The city of Nagasaki commemorated the 75th anniversary this Sunday of the dropping of the American atomic bomb on this Japanese city.
However, that occurred in a particular context due to the coronavirus pandemic, which forced a limit on tributes to the victims.
Nagasaki lived through hell on August 9, 1945, three days after Hiroshima, devastated by Little Boy, the first atomic bomb.
Both bombs, of a destructive power unprecedented at that time, ended up bend Japan.
On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced to the Japanese the capitulation to the Allies, putting end to World War II.
Early in the morning, the participants attended a mass celebrated in memory of the victims in the church of Urakami, near the scene of the bombing, while others participated in a memorial service in the city’s Peace Park.
The number of people authorized to participate was reduced by 90% in relation to previous years.
At 11:02 a.m. (10:02 p.m. on Saturday in Chile), the bells rang at the Nagasaki peace monument and the attendees, including some foreigners, kept a minute of silence.
A group of representatives of the survivors, relatives of the victims, children and adolescents symbolically contributed water to the victims in wooden containers, a tribute to the anguishing thirst they suffered the inhabitants of the city after the explosion of the bomb.
Terrible wounds
This moment is still recorded in the memoria de Shigemi Fukahori, 89, who gave his testimony during a ceremony broadcast live on the Japanese public television network NHK.
Fukahori, then a teenager, recalled seeing “mountains of blackened bodies” that he did not know “if they were alive or dead.” “People were shouting: water, water! But I couldn’t help them “explained the old man, whose friends and brothers were killed during the explosion.
“I saw many people with terrible burns and injuries evacuating people who were already dead to a school transformed into a shelter,” Terumi Tanaka, 88, recently told AFP.
Survivors “think the world should give up nuclear weapons because we don’t want the younger generations to experience the same thing, “said Tanaka, who is concerned about the overconfidence of the population that the atomic bomb will not be used.
Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue asked attendees to applaud the survivors, known in Japan as the “hibakusha”, which “did not stop (…) alerting the entire world to the dangers of nuclear weapons.”
The nuclear risk “is still present”
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, asked Japan to sign the UN treaty on the prohibition of atomic weapons, adopted in 2017, through a message read by Deputy Secretary General Izumi Nakamitsu.
“The prospect of intentional, accidental or miscalculated use of the nuclear weapon remains,” Guterres warned.
Nuclear powers (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, China, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) they boycotted this agreement, in the same way that most NATO countries did, including Japan.
“As the only country that has suffered nuclear attacks, it is our duty to advance the efforts of the international community to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons “, said the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who defended that Japan “will act as a bridge between countries with different positions.”
The ceremonies take place at a time when Concerns persist over North Korea’s nuclear program and relations between the United States and China deteriorate.
The first atomic bomb caused about 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima. Many people were killed on the spot and others in the days and weeks following the explosion.
Second atomic bomb, Nagasaki, killed 74,000 more people.
–
