HIROSHIMA: The Tokyo Olympic flame was passed round by torchbearers in a ceremony in Hiroshima Prefecture on Monday, held behind closed doors in response to a surge in novel coronavirus infection cases in the western Japan prefecture.

An Olympic torch was lit in the ceremony in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in the city of Hiroshima, the prefecture’s capital. The event came in line with the cancellation of the Olympic torch relay on public roads in the prefecture amid the virus crisis.

Torchbearers passed along the flame, together with hopes for peace, in an area between the cenotaph for victims of the Aug. 6, 1945, US atomic bombing of the city and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, with the Atomic Bomb Dome, a structure that survived the nuclear attack in the closing days of World War II, in the background.

Fumiaki Kajiya, one of the torchbearers, was exposed to radiation from the bombing at a point 1.8 kilometers from ground zero. The 82-year-old resident of the city lost his sister, who was two years older than him, in the bombing.

Kajiya had prepared for the torch relay by walking about 2 kilometers a day around his house, among other things. “I want to hold the torch high, consoling the souls of the dead and hoping that peace will last,” he has said.

Shoji Tomihisa, a 104-year-old atomic bomb survivor in the city of Miyoshi in the prefecture, canceled his participation in Monday’s event because of the spread of the virus.

Hiroshima Prefecture and eight other prefectures are now under the Japanese government’s coronavirus state of emergency, which is slated to last until the end of May.

Tomihisa, who holds the Japanese record for men’s 60-meter sprint in the 100-to-104-year-old category in the Japan Masters Athletics, had continued training, sometimes using a mock torch, with support from fellow athletes and others.

“I’ve practiced hard to run (in the torch relay), so I’m now really disappointed,” Tomihisa said, adding, “I wish we didn’t have the epidemic.”

Still, he said, “I want to enjoy my life as an athlete, also for my mental health.”

JIJI Press