When an atomic bomb was deployed over the Japanese city of Nagasaki 72 years ago, Taro Shibahara was 50 km north of the city.

While he survived the bombing, its after-effects have echoed through his life. His wife, born three months after the war, lost her father after he was exposed to radiation while returning to Nagasaki after the bombing to see what had happened.

On Sunday, a commemoration of the first deployment of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and the bombing of Nagasaki three days later, was held at 6:30 p.m. in the Toronto Peace Garden. The first bomb and its after-effects killed 140,000. The second bomb and its aftermath killed 80,000 people.

Keynote speaker Douglas Roche, a former senator, MP and Canadian ambassador for disarmament, used the event to call on Ottawa to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.

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