship to the Hiroshima City Council.
The Cathedral’s fellowship of reconciliation has also awarded the prestigious Coventry Cross of Nails to the people of Hiroshima recognising their contribution to world efforts for peace.
