Hiroshima & Nagasaki Vigil, Bolton

A well spent afternoon at Bolton's Victoria Square today at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Memorial Vigil with Bolton CND and Bolton Socialist Club members. And it was lovely to see Malcolm Pittock.

Originally, the venue was at the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Picnic at Heaton Park in Prestwich, but it was cancelled.

This project commemorates the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and were left at the War Memorial.

I found quotes by Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors to create the mini banners.

Unfortunately, the weather was so bad, the Wood Street Craftivists couldn't make the paper doves as planned.

And it was too windy to take pictures of all the quotes (the banners were flapping about like crazy things),

So I had some that I'd taken at home yesterday:

The US dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, at the close of the Second World War in August 1945. Japan already wanted to surrender, but the US wanted to use the bomb to show its strength and dominate the post-war world.

The cities were obliterated: by 1950, over 340,000 people had died as a result and generations were poisoned by radiation. The explosion's effects killed indiscriminately by vaporising human tissue. Many survivors of the initial blast burned to death, while cancers caused by the radiation affected countless others and their children, causing years of misery. Homes, schools and livelihoods were destroyed with communities ruined.