US envoy skips Nagasaki memorial after Israel snub

Tokyo, Japan — AFP

The US ambassador to Japan skipped a ceremony on Friday marking the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in protest at Israel not being invited.

Rahm Emanuel instead attended a prayer meeting at a Tokyo temple with Israeli ambassador Gilad Cohen and Britain’s Julia Longbottom, who also boycotted the Nagasaki event.

On August 9, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people including many who survived the explosion but died later from radiation exposure.

The bomb fell three days after the first nuclear bomb hit Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people. Japan announced its surrender in World War II on August 15, 1945.

Former US ambassador John Roos in 2010 became the first American representative to attend the Hiroshima commemoration and followed suit in Nagasaki two years later.

Nagasaki’s mayor, Shiro Suzuki, has insisted that Cohen’s exclusion from the annual event in the southern Japanese city was “not political”.

Instead, it was to avoid possible protests over the Gaza conflict and ensure a “smooth ceremony in a peaceful and solemn environment.”

But Emanuel, former chief of staff for ex-president Barack Obama, rejected this.

“I think it was a political decision, not one based on security, given the prime minister (of Japan) is in attendance,” he told reporters after the ceremony at the Buddhist temple.

The snub drew “a moral equivalence between Russia and Israel — one country that invaded versus one country that was a victim of invasion,” he added.

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.

Cohen said: “On behalf of the state and the people of Israel, we extend our sympathy and stand by the victims of the Nagasaki A-bomb, their families and the people of Japan today.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Thursday defended Emanuel’s decision.

“I think our position on it and our respect for Japan when it comes to this anniversary is well-documented, and goes beyond — far beyond — the ambassador not attending one event,” Miller said.