Also Read
Nagasaki’s mayor on Saturday appealed for an end to ongoing wars and warned of the growing risk of nuclear conflict on the 80th anniversary of its destruction by a United States atomic bomb.
“Conflicts around the world are intensifying in a vicious cycle of confrontation and fragmentation,” Mayor Shiro Suzuki said in a peace declaration at a solemn ceremony. “If we continue on this trajectory, we will end up thrusting ourselves into a nuclear war.”
Thousands bowed their heads in prayer at Nagasaki Peace Memorial Park to remember the victims of the August 9, 1945 bombing.
At exactly 11:02 am, the time the plutonium-239 bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” exploded over the city, a moment of silence was observed.
The 10,000-pound weapon instantly killed an estimated 27,000 of the city’s 200,000 residents.
By the end of 1945, the death toll from acute radiation exposure had reached about 70,000.
In the following years, many survivors suffered from leukaemia and other severe radiation-related illnesses.
Nagasaki’s destruction came three days after Hiroshima was devastated by a uranium-235 bomb on August 6, 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people.
The Nagasaki bomb, larger and more powerful than the Hiroshima device, wiped out entire communities in seconds.
Japan surrendered on August 15, bringing an end to World War II.
Mayor Suzuki urged world leaders to return to the principles of the United Nations Charter and present a clear path to abolishing nuclear weapons, warning that further delay was “no longer permissible”.
Calling the current global situation “a crisis of human survival”, he said, “This is closing in on each and every one of us.”
He recounted the words of a survivor: “Around me were people whose eyeballs had popped out... Bodies were strewn about like stones.”
He asked whether it was not this “global citizen” perspective that could help stitch together a “fragmented world” through mutual understanding and solidarity.
The US military is believed to have selected Nagasaki for its importance as a major industrial and port city, with its hilly terrain expected to concentrate the bomb’s destructive force.
Representatives from 95 countries and territories attended the commemoration, including the United States, Israel, Russia and other nuclear powers.
