WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 Kyodo

Three Japanese survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II visited a museum displaying the Enola Gay B-29 bomber in Virginia on Friday and urged U.S. President George W. Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Their visit came two days before the 61st anniversary of the world's first use of an atomic bomb, dropped by the Enola Gay on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. The second bomb was dropped three days later on Nagasaki.

The three survivors spoke of their experiences and called for the abolition of nuclear weapons at a press conference in front of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The center is located in Virginia on the outskirts of the U.S capital.

The three are Yoshio Sato, 75, of Yokohama, Shotaro Kodama, 76, of Tokyo, and Kazuhiro Yoshimura, 65, of Saitama. Sato and Kodama were in Hiroshima and Yoshimura in Nagasaki at the time of the attacks.

''So that was the plane,'' Sato said after seeing the Enola Gay. He lost his mother soon after the bomb exploded about a kilometer from his home.

Sato said that nuclear weapons should be abolished.

''To tell the truth, I don't want to see it...because I had that terrible experience,'' said Kodama, who was working at a factory about 2 km away from ground zero.

Yoshimura, who was only 4 years old at the time, said, ''I plead for nuclear abolition and no production. I want the leader of the United States to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki and apologize to the victims.''

Speaking with them was an American man some of whose family members died due to radioactive fallout when they lived in Utah near the nuclear test site in Nevada.

Criticizing the Bush administration for its plan to conduct a massive non-nuclear explosion test at the same site, he said nuclear arms are weapons of ''genocide.''

The three survivors were invited by a U.S. group of peace activists, and are also scheduled to speak of their experiences in the U.S. capital and New Jersey.

2006-08-05 09:26:02JST