On August 6, 1945, shortly before the end of World War II, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. There were 140,000 deaths. Three days later, a second American bomb hit Nagasaki, killing about 74,000 people. The two atomic attacks led to Japan's surrender on September 2 of that year.
For almost eight decades, on August 6 and 9, solemn events are held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to remember the atrocious bombing, observe a minute of silence for the victims, and for Japanese politicians to appeal to world leaders for nuclear disarmament.
Every year, hundreds of ambassadors and diplomats from around the world attend these events. Last Tuesday, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, foreign guests participated in a solemn ceremony alongside local authorities and hibakusha, the bombing survivors still alive.
This Friday, a similar event was held in Nagasaki attended by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. But unlike the quiet commemorations in Hiroshima, controversy reigned in Nagasaki due to the boycott by high foreign representatives of the G-7 countries after the city's mayor excluded the Israeli ambassador from the event.
"It's not that we didn't send an invitation to the Israeli ambassador for political reasons, but we wanted to carry out the ceremony smoothly, in a peaceful and solemn atmosphere," said Shiro Suzuki, Nagasaki's mayor on Thursday, expressing concerns that protests against the conflict in the Middle East could affect the ceremony's solemnity.
The decision was applauded by part of the Japanese press, very critical of the massacre by Israeli forces in Gaza.
In Japanese social media, there was also strong support for Nagasaki authorities' determination to list Israel as one of the countries not invited, along with Russia and Belarus. The Israeli ambassador to Japan, Gilad Cohen, did attend this week's ceremony in Hiroshima despite pressure from local activists and bomb survivors' groups calling for Israel's exclusion from the event due to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
"The invasion of Ukraine by Russia and Israel's self-defense are not morally equivalent," stated U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, before announcing he would not attend the Nagasaki event. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and the European Union also protested the exclusion of Israel from the city's atomic bombing commemoration.
"The lack of invitation places Israel on the same level as countries like Russia and Belarus," wrote spokespersons from these countries in a joint letter addressed to the city's mayor. None of the G-7 ambassadors (except Japan) attended a ceremony with 2,300 participants, including representatives from around 100 nations.
In a peace declaration during the event, Mayor Suzuki called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, citing ongoing concerns about their potential use due to increasing geopolitical uncertainty, although he did not directly mention Israel or Palestine.
"Amid the uncertainty of when the Russian invasion of Ukraine will end and concerns about the expansion of armed conflicts in the Middle East, we are currently facing a critical situation with an increasing likelihood of the important norm we have respected so far on the non-use of nuclear weapons disappearing," he said.
Attendees bowed their heads and observed a moment of silence at 11:02 a.m., the exact time when the "Fat Man" bomb was dropped by an American bomber and devastated this city in southwestern Japan.
Japanese leader Kishida also spoke at the event, urging Nagasaki to be "the last city to experience atomic weapons." One of the bomb survivors, 89-year-old Seiichiro Mise, publicly demanded the abolition of these weapons.
"When we look at the international situation, we see that wars like those in Ukraine and Palestine continue instead of ending, and many children are losing their lives," Mise stated. "With this sad reality before our eyes, we cannot turn away from the stupidity of war."