Nagasaki citizens Thursday mourned the deaths of about 5,500 pupils and schoolteachers in the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the city, ahead of the 55th anniversary of the attack next Wednesday.
Some 400 people, including relatives of the dead and Nagasaki elementary, junior high and high school students, attended a memorial ceremony at the Peace Hall.
Mourners offered a silent prayer at 11:02 a.m., the time the bomb exploded over the city on Aug. 9, 1945. It was the 19th annual ceremony of its kind.
"I will continue to cry for peace, cherishing emotions held by those who perished and those who lost their families," said Rika Suzuta, 11, a sixth-grader at Yamazato Elementary School.
The annual memorial ceremony began in 1982 after teachers in Nagasaki Prefecture built a monument near the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum dedicated to schoolchildren and teachers in the city who died in the bombing.
The attack on Nagasaki came three days after the A-bombing of Hiroshima.
The bomb killed an estimated 74,000 people. Many survivors still suffer physical and mental anguish as a result of the bombings.