Since the atomic bombing 80 years ago, the bells of the Double Cathedral rang in Nagasaki, Japan on Saturday in Nagasaki, Japan, a time to commemorate the horror.
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After the downpour on Saturday morning, the rain stopped for a moment, and during a period of silence and ceremony, Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki urged the world to “stop armed conflict immediately.”
“Eighty years have passed, who can imagine that the world will be like this?
“A crisis that could threaten human existence, such as nuclear war, is looming over the people we all live on this planet.”
About 74,000 people were killed in the southwest of the port city, of which 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima.
A few days later, on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, marking the end of World War II.
Historians debate whether the explosion ultimately saves lives by ending conflict and avoiding ground invasions.
– “Invisible Terror” –
But these calculations mean little to survivors, many of whom struggled with decades of physical and psychological trauma, and often hibakusha’s stigma.
Ninety-three-year-old survivor Hiroshi Nishioka, just 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from where the bomb exploded, told the ceremony that he had witnessed his young teenager.
“Even the lucky ones (the lucky ones who were not seriously injured) gradually began to bleed from their gums and lose their hair, and then died one after another.”
“Even if the war is over, the atomic bomb brings invisible horror.”
Nagasaki resident Atsuko Higuchi told AFP it “has made her happy” that everyone will remember the city’s victims.
” Rather than believing that these events belong to the past, we must remember that these events are real events that happened,” the 50-year-old said.
Since 1945, 200-300 people attending Mass at the Immortal Cathedral of Nagasaki’s Immortal Sin has heard two bells.
One of them is Akio Watanabe, 61, who said he has been waiting since he was a child and they listened to the bells together.
He said recovery was a “symbol of reconciliation” and tears flowed down his face.
The magnificent red brick cathedral and its double bell tower topped by the mountain, after being rebuilt in 1959, was destroyed in a huge explosion almost a few hundred meters away.
Only one of its two bells was recovered from the rubble, silenced the tower to the north.
With the help of American Church funds, a new bell was built and the tower was restored and the moment the bomb fell, chatted on Saturday.
– “Working together for peace” –
“It’s not about forgetting the wounds of the past, but about recognizing them and taking action to repair and rebuild and work together for peace,” Kenichi Yamamura, chief pastor of the cathedral, told AFP.
He also saw the sound of the bell as a message to the world, shaken by multiple conflicts and fell into a crazy new arms race.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, nearly 100 countries will participate in this year’s commemoration, including Russia.
Israel’s ambassador was not invited to attend last year during the Gaza War.
The grandfather of an American university professor participated in the Manhattan project, which developed the first nuclear weapon and led the Bell Project.
In Nagasaki’s study, a Japanese Christian told him that he wanted to hear two bells of the cathedral ring together throughout his life.
Inspired by this idea, James Nolan, a professor of sociology at Williams College in Massachusetts, began a year-long lecture on the American atomic bomb, mainly in churches in the United States.
– “Tears” –
He managed to raise $125,000 from American Catholics to fund the new bell.
When it unveiled in Nagasaki in spring, Nolan said, “the reaction was grand. Some people cried.”
Many American Catholics he met were also unaware of the painful history of Nagasaki’s Christians, who were converted in the 16th century by the first European missionary and then persecuted by the Japanese shogun, keeping their faith alive for more than 250 years.
The story is told in Shusaku endo’s novel Silence and is adapted into a 2016 film by Martin Scorsese.
He explained that American Catholics also showed “sympathy and grief” when they heard the perseverance of Nagasaki Christians following the atomic bomb, which caused 8,500 of the 12,000 faithful bombs in the parish.
Their inspiration was from the willingness to “forgive and rebuild.”
Mac-Bur-aph/djw
