GARMISH-PARTENKIRCHEN /Germany/, June 28. /TASS/. The next meeting of the G7 leaders will be held on May 19-21, 2023 in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which was subjected to a US atomic bombing in August 1945, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced at a press conference following the G7 summit on Tuesday.
"The Hiroshima summit will take place from May 19 to 21," he said. Earlier, the Kyodo news agency reported, citing a source, that Kishida had indicated these dates to his G7 colleagues at the summit in Germany.
Hiroshima was chosen to show Japan's commitment to nuclear disarmament. As the Kyodo news agency previously reported, citing sources, Kishida told his G7 colleagues that no other city was more appropriate to express a commitment that "the horrors of the use of nuclear weapons must not be repeated."
The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 killed between 70,000 and 100,000 people in a single day, according to various estimates. By the end of 1945, the number of victims had increased to 140,000 due to those who died in hospitals from wounds and radiation. Every year this sad list is replenished when a "hibakusha" dies. Hibakusha is the Japanese word for surviving victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also includes those who died during the attack itself and whose deaths have not been confirmed to date. By August 2021, the total number of victims of the bombing exceeded 350,000.
Nagasaki was the second city in Japan after Hiroshima to be hit by the American atomic bomb in August 1945. At the moment of the explosion 70,000 inhabitants were killed and the city was practically wiped off the face of the Earth. The total number of victims had risen to 189,000 by August 2021.