Atomic bomb survivors hopeful G7 Hiroshima summit will be turning point

Hiroshima – Atomic bomb survivors and activists expressed hope that the Group of Seven leaders’ historic Hiroshima Peace Park visit on Friday and a summit in the city will serve as a major turning point in moving toward a world without nuclear weapons.

G7 heads including U.S. President Joe Biden came together for the first time as one to tour the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where they spent around 40 minutes looking at artifacts from the bombing. The attack killed some 140,000 people in the city before the end of 1945.

Toshiko Tanaka, an 84-year-old who was exposed to the bomb at age 6, said she felt that seeing items that had belonged to those killed in the blast “will certainly be an opportunity for them to imagine what it might have been like if it happened to the people around them.”