Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in the Japanese city of Nagasaki on Sunday, following her attendance at the G20 summit in Indonesia on Friday and a brief stop in the Pacific Island nation of Palau on Saturday.

Baerbock visited the Atomic Bomb Museum in the city that was hit by a US nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945, where she laid a wreath in memory of the 70,000 people who were killed.

It is one of the only two cities, along with Hiroshima, to ever be hit by a nuclear weapon.

The two stand "like no other place for absolute annihilation and war, and as a symbol for the warning against the use of nuclear weapons," the German foreign minister said.

She called for a world without such destructive weapons and said the German government supports disarmament, "even if the current global situation is quite different."

A 'world without nuclear weapons'

Baerbock wrote in the museum's guest book saying that she was leaving "with a heavy heart" but also that she felt strengthened in "the communal striving for a more peaceful world without nuclear weapons."

She also called for the two countries to work together in keeping the memory alive as the number of living witnesses decreases. This should include recalling the genocide carried out by Germany in the Second World War, she said.

Baerbock took part in a conversation about peace and globalization at the Junshin Catholic University in Nagasaki.

On Monday, the foreign minister will visit Tokyo. Japan is holding elections on Sunday, just days after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead in the town of Nara.

ab/msh (dpa, Reuters)