News In Brief
| Hiroshima, Japan
Moment of silence observed in Hiroshima 39 years later
An estimated 50,000 people observed a minute of silence Monday morning at Hiroshima's peace park to commemorate the moment 39 years ago when the mainland city was devastated by the world's first atomic bomb attack. In a speech afterward, Hiroshima's mayor, Takeshi Araki, said that ''the spirit of Hiroshima has permeated the whole world'' in the search for an end to the nuclear arms race.
A group of radical left-wingers demonstrated outside the park, complaining that Mayor Araki had not denounced the presence in Japanese waters of US ships carrying Tomahawk nuclear missiles.
Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, a second US atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, in southern Japan. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone will attend the Nagasaki memorial Thursday.
Meanwhile in Moscow, the government newspaper Izvestia said the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as ''testing ranges and demonstration grounds'' for an attack on the Soviet Union. It never mentioned World War II.
The Soviet Union, despite frequent claims of its victory over Japan, declared war only two days after the Hiroshima attack and then permanently seized Japanese-held land near its borders.
