US boycotts Nagasaki memorials in protest over Israel’s denial
▲ Students form a human chain during a ceremony for those killed in the bombing of the United States in 1945.Afp Photo
Xinhua, Europa Press, Sputnik and Prensa Latina
The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, August 10, 2024, p. 23
Tokyo. Japan yesterday paid tribute to the victims of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki 79 years ago, at an event that was not attended by the ambassadors of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy or the European Union due to the exclusion of the Israeli ambassador.
Tokyo argued that the Tel Aviv representative was not invited to avoid incidents related to the war in Gaza. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller justified the diplomat’s absence by saying: We thought it was important that the Israeli ambassador be invited, as have been representatives of other countries; that no nation should have been singled out for not attending this celebration..
Japanese MP Muneo Suzuki called the US-led absence unfair. “If they tell the mayor of Nagasaki that if he doesn’t invite Israel, ‘we won’t go either,’ then they should bear in mind that Russia and Belarus were not invited either. The G7 ambassadors, starting with the US, should declare that it is not fair and that they would boycott the Hiroshima ceremony. That way a fair balance will be maintained,” the MP said.
At 11:02, the exact local time of the explosion on August 9, 1945, when an American plane dropped the plutonium-core bomb – nicknamed Fat Man–, A minute of silence was observed and then offerings of flowers and water were placed in memory of the deceased and the survivors.
Water is a symbol of that moment, as survivors desperately asked for it to quench the thirst generated by so many internal and external burns.
Nearly 70,000 Japanese died in Nagasaki in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, but hundreds of thousands of residents – mostly women and children – died later from radiation exposure.
Three days earlier, on August 6, similar horrors and consequences were experienced in the city of Hiroshima.
Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki has demanded that the Japanese government sign and ratify a U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons, and called for Japan to lead discussions to ease tensions and advance disarmament in Northeast Asia.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to lead international efforts to promote nuclear disarmament, so that Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only two cities in the world to have suffered such a tragedy.
The tribute took place in front of the Statue of Peace, located near the epicenter of the explosion.
Following an annual tradition, a declaration of peace was read and an updated list of victims, with the names of survivors who died in the past 12 months, was posted at the memorial.
The death toll from the Nagasaki tragedy now stands at 198,785.
The decision of the United States to drop atomic bombs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the war was almost won by the Allies, has been questioned by numerous historians.