2011-05-23 22:01

OSAKA, Japan - Some 50 people staged a sit-in Monday in the city of Hiroshima in southwestern Japan to protest the latest experiments conducted by the United States to examine the effectiveness of its nuclear weapons using minute amounts of plutonium, according to a report reaching here.

The protest was held in response to reports that the US conducted the tests last November and this March at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico using "Z machine" equipment capable of generating the strongest X-rays in the world to simulate the fusion that occurs in nuclear weapons.

Putting up a protest banner in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, Nobuo Takahashi, 72-year-old leader of the Hiroshima Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, said the tests were an " unforgivable act" that insults the victims of the atomic bombings.

In a related development, Tomihisa Taue, mayor of Nagasaki, sent a letter to US President Barack Obama via the US Embassy in Tokyo, denouncing the tests as setting back the efforts of the international community to create a world free of atomic arms, the report said.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit by atomic bombs at the end of World War II . The first bomb was detonated by the US over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people and the second on Nagasaki three days later.