NAGASAKI: Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki stressed the importance of achieving the abolition of nuclear weapons Friday, the 79th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the southwestern Japan city.

The humanitarian norm of never using a nuclear weapon again has been shaken, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragging on and the Middle East situation becoming tense, Suzuki said in this year’s Nagasaki Peace Declaration.

This year’s memorial ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, representatives from a record 100 countries including nuclear powers, hibakusha atomic bomb survivors and bereaved families.

The city of Nagasaki did not invite representatives of Russia, Belarus and Israel.

The exclusion of Israel led all of Japan’s Group of Seven partner countries–Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United States–to stop their ambassadors to Japan from attending Friday’s ceremony, casting a dark shadow over the event to pray for peace.

On Aug. 9, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, thus “completely devastating loving families,” Suzuki said in the declaration, quoting a poem by Sumako Fukuda, a poet from Nagasaki, who highlighted the misery caused by atomic bombings as a hibakusha survivor.

The mayor said that hibakusha survivors suffer from symptoms and hardships due to their exposure to radiation throughout their lifetime.

He expressed concerns over the possibility of a conflict like those occurring in the world escalating into a nuclear war, which would have a devastating impact.

“That is why the abolition of nuclear weapons is an absolute requirement for the survival of humankind,” Suzuki stressed.

He called on nuclear powers and countries under the nuclear umbrella to “make a brave shift toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.”

Suzuki urged the government of Japan, the only country that experienced nuclear bombings in war, to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Seiichiro Mise, an 89-year-old hibakusha representative, read out a pledge for peace, followed by a speech by Kishida.

The prime minister said he will lead the international community’s efforts to realize a world without nuclear weapons while upholding the three nonnuclear principles of not possessing or making nuclear weapons or allowing them to be brought into Japan. He did not refer to the international treaty.

A name list of 3,200 sufferers of the Nagasaki atomic bombing newly confirmed dead in the year to the end of July was placed in a memorial monument. Their addition raised the total death toll in Nagasaki to 198,785.

Participants in the event offered a moment of silence at 11:02 a.m., the exact time when the U.S. bomb was dropped 79 years ago. Three days earlier in 1945, the United States attacked the western city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb.

JIJI Press