Japan’s imperial family honors Nagasaki victims

Emperor Naruhito meets survivors on a tour marking 80 years since atomic bombing.

- By Mari YAMAGUCHI

NARUHITO, Empress Masako, center, and Princess Aiko at the cenotaph for Nagasaki atomic bomb victims.

Japan's Emperor Naruhito and his family paid their respects Friday to the victims of the atomic bombing 80 years ago of the city of Nagasaki.

Naruhito, his wife, Empress Masako, and their daughter, Princess Aiko, bowed deeply and offered bouquets of white flowers at the memorial at the ground-zero site in the city’s peace park.

The United States dropped a plutonium bomb on the southwestern city of Nagasaki at 11:02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945, killing more than 70,000 people by the end of that year. The attack came only three days after the U.S. dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima, destroying the city and killing 140,000 others. Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, ending World War II and the country’s nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.

The visit to Nagasaki — Naruhito’s first since ascending the Chrysanthemum Throne, and the first ever for Aiko — is the culmination of a tour of other locations in Japan this year where they have offered prayers and consolation to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.