On Thursday August 6 at the Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto, the Hiroshima -Nagasaki Day Coalition held their 70th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . The Coalition consists of 21 organizations committed to the global banning of nuclear weapons including the TorontoNAJC, Toronto Buddhist Church, Hiroshima Kenjinkai and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre of the JC community in Toronto.
TorontoNAJC is pleased to contribute to this special 70th anniversary of the horrific nuclear bombing of civilian populations which killed several hundred thousand people directly and indirectly. The commemoration ceremony featured Mr Paul Dewar, Co-President of the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and a federal MP as a key note speaker. Mr Dewar argued convincingly that the manufacture and maintenance of nuclear arms by governments was not a rational response or deterrent to the today’s global threats of terrorism, cyberattack , environmental and economic disasters . Mr Andrew Thurlow, spoke in place of Setsuko Thurlow, OC who is his mother and a Hiroshima bombing survivor. Mrs Thurlow was attending the special 70th anniversary commemoration ceremony in Hiroshima. Mr Thurlow read the proclamation issued by the Mayor of Hiroshima today, on August 6, in which the mayor called nuclear weapons ” the ultimate inhumanity and evil” and he urged nations “to establish a broad national security framework that does not rely on use of force but is based on trust.”