Japan on Monday marked the 66th anniversary of its surrender to the Allied Powers in World War II amid unprecedented circumstances. Both those who attended the anniversary ceremony at Tokyo's Budokan and other Japanese must have superimposed the Tohoku-Pacific region devastation from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami over the destruction across the country caused by the war.
Many must have also pondered on both the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
At Budokan, the attendants prayed for the souls of some 2.3 million Japanese soldiers and civilian workers of the military who died in the war and some 800,000 civilians, mostly victims of air raids including the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.