COVENTRY will be remembering those who lost their lives in the Hiroshima nuclear bombing next Sunday (August 6).
Coventry Hiroshima Remembrance will get under way at 2pm in the nave of Coventry Cathedral and the Chapel of Unity with all welcome to attend.
Several Coventry dignitaries will be in attendance including Lord Mayor Coun Jaswant Singh Birdi as well as Yasuyuki Okazaki, Minister of Public Diplomacy of the Embassy of Japan.
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.
The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, making next Sunday the 78th anniversary of the bombing.
Around 526,000 Hibakusha people have died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki since 1945.
The remembrance includes messages of greeting from the Lord Mayor to the people of Hiroshima.
The story of Sadako will also be told and people will be making cranes of Peace in origami.
And there will be a reading of Coventry Cathedral’s Litany of Reconciliation.
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.
Coventry Society member and chair of the Lord Mayor’s peace committee said: “The annual Coventry Hiroshima Remembrance is part of the city’s great contribution to the worldwide work of Peace and Reconciliation and the call to end the world of the unbelievably destructive power of nuclear weapons.”
Visit www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hiroshima-day-2023-in-coventry-cathedral-tickets-636544721397 to book tickets to the remembrance.
