Final Japan stop – Hiroshima and the quest for peace.

I have never left a museum struggling to hold back tears before. And I ultimately failed. But there really wasn’t any other human response to the one of the most deeply horrorific stories of the 20^th century. The Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum devastatingly illustrated the brutal facts of the darkest days in human history – when the first atomic bomb was dropped at 8.15am on the 6^th of August 1945. The bomb and its aftermath killed 140,000 people by the year’s end and left 100,000s more forever impacted. The descriptions of those who witnessed this horrific event told a story of what can simple defined as the earth made hell – thousands of people with their skin melted off, blind, calling for help, for water.

I was fortunate enough to sit down and talk with one of the survivors a 77yo women who was 8 when the bomb hit her family. She like all the Hibuksha has a simple message “we must never let this happen again”.

Mayors for Peace was an initiative born out of this horror. It is led by the Mayor of Hiroshima. The City of Fremantle joined Mayors for Peace around a decade ago under Mayor Peter Tagliaferri as part of a push from cities around the world to work to make sure nuclear disarmament is front an centre of the global agenda. There are now over 6000 member cities and Fremantle recently became a lead city in Western Australia and with the help of local community members we plan to hold a Mayors for Peace conference in Fremantle in September this year.

In addition to meeting with the atomic bomb survivor, I also met with the Mayor of Hiroshima and the Secretary General of Mayors for Peace.  I can’t remember a day when I have have felt and learnt so much.

As I touch back down in Perth this extremely powerful experience still resonates with and I am very grateful to be a mayor of a city that knows it is important to care and be a voice at a local level for important international issues like this.