長崎平和公園 | |
32°46′33″N129°51′48″E / 32.7757°N 129.8632°E | |
Location | Nagasaki, Japan |
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Designer | Seibo Kitamura |
Type | International Memorial Park |
Height | 10 metres (33 ft) |
Opening date | April 1, 1955 |
Dedicated to | Victims of the atomic bomb explosion on August 9, 1945 |
Nagasaki Peace Park is a park located in Nagasaki, Japan, commemorating the atomic bombing of the city on August 9, 1945 during World War II. It is next to the Atomic Bomb Museum and near the Peace Memorial Hall.
Established in 1955, and near to the hypocenter of the explosion, remnants of a concrete wall of Urakami Cathedral can still be seen. Urakami Cathedral was the grandest church in east Asia at the time. At the park's north end is the 10-meter-tall Peace Statue created by sculptor Seibo Kitamura of Nagasaki Prefecture. The statue's right hand points to the threat of nuclear weapons while the extended left hand symbolizes eternal peace. The mild face symbolizes divine grace and the gently closed eyes offer a prayer for the repose of the bomb victims' souls. The folded right leg and extended left leg signify both meditation and the initiative to stand up and rescue the people of the world. The statue represents a mixture of western and eastern art, religion, and ideology. Installed in front of the statue is a black marble vault containing the names of the atomic bomb victims and survivors who died in subsequent years.
A plaque by the Peace Statue is titled Words from the Sculptor and reads:
After experiencing that nightmarish war,
that blood-curdling carnage,
that unendurable horror,
Who could walk away without praying for peace?
This statue was created as a signpost in the
struggle for global harmony.
Standing ten meters tall,
it conveys the profundity of knowledge and
the beauty of health and virility.
The right hand points to the atomic bomb,
the left hand points to peace,
and the face prays deeply for the victims of war.
Transcending the barriers of race
and evoking the qualities of Buddha and God,
it is a symbol of the greatest determination
ever known in the history of Nagasaki
and the highest hope of all mankind.— Seibo Kitamura (Spring 1955)
A plaque at the nearby hypocenter gives the following account and statistics of the damage caused that day.
At 11:02 A.M., August 9, 1945 an atomic bomb exploded 500 meters above this spot. The black stone monolith marks the hypocenter.
The fierce blast wind, heat rays reaching several thousand degrees and deadly radiation generated by the explosion crushed, burned, and killed everything in sight and reduced this entire area to a barren field of rubble.
About one-third of Nagasaki City was destroyed and 150,000 people killed or injured and it was said at the time that this area would be devoid of vegetation for 75 years. Now, the hypocenter remains as an international peace park and a symbol of the aspiration for world harmony.
1. Leveled Area: | 6.7 million square meters (2.59 square miles) |
2. Damaged Houses: | |
Completely burned: | 11,574 |
Completely destroyed: | 1,326 |
Badly damaged: | 5,509 |
Total structures damaged: | 18,409 |
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3. Casualties: | |
Killed: | 73,884 |
Injured: | 74,909 |
Total: | 148,793 |
(Large numbers of people have died in the following years from the effects of radioactive poisoning.)
Every year, on 9 August, the anniversary of the atomic bombing, a Peace Memorial Ceremony is held in front of the statue and the Mayor of Nagasaki delivers a Peace Declaration to the World. [1]
At the south end of the park is a "Fountain of Peace". This was constructed in August, 1969, as a prayer for the repose of the souls of the many atomic bomb victims who died searching for water, and as a dedication to world peace. Lines from a poem by a girl named Sachiko Yamaguchi, who was nine at the time of the bombing, are carved on a black stone plaque in front of the fountain. It reads: "I was thirsty beyond endurance. There was something oily on the surface of the water, but I wanted water so badly that I drank it just as it was."
In 2024, on the eve of the 79th anniversary of the bombing, ambassadors from all members of the G7 as well as the European Union announced that they will be skipping the ceremony due to Israel's exclusion, instead sending representatives, citing fears of politicization of the ceremony in light of the ongoing Israel–Hamas war. [2] [3] The Mayor of Nagasaki City, Shiro Suzuki, justified his decision to exclude Israel (as well as Russia and Belarus, who are involved in the invasion of Ukraine) in an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun stating that "something might happen if we invite participants of a conflict where the ceremony cannot proceed peacefully and solemnly". [4] This was in contrast to Hiroshima City which had invited the Israeli Ambassador to its ceremony held three days prior. [5] [6]
Of the G7 members' ambassadors that skipped the 2024 ceremony, the British and American ambassadors, together with the Israeli Ambassador, attended a memorial service on that day held at Zojoji in Tokyo. [7]
In 1978 the city of Nagasaki established a "Peace Symbols Zone" on both sides of the park and invited donations of monuments from countries round the world. The following monuments can be seen in the park:
The Monument for Korean Atomic Victims is located in Nagasaki Peace Park in Nagasaki, Japan. At the time of the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, there were many people of nationalities other than Japanese that were living in the area. There were an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 Koreans living in Nagasaki during the bombing. It is believed that up to 2,000 of them died because of the atomic bomb. At the time, many of those Koreans were being used as forced labor as a part of the Japanese war effort. This monument commemorates the Korean victims and serves as a message asking for peace in the world, an abolition of nuclear weapons, and a peaceful reunification of the Korean nation. The Monument for Korean Atomic Victims was unveiled on August 9, 1979.
The park was shown in the 1991 Akira Kurosawa film Rhapsody in August , in which a Japanese child points out that there is no sculpture in the Peace Symbols Zone from the United States. [9] "Constellation Earth" was donated in 1992, a year after the film's release, after this omission was noted by St. Paul mayor James Schiebel during a trip to Nagasaki in 1990. [10]
Nagasaki, officially known as Nagasaki City, is the capital and the largest city of the Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. As of June 1, 2019, the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has been the city's mayor since April 2011. The Hiroshima metropolitan area is the second largest urban area in the Chugoku Region of Japan, following the Okayama metropolitan area.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, and now commonly called the Genbaku Dome, Atomic Bomb Dome or A-Bomb Dome, is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who became a victim of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. She was two years of age when the bombs were dropped and was severely irradiated. She survived for another ten years, becoming one of the most widely known hibakusha—a Japanese term meaning "bomb-affected person". She is remembered through the story of the more than one thousand origami cranes she folded before her death. She died at the age of 12 on October 25, 1955, at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.
Peace Park is a park located in the University District of Seattle, Washington, at the corner of Northeast 40th Street and 9th Avenue Northeast, at the northern end of the University Bridge. Its construction was conceived and led by Floyd Schmoe, winner of the 1988 Hiroshima Peace Prize, and dedicated on August 6, 1990, 45 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Hibakusha is a word of Japanese origin generally designating the people affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of World War II.
Takashi Nagai was a Japanese Catholic physician specializing in radiology, an author, and a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. His subsequent life of prayer and service earned him the affectionate title "saint of Urakami".
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is a memorial park in the center of Hiroshima, Japan. It is dedicated to the legacy of Hiroshima as the first city in the world to suffer a nuclear attack at the end of World War II, and to the memories of the bomb's direct and indirect victims. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is visited by more than one million people each year. The park is there in memory of the victims of the nuclear attack on August 6, 1945, in which the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was planned and designed by the Japanese Architect Kenzō Tange at Tange Lab.
The Children's Peace Monument is a monument for peace to commemorate Sadako Sasaki and the thousands of child victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This monument is located in Hiroshima, Japan. Sadako Sasaki, a young girl, died of leukemia from radiation of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony is an annual Japanese vigil.
Peace Boulevard is one of the main streets in Hiroshima, Japan, which faces the south side of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims is one of the National Memorial Halls in Hiroshima, Japan.
The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum is in the city of Nagasaki, Japan. The museum is a remembrance to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the United States on 9 August 1945 at 11:02:35 am. Next to the museum is the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, built in 2003. The bombing marked a new era in war, making Nagasaki a symbolic location for a memorial. The counterpart in Hiroshima is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. These locations symbolize the nuclear age, remind visitors of the vast destruction and indiscriminate death caused by nuclear weapons, and signify a commitment to peace.
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan and invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria. The Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender on 2 September, effectively ending the war.
The Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims is a commemorative monument in Nagasaki, Japan, situated next to its Atomic Bomb Museum. The Peace Park is nearby.
Urakami Station is a railway station in Kawaguchi-chō, Nagasaki, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. It is operated by JR Kyushu and is on the Nagasaki Main Line. It is the station where the old line and new line sections of the Nagasaki Line intersect. In front of the station is the Urakami Ekimae stop on the Nagasaki Electric Tramway.
Seibo Kitamura was a Japanese sculptor. He is known as the sculptor of the 10-meter-tall Peace Statue in Nagasaki Peace Park. He is most often referred to as "Seibo".
The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, often shortened to Nihon Hidankyō, is a group that represents survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was formed in 1956.
The Statue of Peace, often shortened to Sonyeosang in Korean or Shōjo-zō in Japanese and sometimes called the Comfort Woman Statue, is a symbol of the victims of sexual slavery, known euphemistically as comfort women, by the Japanese military during World War II. The Statue of Peace was first erected in Seoul to urge the Japanese government to apologize to and honour the victims. However, it has since become a site of representational battles among different parties.
Julia Longbottom is a British diplomat and the current Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Japan since March 2021. She is the first woman ambassador to represent the United Kingdom in Tokyo.