Group of Seven leaders are set to lay flowers at the cenotaph for victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bomb, located in the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, on the first day of their summit in May, diplomatic sources said Wednesday.
After Prime Minister Fumio Kishida greets the G-7 leaders at the park, they will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and write messages for peace before laying flowers, the sources said, amid fears Russia may use nuclear weapons against Ukraine in their war.
It will be the first time that the G-7 leaders have visited the museum and laid flowers at the park together, according to the sources, with Kishida eager to pitch his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons at the summit in his home constituency of Hiroshima.
In addition to a joint communique, the Japanese government is arranging the release, following the three-day summit from May 19, of a separate document centering on the commitment of the G-7 to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, the sources said.
In 2016, then U.S. President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima in western Japan, on the occasion of the previous G-7 summit in Japan.
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