Nakasone, on Anniversary of Attack, Urges Disarmament

Speaking at a ceremony in Hiroshima commemorating the 40th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on the city, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone today appealed to the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve real progress toward nuclear disarmament in the summit meeting their leaders have scheduled for this fall.

Speaking to 55,000 people seated in Peace Memorial Park near the epicenter of the 1945 explosion, Nakasone also pledged to uphold Japan’s own “three non-nuclear principles”--never to produce nuclear weapons, to possess them or to allow them to be introduced into Japanese territory.

Hiroshima Mayor Takeshi Araki, who survived the bomb blast that came at 8:15 a.m. 40 years ago today, said the people of his city have learned that the use of nuclear weapons “will lead to the destruction of mankind and the termination of civilization.”

Araki appealed to President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to move toward abolishing all nuclear weapons. “Today’s hesitation will lead to tomorrow’s destruction,” he said.

Over the years, estimates of the toll from the bomb have ranged upward from a figure of 86,141 cited by the national government’s former Economic Stabilization Board. Figures compiled by the city itself indicate that more than 200,000 died.

Only this year, the government promised to conduct a survey in an attempt to determine an accurate toll.

At 8:15 a.m., the audience at Peace Memorial Park was asked to rise for a minute of silent prayer, accompanied by seven tolls of a Buddhist bell.