General News

U.S. Envoy to Skip Nagasaki Peace Ceremony as Israeli Ambassador Not Invited to Event

Yomiuri Shimbun file photo
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel

Jiji Press

19:03 JST, August 7, 2024

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel will not attend an annual peace ceremony to be held in the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki on Friday, sources at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said Wednesday. On behalf of Emanuel, Chuka Asike, principal officer at the U.S. Consulate in Fukuoka, near Nagasaki, will take part in the ceremony to mark the 79th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki, according to the sources.

British Ambassador to Japan Julia Longbottom said Tuesday that she would miss the ceremony because Israeli　Ambassador to Japan Gilad Cohen was not invited to the event amid the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas. The United States, a key ally of Israel, is set to follow the British move.. Both Emanuel and Longbottom attended this year’s peace ceremony in Hiroshima on Tuesday to mourn victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of the western Japan city 79 years ago. The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later, in the closing days of World War II. Emanuel will skip the Nagasaki ceremony in order to avoid politicizing the event, a U.S.　embassy official said.

The ambassador will instead attend a memorial event for Nagasaki atomic bomb victims to be held at the Zojoji temple in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on Friday. According to the embassy, the United States has sent a government representative to the Nagasaki ceremony since 2011. Emanuel attended the event in 2022 after assuming office early that year, but was absent last year due to a typhoon.

Israel has been involved in fierce fighting with Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, with a number of civilians having been killed in the conflict. Nagasaki invited Palestine to this year’s ceremony, but not Israel, out of concerns over the event not being conducted smoothly. Neither Nagasaki nor Hiroshima invited Russia, which continues its military aggression against Ukraine, to their 2024 peace ceremonies.