Premier Shigeru Ishiba expresses remorse for victims
The Japanese Premier Shigeru Ishiba reiterated his country’s commitment to maintain peace, underlining the importance of memory, the meaning of the experience of survivors to conflicts to “pass on the painful memories” of the war on future generations.
In a government ceremony held in Tokyo to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the country’s surrender in the Second World War, Ishiba promised to keep in mind the “remorse” of Japan, becoming the first premier in over a decade to use this term during the annual event for the fallen in war. “Remorse and the lessons of that war must be deeply impressed in our hearts,” he added.
At noon (the 5 in Italy), a minute of silence was observed, the same moment when the Emperor Hirohito declared the rendering of the nation 80 years ago in a radio discourse. During the commemoration, the current Emperor Naruhito, accompanied by the consort Masako, expressed “deep remorse”, stating that the calamity of the war should never repeat itself. The participants, including about 3,400 family members of the victims, recalled the approximately 3.1 million fallen of the war in Japan; A number that includes the victims of the US atomic bombings on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Like the 80 -year anniversary of nuclear catastrophes, the transmission of the memory of the war experiences has taken on greater urgency in Japan, due to the progressive aging of the survivors. For the first time, the statistics say, more than half of the participants in the commemorative ceremony, were in fact born after the war.
