Restored Nagasaki bell rings in 80 years since A-bomb

Twin Cathedral Bells have met for the first time in Nagasaki, Japan, commemorating the moment of fear since the atomic bombing of the city 80 years ago.

On August 9, 1945, he left an atomic bomb to Nagasaki at 11:02 hours after a nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

After heavy torrential rains on Saturday morning, Yağmur stopped shortly before a silence and ceremony that Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki called the world “immediately stopped armed conflicts”.

“Eighty years have passed, and who could imagine that the world would be like this?

“A crisis that can threaten the survival of humanity like a nuclear war is approaching each of us living on this planet.”

Approximately 74,000 people were killed in more than 140,000 southwest Port City killed in Hiroshima.

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

Historians argued whether the bombings were ultimately saving life by ending the conflict and preventing them from invading a place.

– ‘invisible terror’ –

However, these calculations meant stamping, many of whom were struggling with decimal physical and psychological trauma, and often a Hibakusha.

The ninety -three -year -old survivor Hiroshi Nishioka, who was only three kilometers (1.8 miles) from the point where the bomb exploded, told the participants of the ceremony as a young teenager.

“Even those who are lucky (not seriously injured) slowly began to bleed from the gums and lose their hair and died one after another.”

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

Nagasaki resident Atsuko Higuchi told AFP, “He made him happy.”

“Instead of thinking that these events belong to the past, we must remember that these are real events.” He said.

On Saturday, 200-300 people who joined Mass at Nagasaki’s Immaculate Concept Cathedral heard that two bells played for the first time since 1945.

One of them said that he was waiting because he was a young man to hear the bells to come together.

The restoration said, “The symbol of reconciliation,” it flows down because of tears.

On a hill, the twin bell towers and the imposing red brick cathedral were rebuilt in 1959 after it was almost completely destroyed in the terrible explosion, just a few hundred meters away.

Only one of the two bells was rescued from the rubble and left the North Tower silent.

A new bell was built with the funds of the US Churchgoers and was restored to the tower and the president on Saturday when the bomb fell.

– ‘Working together for peace’ –

Kenichi Yamamura, the priest of the cathedral, said to AFP, not to forget the wounds of the past, but to take action to recognize and repair and rebuild them and to work together for peace while doing so. “

He also sees the bells as a message to the world, shaken by multiple conflicts and caught a crazy new arms race.

Approximately 100 countries will attend this year’s commemoration ceremonies, including Russia, which has not been invited since 2022 Ukraine invasion.

Israel, who was not invited to the war in Gaza last year, joined Israel.

An American University Professor who participated in the Manhattan project, which developed his first nuclear weapons, pioneered the Bell project.

During his research in Nagasaki, a Japanese Christian said he wanted to hear the two bells of the cathedral ring together throughout his life.

James Nolan, a professor of sociology at Williams College in Massachusetts, inspired by the idea, started a series of conferences on the atomic bombs in the United States, especially in churches, in the United States.

– ‘Tears’ –

He managed to collect $ 125,000 from American Catholics to finance the new bell.

Nolan was introduced in Nagasaki in spring, “The reactions were great. The word literally had tears,” Nolan said.

Many American Catholic he met was unaware of the painful history of Nagasaki’s Christians, which were transformed by the first European missionaries in the 16th century and then persecuted by the Japanese shoguns.

This story was described in Shusaku Endo’s “Silence” novel and was adapted to a film by Martin Scorsese in 2016.

He explains that the American Catholics showed “compassion and sadness” after hearing the determination of Nagasaki’s Christians after the atomic bomb that killed 8,500 of the congregation’s 12,000 loyalty.

They were inspired by the desire to “forgive and rebuild.”

MAC -BUR -PH/DJW