Pope Francis : Nagasaki makes us deeply aware of the pain and horror that we humans are capable of inflicting upon one another

Pope Francis on Sunday called for the abolition of nuclear weapons during a visit to Japan’s western cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Reuters has reported.

Francis told a gathering in a park at the blast site that nuclear weapons are indefensible.

The city “makes us deeply aware of the pain and horror that we humans are capable of inflicting upon one another,” he added.

At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 Superfortress bomber named “Enola Gay” - for the pilot’s mother - dropped a 10,000-pound (4,536-kg) uranium-235 bomb on Hiroshima. Three days after the Hiroshima event, at 11:02 a.m. on August 9, the United States dropped a 10,000-pound (4,536-kg) plutonium-239 bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man”, on the major industrial and port city of Nagasaki.

By Aug. 2019, Japan had recognized the total of deaths from radiation illness and injuries in Hiroshima as 319,186 and in Nagasaki as 182,601.