Nagasaki He kept on Saturday (local time) a minute of silence in memory of the time in which 80 years ago the atomic bomb fell on that Japanese city, while the restored bell of a church repeated for the first time from that attack.
On August 9, 1945, at 11:02 local hours and three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki suffered the horror of the nuclear weapon launched by the United States. About 74,000 people lost their lives in that southwest port of the Asian country, joining the 140,000 victims of Hiroshima.
“80 years have passed, who would have imagined that the world would become this?
“The confrontations intensify in various places due to a vicious circle of confrontation and division. A crisis that can threaten the survival of humanity, such as a nuclear war, looms over all of us who live on this planet,” he added under a torrential rain that ceased for the minute of silence.
This large international participation, which has broken all records, has been marked by the presence of Russia, which had not been invited since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Israel, whose ambassador was not invited last year in protest Conflict in Gazawhich caused the boycott of the ceremony by the representatives of the other G7 countries, was also present.
“Real events”
This explosion “seems very old, but for the people who lived it, it must be as if it were yesterday. We must remember that they are real events,” said Atsuko Hyguchi, a 50 -year -old Nagasaki inhabitant, present near the Park of La Paz.
As a symbol of this commemoration, the bell of a cathedral destroyed by the outbreak of the bomb and restored by American Christians sounded for the first time in 80 years.
The red brick church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, flanked by two bells, rises on top of a hill in the city. It was rebuilt in 1959 after the original building had been destroyed a few hundred meters from there.
Only one of his two bells was found among the rubble.
For your main priest, Kenichi Yamamurathis restoration “shows the greatness of the human being, the proof that the people who belong to the side that has hurt another can someday want to redeem.”
“It’s not about forgetting the wounds of the past, but about recognizing and acting to repair them, rebuild and, thus, work together for peace,” Yamamura added to AFP.
The bishop also sees in it a message for everyone, shaken by multiple conflicts and released to a vertiginous arms race.
The restoration project was carried out by an American university professor whose grandfather participated as a doctor in the Manhattan project, which gave rise to the atomic bombs of the Second World War.
James Nolan, teacher of Sociology at Massachusetts, raised $ 125,000 in the United States.
The two atomic bombings gave the coup of grace to Japanwhich surrendered on August 15, 1945, ending the second great war.
However, historians continue to discuss whether these attacks really allowed more lives to save by accelerating the end of the conflict, in front of the Calvary of the “Hibakusha”, as the survivors of the bomb are known victims of discrimination and exposed to a greater risk of developing certain types of cancer.
