Nagasaki church bells ring again after atomic bombing

NAGASAKI, Japan (AFP) — Twin cathedral bells rang in unison Saturday in Japan’s Nagasaki for the first time since the atomic bombing of the city 80 years ago, commemorating the moment of horror.

On 9 August 1945, at 11:02 a.m., three days after a nuclear attack on Hiroshima, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

After heavy downpours 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?”

“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 southwestern port city, on top of the 140,000 killed in Hiroshima.

Days later, on 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, marking the end of World War II.

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, many of whom battled decades of physical and psychological trauma, as well as the stigma that often came with being a hibakusha.

Ninety-three-year-old survivor Hiroshi Nishioka, who was just three kilometers from the spot where the bomb exploded, told ceremony attendees of the horror he witnessed as a young teenager.

“Even the lucky ones (who were not severely injured) gradually began to bleed from their gums and lose their hair, and one after another they died,” he recalled.

“Even though the war was over, the atomic bomb brought invisible terror.”