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| Doves are leased over the peace statue in Nagasaki, during a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the US atomic bombing. Photograph: Kotaro Ueda/AP |
Twin cathedral bells rang in unison in Nagasaki for the first time in 80 years on Saturday, commemorating the moment the city was destroyed by an American atomic bomb.
The two bells rang out at Immaculate Conception cathedral, also called the Urakami cathedral, at 11.02am, the moment the bomb was dropped on 9 August 1945, three days after a nuclear attack on Hiroshima.
The imposing redbrick building, with its twin bell towers atop a hill, was rebuilt in 1959 after it was almost completely destroyed in the monstrous explosion just a few hundred metres away. Only one of its two bells was recovered from the rubble, leaving the northern tower silent. With funds from US churchgoers, a new bell was constructed and restored to the tower.
After heavy downpours on Saturday morning, the rain stopped shortly before a moment of silence and ceremony in which Nagasaki mayor Shiro Suzuki urged the world to “stop armed conflicts immediately”
“Eighty years have passed, and who could have imagined that the world would become like this?” he said. “A crisis that could threaten the survival of humanity, such as a nuclear war, is looming over each and every one of us living on this planet.”
About 74,000 people were killed in the south-western port city, on top of the 140,000 killed in Hiroshima.
Days later, on 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, marking the end of the second world war.
Historians
have debated whether the bombings ultimately saved lives by bringing an
end to the conflict and averting a ground invasion. But those
calculations meant little to survivors, known as hibakusha, many of whom battled decades of physical and psychological trauma, as well as stigma.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/09/nagasaki-japan-atomic-bomb-twin-bells-urakami-cathedral