Hiroshima residents indifferent about IOC president's visit

With one week to go before the opening of the Olympic Games, IOC President Thomas Bach is visiting the western Japanese city of Hiroshima where the local residents are seemingly less enthusiastic of their high-profile guest.

The United States dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. Since then, the city has been in the forefront of the world peace movement and a campaigner for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

On the streets of Hiroshima, 58 year-old medical worker Sayuri Yamada said Bach's visit when coronavirus risks remain high was unnecessary.

44-year old Takayoshi Kayano said he was disappointed that spectators will be banned from key venues, and that the IOC appears concerned only with making money.

The Games are going ahead during the pandemic despite persistent opposition in Japan from the general public and the medical community.

The same day, IOC Vice President John Coates is also visiting Nagasaki, the second Japanese city on which the United States dropped an atomic bomb, killing another 70,000.

Bach and Coates are using the backdrop of the cities to promote the first day of the so-called Olympic Truce, a tradition from ancient Greece that was revived by a United Nations resolution in 1993.