TOKYO, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Kobe City in western Japan on Tuesday marked the 28th anniversary of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, which claimed the lives of 6,434 people.

A memorial service was held at Higashi Yuenchi, a park in Kobe's Chuo Ward, with mourners observing a minute of silence at 5:46 a.m. (local time), the exact time a devastating, magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck the port city of Kobe and surrounding areas in the western prefecture of Hyogo in 1995.

At the early-morning service, around 10,000 bamboo and paper lanterns were lit in remembrance of the disaster, with thousands of candles formed to spell out the date of the tragedy "1.17, 1995," and the characters "musubu", meaning to be "bound together" in Japanese.

The annual event, which in recent years had been downsized due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was allowed by organizers to return to its regular size, with 5,000 people paying their respects at the memorial event as of 07:00 a.m. (local time), and to double the number of candles allowed to be lit, Japan's public broadcaster NHK said.

While the memories of the quake and the destruction that ensued are still fresh in the minds of those who had lost their loved ones, a growing number of people were not born when the quake occurred.

To this end, Kobe Mayor Kizo Hisamoto said at the memorial service the city will work to "ensure the experiences and lessons of the quake do not fade and that they are passed on to the next generation."

A father who lost his 20-year old daughter in his speech as a representative of other bereaved families, spoke of the pain he felt when he found his young daughter's body, saying her life as an adult had only just begun.

The grieving father said the lessons from the disaster must be heeded.

The devastating quake on Jan. 17, 1995, the intensity of which for the first time in Japan measured the highest of 7 on Japan's seismic intensity scale, destroyed more than 100,000 homes and damaged 640,000 others.

Along with the thousands of lives lost, 44,000 people were injured as a result of the powerful quake and more than 300,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes.

"The knowledge and experience from the Great Hanshin Earthquake would be faithfully carried on and used to ensure a full response when disaster strikes in the future," said Japan's top government spokesperson and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno at a press conference in Tokyo. Enditem

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