Below is the full text of the Peace Declaration delivered Thursday by Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui at the ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:
In our town, we had the warmth of family life, the deep human bonds of community, festivals heralding each season, traditional culture and buildings passed down through history, as well as riversides where children played.
At 8:15 a.m., Aug. 6, 1945, all of that was destroyed by a single atomic bomb. Below the mushroom cloud, a charred mother and child embraced, countless corpses floated in rivers, and buildings burned to the ground. Tens of thousands were burned in those flames. By year's end, 140,000 irreplaceable lives had been taken, that number including Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, and American prisoners of war.