Peace Declaration (1964)

August 6th is here with us again today.

Nineteen years ago today, the City of Hiroshima was suddenly reduced to cinders and countless human lives were taken away; even to this day the radioactive contamination that penetrated deep into the bodies of the survivors on that day continues to endanger their lives.

Remembering the depths of these miseries, we, the people of Hiroshima, have at every opportunity made known our experience to all the world and repeatedly appealed for the abandonment of nuclear weapons and abolishment of all wars.

With great gratification we have greeted the partial test ban treaty that came into existence last year, initiated by the three powers, the United States of America, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, and joined by many other nations. While it certainly marked a step forward toward our ultimate goal, as such it is by no means an assurance for a complete abandonment of nuclear weapons and our present world sees international skirmishes going on persistently at various locations, charged with grave dangers.

It is our hope that people throughout the world take to heart afresh that a war in the nuclear age would be nothing less than a means of total annihilation nor only for the belligerent nations alone, but also for the whole mankind and that they further lend their efforts at attaining a complete abolition of all wars.

As we pay homage today to those who fell in the atomic catastrophe, we once again proclaim this far and wide to all peoples of the world.

August 6, 1964

Shinzo Hamai
Mayor
The City of Hiroshima