During the ceremony, two representatives of bereaved families and Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba will consecrate the new names to the register of victims of the bombing. This time, there were 4,977 atomic bomb victims who either died over the past year or whose deaths to the atomic bombing were newly confirmed. The register now contains a total of 226,870 names.

Following representatives of the bereaved families and atomic bomb survivors, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, House of Councillors President Hiroyuki Kurata, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Chikara Sakaguchi, and others also offered flowers.

At 8:15, the time the bomb dropped, bereaved family representatives Taiji Hiyama (40) and China Hasegawa (11), a sixth-grader at Nakano Higashi Elementary School, will ring the Peace Bell. A minute of silence will be observed.

Next, Mayor Akiba will read the Peace Declaration. He will sound a warning about an international climate fraught with increased danger of nuclear war since last year's terrorist attacks on the U.S.. He will call for reconciliation, quoting President Kennedy's statement that "World peace ..requires only that (each man) live together with mutual tolerance." He will urge President Bush to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, call the A-bomb experience "the collective memory of humankind," and urge the people of the world to make this a "century of peace of humanity."

Representing children, Naomitsu Miwa (12) of a sixth-grader at Koi Elementary School and Yoshie Hijioka (11) of a sixth-grader at Dambara Elementary School will read the Commitment to Peace, following which Prime Minister Koizumi and Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture Yuzan Fujita will give addresses. Ramesh Thakur Vice Rector of the United Nations University, will deliver a message from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The ceremony will last 45 minutes, as did last year's. In consideration of the advancing ages of the survivors, the ceremony is 13 minutes shorter than in preceding years.

Hiroshima City will distribute gold-colored paper to all in attendance and ask them each to fold a paper crane. The paper cranes will be sent to residents of New York City, which suffered a terrorist attack, and to residents of Kabul, Afghanistan, which suffered retaliatory air strikes.

(Caption)On the eve of "A-bomb Day," a day of mourning and pledges to pass on the message, the A-bomb Dome stands silhouetted against the sunset.