(CNN) – A grandson of former President Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombings
of Japan during the Second World War, attended a ceremony in Hiroshima August 6 to offer prayers for the victims.
Clifton Truman Daniel, the wartime president’s eldest grandson, was invited to
this year’s atomic bomb commemoration by peace group Sadako Legacy, chaired by
71-year-old Masahiro Sasaki.
Daniel has said he was inspired by an account of Sasaki’s younger sister
Sadako, who died of leukaemia in 1955 at the age of 12 and is remembered for
her efforts to fold 1000 paper cranes before her death.
“I was praying for the souls lost in Hiroshima and trying to imagine what must
have happened on a beautiful August day,” Daniel told reporters after the
ceremony.
The bomb dropped on the city, nicknamed “Little Boy”, releasing a mix of shock
waves, heat rays and radiation. The death toll by the end of 1945 was
estimated at about 140,000 out of the total 350,000 that lived there at the
time.
Three days after the attackon Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second
atomic bomb on the southern city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered six days
later.
Nagasaki is due to hold its own atomic bomb remembrance ceremony on August 9.
