US and UK to boycott Nagasaki bombing memorial after Israel disinvited
The American and British ambassadors to Japan have announced they will skip an upcoming ceremony commemorating the victims of the US’s 1945 atomic bombing because the city’s mayor did not invite the Israeli ambassador.
The Russian and Belarusian ambassadors have also been excluded from the event this Friday by Japanese authorities.
The Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony is intended to mark the 79th anniversary of the US atomic bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, with many more later dying from radiation poisoning.
The attacks in August 1945 preceded Japan’s unconditional surrender to the US and the end of the Second World War.
Julia Longbottom, the UK’s ambassador to Japan, told local reporters that Israel is exercising self-defence in Gaza and should not be treated in the same way as Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
The American embassy said that Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador, does not want to politicise the Nagasaki event by attending.
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