In the post-Nagasaki world, we’re still struggling to find global peace

In the largest city on the island of Kyushu in Japan, many thousands have been gathering today to remember the dreadful events that occurred there 79 years ago. It started out as a relatively ordinary day in Nagasaki but at 08:15am local time an American B-29 bomber, Call sign Dimples 82, flying some 31,000ft above the city released a bomb containing about 64kg of uranium-235. 44.4 seconds later the bomb exploded at 1,900ft, releasing the equivalent energy of 16 kilotons of TNT.

Some 70,000 unsuspecting civilians were evaporated in an instant, and the total destructive force of the bomb extended across more than four square miles. Over the subsequent days and months many thousands more continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. In all it is estimated that this – and the bombing of Hiroshima three days before – killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people.

History records that the Japanese Prime Minister Baron Kantarō Suzuki told his country to fight on after the first bomb, and was only forced to declare a surrender after the second. As it happened, between the two bombings the Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan on 8th August, and poured more than one million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army. So other factors may have been at play in the Japanese decision to surrender.

It’s also a largely forgotten fact of history that, under the Quebec Agreement, signed consent from the UK was required and given to the atomic bombings, and two further Japanese cities – Kokura and Niigata were also being lined up for annihilation.

Three quarters of a century on from those dreadful events the annual peace commemorations that take place in Nagasaki every 9th August have served as a solemn and desperately poignant reminder of so many things that are flawed in human nature, not least our capacity for destruction and our seemingly eternal inability to talk through and settle our differences.

For decades afterwards, and especially as the dreadful stories of the effects of the blasts on survivors emerged, it became known as the moment when a ‘blinding flash’ changed almost everything that the world had taken for granted. Humanity had entered the nuclear age and had finally come to realise the destructive power that now lay in its hands.

The post-Nagasaki world has been littered with annual promises that we will never again repeat such dreadful acts of inhumanity, yet every year the world is blighted by new conflicts and ever more barbarous accounts of the destruction of our fellow human beings. The violent incidents and ruthless destruction of innocent human lives that is occurring daily in Gaza and Ukraine, in Sudan, to the Yazidis and other religious minorities in northern Iraq, to Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, the genocide of the Uyghurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – the list just goes on and on, and is getting longer with every passing year.

In the face of this, the commemorations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki have long stood as reminders of the dreadful consequences of resorting to war to settle our differences, especially when many often unstable nations are still actively aspiring to join the nuclear arms race.

Here in the UK there has always been a strong and highly vocal opposition to the stockpiling and possible use of nuclear weapons. Unlike the recent street disturbances we’ve been witnessing across the UK, anti-nuclear protesting has of its nature always been a predominantly peaceful activity conducted within the framework of the law – but this has been in a country where up to now the government and its agencies have cherished freedom of speech and protest as much as the protagonists.

So much ink has been spilled over the recent riots – yet so few understandings have emerged about the underlying motives of those taking to the streets – that it hardly seems worth commenting further. Likely we would find that there are almost as many initiating motives as there are protestors, which is one of the main reasons why any government struggles to talk meaningfully to anyone when mass public disorder breaks out.

In this respect civil disorder and protest that is not pacified through dialogue, and especially civil disorder which is suppressed and stifled ruthlessly and indiscriminately, is sadly often a precursor to things far worse. It doesn’t take too much of a sideways glance to see worrisome similarities with what is going on right now on our streets and the government’s heavy-handed response to it, and what took place in Northern Ireland immediately prior to the ethno-nationalist Troubles.

To make matters worse, what we’re seeing right now on our streets is in many respects the converse of the Troubles, which emerged on the back of increasingly organised and focussed protests and demonstrations led by a new generation of politically aware and motivated young Catholics attempting to end blatant discrimination. What erupted in northern Ireland at the end of the 60s was about a call for more integration and equality of opportunity; what we’re seeing on our streets just now is something far darker and more divisive, but it’s growing as a result of exactly the same reluctance of politicians to engage with the narratives of opposing sections of our community who have genuine concerns about the peace and stability of British society.

Given that this kind of social and political upheaval is hitting the streets of many other countries too, you could forgive the Mayor of Nagasaki for being reticent that this year’s annual remembrance event should remain a stoic and dignified reminder of the futility and consequences of human conflict. So it was with such thoughts in mind that Mayor Shiro Suzuki (whose parents survived the bombing) made what he called the “difficult” decision not to invite Israel’s ambassador to this year’s event.

“After comprehensively considering the matter, including the risk that an unexpected situation may arise, I made the decision to refrain from inviting the Israeli ambassador,” Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said, according to Japanese media.

“We made a comprehensive decision not for political reasons … we want to conduct a smooth ceremony in a peaceful and solemn environment.”

It seems the concern was that pro-Palestinian protests might mar the ceremony, but it didn’t go un-noticed that three days earlier Hiroshima had had no such problem with the presence of the Israel’s ambassador to Japan, Gilad Cohen at its remembrance event – though her presence was met by some people protesting the Israel-Hamas war. It was also noted that back in June this year Mr Suzuki said that Nagasaki had sent a letter to the Israeli embassy calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza.

Sadly the snubbing of the Israeli ambassador has had exactly the kind of consequences that the Nagasaki narrative has historically cautioned against – the adoption of an unnecessarily contentious and uncompromising position that obliges other affected actors to respond, usually negatively.

Within hours of Mr Suzuki’s announcement a spokesperson for the British embassy in Tokyo told the BBC that ambassador Julia Longbottom would not be attending the ceremony in Nagasaki. Apparently Ambassador Longbottom felt that the decision not to invite Israel created an unfortunate and misleading equivalency with Russia and Belarus – the only other countries not invited to this year’s ceremony.

US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel quickly followed suit, saying that he thought Mayor Suzuki had made “a political decision, not one based on security.”

He said the snub drew “a moral equivalence between Russia and Israel – one country that invaded versus one country that was a victim of invasion.” Russia and ally Belarus have not been invited to either Nagasaki or Hiroshima since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“My attendance would respect that political judgment and political act. I cannot do that in good conscience,” Emanuel said.

The decision also spurred a backlash from France, Germany, Italy and Canada — and the EU, who had just last month written to Mr Suzuki warning that they would not attend if Israel was not invited.

It may seem a little sad that an event as poignant and iconic as the annual Nagasaki commemoration has been dragged into the grubby theatre of modern geopolitics, but unfortunately that just seems to be the way of the world. For all our efforts and proclamations about striving for global peace the world seems at times more divided and confrontational than ever – and the threat of nuclear annihilation hasn’t in any way diminished, despite repeated reminders about the horrors of August 1945.

Thankfully Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren’t just metaphors for pacifism and the futility of war. Although the death toll and suffering in both cities was almost too dreadful to imagine, there have been many other acts and consequences of war that have been equally destructive to human life and the common good. What makes these two cities such powerful examples of the potential goodness of humanity is not just the death toll of the innocents but the 118,000 hibakusha, as the survivors of the atomic bombs are known.

These unimaginably dignified souls survived the immediate effects of the blast but suffered dreadfully from radiation sickness, loss of family and friends and discrimination and social isolation. In spite of this they have been an example to the world as they tuned their personal tragedies into a lifelong struggle to promote peace, and a world free of nuclear weapons.

It is often said that our leaders may create the world in which we have to live, but it is ordinary people who have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Thus it is hardly ever the failure of ordinary people to talk that creates war and destruction, but the seeming inability of those who lead to put aside their false constructs of power and control in the greater interests of humanity and the common good.

Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and theologian

Pic: During a school trip to Nagasaki’s Peace Park, school boys and girls pose in front of the park’s famous Peace Statue.