The danger that atomic bombs could be used would never end unless public opinion "makes it impossible for governments to be so irresponsible", the president of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said yesterday.
Dr John de Courcy Ireland was speaking at a wreath-laying ceremony to mark the 55th anniversary of the dropping of the first A-bomb on Hiroshima.
"That is really the only lesson we can draw from all the expense, millions of pounds, the using of atomic energy in Sellafield, the using of unfortunate seamen to take atomic waste across the oceans. All these kinds of danger that happen every day are there because we allowed politicians to make those awful weapons."
About 200,000 people were killed when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city at 8.15 a.m. Japanese time on August 6th, 1945. A second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945. The event is marked across the world every August 6th as Hiroshima Day.
Yesterday's ceremony in Merrion Square, Dublin, at the site of a cherry tree planted there by CND in 1980 to mark Hiroshima Day that year, was attended by a small gathering which included Mr Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance and Mr Vassile Istratov, Minister Counsellor at the Russian embassy. A wreath was sent by the Japanese ambassador, Ms Kazuko Yokoo, who had a prior engagement.
Opening the ceremony, the Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Garry Keegan, said it was important that people realised the suffering of victims of the two A-bombs still continued.
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