Crowds of up to 150 people gathered on the banks of the River Avon in Salisbury to commemorate the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.
Salisbury Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament organised the event, which saw 200 floating candles and 20 lanterns set alight to float down the river between Fisherton and Crane bridges in the city centre.
It’s believed that between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, were killed in the two Japanese cities in 1945.
In a poignant tribute to the children who lost their lives, the lanterns had been decorated by school children from Hiroshima.
As dusk fell, the crowd was quiet as the candles and lanterns were lit and put in the water, drifting downstream, where they were recovered from the river as they approached Crane Bridge.
Event co-ordinator and CND member, Caroline Lanyon said: “The weather was perfect and there was no wind. It’s actually quite a complicated exercise, you don’t want a strong wind to blow the candles and lanterns into the bank, but we have people in the water to make sure they don’t get stuck on the side of the river.”
The group had received a letter from the Mayor of Hiroshima, in which he said: “No one else should ever suffer as we have. It is increasingly important for us policymakers to abandon nuclear deterrence in favour of a peaceful world that refuses to compromise individual dignity and security.”
One Salisbury spectator said she thought the event was very moving: "I'm impressed that we are commemorating such a horrific event nearly 80 years on with such simplicity, beauty and significance."
A spokesperson from Salisbury CND said: “The world has never been closer to a devastating nuclear war. Such a conflict would threaten humanity itself. We need to join together to call on our politicians to acknowledge that nuclear weapons offer us no real security and in fact provide just the opposite.”
It’s the 43rd year that CND has organised a candle float and memorial service in Salisbury.
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