Police in Hiroshima have arrested the mayor of a Japanese town after he got drunk and allegedly punched a female bartender in the face – hours after a ceremony commemorating the atomic bomb attack on the city.

Kunio Watanabe is the 62-year-old mayor of Satte, a town in Saitama Prefecture on the edge of Tokyo. Watanabe was drinking alone in a bar in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward in the early hours of Wednesday morning when he allegedly punched the 20-year-old bartender several times in the face, according to Japanese newspaper reports, citing police.

Watanabe told police he had “no recollection” of punching the server, and didn’t “understand why something like this happened to me.” Police say he and the young woman didn’t know each other.

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The alleged incident took place just hours after 50,000 people – among them Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – had gathered in Hiroshima to commemorate the 74th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city by the US during World War II.

The bombing killed more than 100,000 people, and was the first wartime use of nuclear weapons in history. Japan unconditionally surrendered after the US dropped another nuclear bomb on Nagasaki three days later.

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