Hiroshima Remembers

Aug. 6, 1990--Forty-five years later, residents of Hiroshima today mourned the 140,000 victims of the 1945 atomic bomb attack with a solemn look back and a note of optimism for the future as tensions ease between the Soviet Union and the United States.

For one eerie moment, the city fell silent. Taxis and street cars stopped, and people throughout this industrial center of 1 million joined in a moment of prayer for the souls of those killed in the bombing.

Dignitaries, Hiroshima residents and foreign guests bowed their heads at 8:15 a.m., the exact moment the bomb exploded in a blinding flash of light.

At a ceremony, officials added 5,551 names of people exposed to the bomb who died over the last year to the names enshrined in a granite cenotaph, raising the total of claimed victims to 167,243.