Atom bombs dropped on Japan killing more than 200,000 people in the closing stages of the Second World War, are to be remembered in Medway and Canterbury.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the Japanese communities where the weapons were dropped.

The events taking place next week are memorials for those who died through weapons of mass destruction, and are held in the hope that such weapons are never used again.

Members of the public are welcome to attend both ceremonies, which have been organised by Kent’s peace movement.

A moving River Flower Ceremony, Remember Nagasaki, is scheduled for Saturday August 9 at at 7pm on Chatham Riverside, organised by Medway CND.

Earlier in the week, on Wednesday August 6, in Canterbury, the horrors of Hiroshima will be remembered with the re-dedication of the Peace Tree in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral at 11am.

Kent CND has received a message from a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, Sato Yoshio.

It reads, :"It is a great honour as an A-bomb survivor to send a message of Hiroshima Day Commemoration to the people of Kent, from the distant land of Japan. In 1945, I suffered from the atomic bomb in Hiroshima just one kilometer from the blast center at the age of fourteen.

“I lost three members of my family - mother, brother and the youngest sister, so now I am the only surviving victim in my family.

"Even myself had my stomach half removed due to cancer in 1951. My brother died of liver cancer 39 years after the bombing.

”The two atomic bombs were dropped on human beings in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki for the first time in history.

"More than 200,000 people were killed by the end of 1945, as a result.

"I believe it is the survivor’s mission to convey the cruelty of nuclear weapons to the younger generations who have no memory of this war.”