Victims of Hiroshima bombing are remembered

It is imperative that Irish people have a say on whether the State joins the Partnership for Peace, said the deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Dermot Lacey.

Speaking at the annual Hiroshima Day commemoration in Dublin yesterday, he called for a referendum "as promised by the Government" on the issue. Mr Lacey is a member of the Labour Party.

Beneath a sky of intermittent sunshine and showers, about 30 people gathered at the Hiroshima memorial cherry tree in Merrion Square to mark the the 54th anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima.

Among those attending were Mr Proinsias De Rossa and Mr Eamon Gilmore of the Labour Party and Mr John Gormley of the Green Party; MEP Ms Patricia McKenna of the Green Party and Mr David Noonan, representing the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The cherry tree was planted 19 years ago by Ms Ko-ko Okamura for Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She was there yesterday - as she has been almost every year since 1980 - along with her daughter Kusi.

Though Ms Okamura was just a baby at the time of the bomb and had fled with her family to Shanghai, she said it was "very important for people to remember what happened".

Ms Kusi Okamura, now 23, told the gathering that having been born in Ireland and "being very Irish", it was only in the last few years that she had realised where her roots really lay.

"I have always been aware that Hiroshima Day is a very important day in Japan . . . Every year in Hiroshima, the Hibakusha, that is the victims of nuclear war, come together in Hiroshima to remember this day. I feel that it is really important that everyone does remember this day, that we realise how horrible war can be."

The president of Irish CND, Mr John de Courcy Ireland, said the act of dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened up "to the whole of mankind, from then to this very day, that that could happen again".