Nagasaki Mayor warns of a nuclear war 80 years after Nagasaki

Nagasaki’s mayor appealed to end the wars raging in the world of the 80th anniversary of the attack on the US nuclear bomb that destroyed the Japanese city.

“Conflicts around the world are intensified in a vicious cycle of confrontation and fragmentation,” Shiro Suzuki said in a declaration of peace at a solemn ceremony to celebrate the event.

“If we continue on this trajectory, we will eventually run into a nuclear war.”

The August 9, 1945 attack, which analysts claimed to have accelerated the end of World War II, killed approximately 74,000.

In the years that followed, many survivors suffer from leukemia or other severe side effects of radiation.

The ceremony on Saturday came a few days after the remembrance of the first nuclear bombing aimed at the Japanese city of Hiroshima 80 years ago on August 6, killing approximately 140,000 people.

Nagasaki’s bomb, more and more powerful, erased entire communities in seconds.

Remembrance in the restored city began with a moment of silence.

The cathedrals of the Cathedral of Nagasaki also called for the first time after the attack, in a message of peace to the world.

As part of the ceremony on Saturday, the proposals of the water were made in a moving and symbolic gesture – 80 years ago casualties whose skin burned after the explosion had asked for water.

Today, participants in different generations, including a representative of the survivors, offered water to show respect for those who died in nuclear fire.

“On August 9, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped in this city,” Suzuki said in the declaration.

“Now, 80 years of this day, who could possibly imagine that our world will become like that? Immediately cease from disputes in which” Power is met with power. “

The bomb -survivor Hiroshi Nishioka, 93 -year -old, who was only 3 km (1.8 miles) from where he exploded, said at the horror ceremony he witnessed.

“Even the lucky ones (who were not seriously injured) gradually began to bleed from their gums and lose their hair, and one after the other they died,” he said, quoted by AFP News Agency.

“Although the war was over, the atomic bomb brought an invisible terror.”

Nagasaki’s resident Atsuko Higuchi, 50 years old, told AFP that he “made her happy” that the casualties of the city are remembered.

“Instead of thinking that these events belong to the past, we must remember that these are the real events that took place,” she added.

Among the bloodiest conflicts that are currently raging in the world are the war between Russia and Ukraine and the one between Israel and the Gaza-based group Hamas.

There was A dispute last year when Nagasaki refused to invite Israel Until the annual commemoration, citing security fears.

This year the mayor said Israel was invited as well as Russia and its ally Belarus which was diverted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

An international agreement prohibiting nuclear weapons, the Treaty of Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force in 2021.

More than 70 countries have ratified the treaty, but nuclear forces have opposed it, arguing their law on nuclear arsenals as deterrent.

Japan also rejected the ban, saying his security was improved by US nuclear weapons.