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  • Updated: July 18, 2021

Tokyo 2020: IOC Chief Bach Calls For Solidarity, Peace During Hiroshima Visit [ICYMI]

Tokyo 2020: IOC Chief Bach Calls For Solidarity, Peace Durin

International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach has called for more solidarity to promote peace in the world during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Bach made the call when he visited Hiroshima on Friday, where he marked the start of the Olympic Truce by laying a wreath at the cenotaph of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the location where an atomic bomb was dropped by the United States on Aug. 6, 1945.

The 67-year-old, wearing a black mask, told reporters after the simple ceremony, that peace was central to the thinking of the IOC founder Pierre de Coubertin and that the mission of peace continues to be at the heart of the Olympic Games.

He said the Tokyo Olympics, set to kick off in just a week, would send a resounding message to the world that more solidarity was needed within societies and among societies.

“Without solidarity, there is no peace,’’ he said.

Bach, who was accompanied by Tokyo 2020 organising committee president Seiko Hashimoto, also held a brief chat with Fumiaki Kajiya, an 82-year-old atomic bomb survivor, vowing that the Tokyo Olympics would be a beacon of hope for a better and more peaceful future.

The U.S dropped the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima and the second on Nagasaki three days later, killing about 210,000 people by the end of that year.

The nuclear attacks finally brought an end to the Second World War, which saw Japan’s brutal and ugly colonisation and invasion of many East Asian countries.

Meanwhile, IOC vice president John Coates, also head of the IOC’s Coordination Commission for the Tokyo 2020, visited Nagasaki, the second city in the world that was hit by an atomic bomb.

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