Former Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba has called on Tokyo 2020 to observe a moment of silence ©Getty Images

Former Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba has called on the Olympic movement to observe a moment of silence on August 6 to remember victims of the atom bomb that fell on Hiroshima on that day in 1945.

Akiba, who was only two years old when the bomb fell, launched an online petition on Change.org on the day that International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach visited Hiroshima and IOC vice pesident John Coates went to Nagasaki, the other city that was struck.

Akiba called on Bach to support the tribute.

“He should have no objections to how important it is to spread the message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the world," Akiba said.

"The petition proposes that athletes and people from around the globe observe a moment of silence at 8:15am on August 6 to remember not only those who perished in the atomic bombings of the two cities, but all victims of war.

"The moment of silence would also express a commitment to making world peace a reality through the abolition of nuclear weapons.

"Bach himself said last week that 'everybody should have the chance to come to Hiroshima because they will leave as ambassadors for peace.'

"If we don’t take action on August 6, which falls during the Games, we don’t have the right to tout the Olympics as a festival of peace.

"A silent prayer is the least we can do,” Akiba said.

Organisers of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics had paid their own tribute by choosing Yoshinori Sakai to light the Olympic Flame.

He was born 55 kilometres north of Hiroshima on August 6 1945.

The Torch Relay began in Hiroshima ©Getty Images
The Torch Relay began in Hiroshima ©Getty Images

Sakai said at the time: "Happily I know nothing of war.

"I have grown up free from care in the atmosphere of freedom in peace-loving Japan."

The Olympic organisers had set out their criteria for choosing him.

They wanted "a youngster symbolising the new Japan should be picked. 

"He should be more than 1.70 metres in height and weigh around 65 kg. 

"The runner should be a youth of good character."

Other relay runners were between 16 and 20 years of age.

During his time as mayor, Akiba had tried to launch an Olympic bid.

Hiroshima hosted the 1994 Asian Games with a message of peace particularly prominent.

In 1994 at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch had invoked a silent tribute with a call for fighting in Sarajevo to be halted.

Since then, the performance of John Lennon’s peace song Imagine has been performed at Olympic ceremonies, a tradition honoured here in Tokyo.

Before each Olympic Games, a formal truce resolution is presented at the United Nations, but this did not prevent conflict in 2008 when Russian forces took military action in Georgia.