U.N. secretary general to attend Hiroshima peace memorial ceremony for 1st time in 12 years

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:19 JST, July 1, 2022

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres will attend this year’s peace commemoration ceremony to be held in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on the city, according to a city government source.

It will be the first time in 12 years that a sitting U.N. secretary general has attended the ceremony since Ban Ki-moon did in 2010 during his term. It is believed that Guterres is attending to call for nuclear disarmament in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In 2018, Guterres became the first U.N. secretary general to attend a peace ceremony in Nagasaki. In 2020, or 75 years after the bombings, he was scheduled to attend a ceremony in Hiroshima, which, however, was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.