CHILDREN have created lanterns to be floated down the River Thames to mark the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.

About 25 children at Donnington Doorstep Family Centre, Townsend Square, Oxford, helped make lanterns for a riverside ceremony this weekend.

People will gather at Donnington Bridge on Sunday from 5pm to remember the bombings of the Japanese cities during the Second World War.

There will be music, food, and a lantern making workshop before the candlelit lanterns — including those made by children at Doorstep — are launched on the River Thames at 8.30pm.

Doorstep manager Anna Thorne said: “It’s lovely because it has been involving all sorts of different groups.

“It is fundamentally a peaceful message for the children to think about.”

Event organiser Caroline Gilbert, of Oxford Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Oxford Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, is pictured making lanterns with 20-month-old Evie Woo.

She said: “The children making the lanterns were very nice and very sweet.

“The main idea of it is to have community involvement so if the mums and babies would like to come along on the day, that is absolutely superb.”

She said of the bombings: “I was only three at the time, but my mother, Gabrielle Maas, remembered it.

“We were living in Berlin, where I was born, so she didn’t know exactly what was going on but she said she knew something awful had happened.”

Last year’s lantern ceremony attracted about 300 people.