The mayor of Nagasaki announced that the city would invite the representatives “of all countries” and the regions of the Peace Memorial marking the 80th anniversary of the city's atomic attack.
The invitation to the 157 countries and regions which have diplomatic missions in Japan will include Russia, Belarus and Israel, which were excluded last year.
Mayor Shiro Suzuki said he wanted all the representatives to see the brutal consequences of the use of atomic weapons as a lesson at a time of increasing divisions and conflicts.
The United States abandoned its second atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, three days after Hiroshima's first bombing, killing more than 210,000 people together.
Japan went on August 15, ending the Second World War and its almost half-century of aggression across Asia.
Suzuki said his city is coming back to his “fundamental goal” of the ceremony, to cry the victims of the atomic bomb and pray for sustainable world peace.
“We want to go beyond national borders, overcome ideological differences and all other divisions so that world representatives meet in Nagasaki,” he said.
He added: “To a time of worsening of the divisions of international society, I feel more strongly than ever of the importance for representatives of all countries to participate in the peace memorial of Nagasaki and to learn the atrocious and inhuman results of the use of nuclear weapons through their own eyes, ears and hearts.”
Suzuki did not invite Israel on the anniversary of 2024, invoking the concern of “unpredictable situations” such as violent demonstrations against the Gaza War disturbing the Memorial.
But the exclusion of Israel has aroused criticism and a boycott of the United States ambassadors and the five other groups of seven nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Russia and its ally Bélarus have not been invited to the Nagasaki commemorative event since 2022 after the large -scale invasion of Moscow Ukraine.
Japan, although it is the only country in the world to have undergone nuclear attacks, is based on the American nuclear umbrella and its “prolonged deterrence” in the midst of an increasing tension in the region and supports the possession of atomic weapons for deterrence.
