Over one hundred invited guests attended the opening ceremony of the exhibition at the Reykjavík Art Museum on the afternoon of the 9th of August.
Professor Auður Hauksdóttir, chairman of the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute of Foreign Languages hosted the ceremony which was very provoking.
President of The Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb, Mr. Masanobu Chita, and the Ambassador of Japan in Iceland, Mr. Masayuki Takashima, both addressed the audience and expressed their gratitude for Iceland hosting the exhibition. Honorary guest speaker, the 81 year-old survivor of the Nagasaki nuclear attack, Mr. Inosuke Hayasaki told his moving story.
Before his address, a Japanese Ph.D. candidate, Mr. Seiichiro Kimura, presented the nuclear explosions with figures and images.
Mr. Inosuke Hayasaki showed drawings based on his experience of being 14 year old within 1 kilometer of the explosion. He witnessed that nearly all of his colleagues were dead and thousands of scorched bodies and collapsed buildings all around. Through sheer luck and singular fate, he survived.
At the end of the ceremony, Minister of the Interior, Mr. Ögmundur Jónasson, expressed his and the Foreign Minister’s, Mr. Össur Skarphéðinsson, thanks to the Japanese visitors and asked them to join him to visit the Exhibition at the Reykjavík City Library.
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