IOC's Bach visits Hiroshima one week before Olympic opening

Little enthusiasm in Japanese city for IOC chief's trip to site of nuclear devastation

The Olympic flame is passed from torch to torch with the Atomic Bomb Dome seen in the background at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan, on May 17, © Reuters

RURIKA IMAHASHI, Nikkei staff writer

July 16, 2021 11:48 JST

Updated on July 16, 2021 16:11 JST

TOKYO -- International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach visited Hiroshima on Friday, but his prayers for peace were met with protests.

During his one-day trip, Bach went to Hiroshima's peace memorial park and museum and met some survivors of the atomic bomb that devastated the western Japanese city on August 6, 1945. On the same day, the IOC vice president John Coates visited Nagasaki, which that fell victim to a nuclear detonation three days later.