A SMALL gathering was held in the town centre of Wellington to mark this year’s Hiroshima Day on August 6.

A group of about 15 people held a silent vigil for peace in the public space on the corner of Fore Street and South Street, in the afternoon.

The 30-minute event was followed by an evening screening of the film ‘The War Game, in Wellington Community Centre, in White Hart Lane.

Hiroshima Day is held to remember the Japanese city destroyed by the world’s first atomic bomb at the end of the Second World War, when about 80,000 people died almost instantly and many more in later years.

Those taking part in the vigil included some who were children at the time of the bombing, with one person who remembered as an eight-year-old how shocked people were at the time when they heard the news of the bombing.

The War Game is a 1966 drama-documentary by director Peter Watkins which depicted the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain.

One of those leading the vigil was Wellington town Cllr Mike McGuffie, who said: “War and the threat of war is still with us today and the vigil will lead to further events aimed at creating a more peaceful world.”

The Hiroshima Day vigil took place as the town’s Wellesley Cinema was coincidentally showing director Christopher Nolan’s newly-released film Oppenheimer, a three-hour biography of the man who built the two atom bombs dropped on Japan which brought the Second World War to an end.