Indian, Other Leaders Visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Hiroshima, May 21 (Jiji Press)--Leaders of eight countries including India, a de facto nuclear state, invited to the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on Sunday morning.

The remaining seven were South Korea, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Cook Islands and the Comoros. The national leaders were accompanied by heads of international organizations including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as well as by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, chair of the three-day G-7 summit in the western Japan city through Sunday.

They visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park before attending a session of the G-7 summit. They then entered the museum, located in the park, and are believed to have signed the guest book. The leaders also laid flowers at the cenotaph for the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima nearly 78 years ago.

On Friday, the first day of the Hiroshima G-7 summit, leaders of the seven major countries--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States--plus the European Union visited the museum, paid floral tribute at the cenotaph and met with a hibakusha atomic bomb survivor. Of the seven countries, Britain, France and the United States are nuclear powers.

It was the first time for G-7 leaders to visit together the museum, which displays, among other things, items that belonged to victims of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]