In Nagasaki, the restored bell of the cathedral rings to commemorate the eighty years of the atomic bomb

Eighty years after the atomic explosion which struck Nagasaki, a minute of silence was observed on Saturday August 9, at the time of the atomic explosion which struck the port city, during a ceremony during which the restored bell of the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Nagasaki resounded for the first time since the strike.

On August 9, 1945 at 11:02 a.m., three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki in turn suffered the horror of a nuclear bomb. About 74,000 people died in this southwest port city in the country, adding the 140,000 victims of Hiroshima. The cathedral had been blown by the bomb and only one of the two bells had been saved; The north bell tower had remained empty.

“Eighty years have passed, and who could have imagined that the world would become like this?” Please immediately stop armed conflicts! »»urged the city mayor, Shiro Suzuki, in front of an audience of representatives of more than 100 countries, a record. “The clashes are intensifying in various places. A crisis likely to threaten the survival of humanity, like a nuclear war, hovers over each of us ”added the councilor, while the strong showers of the morning stopped just before the time of meditation.

Among the participants were Russia, who had not been invited since his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Israel, whose ambassador had not been invited last year, officially for security reasons in connection with the conflict in Gaza, was also present. His absence had caused the boycott of the ceremony by the ambassadors of the other G7 countries.

Hiroshi Nishioka, a 93 -year -old survivor who was just 3 kilometers from the atomic epicenter, testified before all the participants of the teenage horror: “Even the lucky [qui n’étaient pas gravement blessés] gradually started to bleed gums and lose their hair, and they died one after the otherhe remembered. Even if the war was over, the atomic bomb brought invisible terror. »»

A strong symbol of reconciliation and hope

Symbol of this commemoration, the bell of the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, a building built in 1895 in the Urakami district of Nagasaki by French priests and destroyed by the atomic explosion, sounded for the first time for eighty years after being restored by American Christians and reinstalled in the cathedral, rebuilt in 1959. Principal of the cathedral, Kenichi Yamamura, this restoration “Shows the greatness of the human being, the proof that people belonging to the camp who injured another one day want to redeem themselves”.

The bell restoration project was piloted by James Nolan, professor of sociology in Massachusetts, whose grandfather had participated as a doctor in the Manhattan project, at the origin of the atomic bombs of the Second World War. He collected $ 125,000 (just over 107,200 euros) in the United States.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the grace of grace in Japan, which capitulated on August 15, 1945, ending the Second World War. Historians continue to debate to find out if these bombings have really saved more lives by precipitating the end of the conflict.