U.S. and other ambassadors to skip Nagasaki peace memorial over Israel’s exclusion
U.S. and other Western ambassadors to Japan are skipping an atomic bombing peace memorial in Nagasaki on Friday after Israel was not invited.
TOKYO — U.S. and other Western ambassadors to Japan are skipping an atomic bombing peace memorial in Nagasaki on Friday after Israel was not invited over what the city’s mayor said were security concerns.
Diplomats from all over the world are invited to the annual ceremony, which commemorates the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city. U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel and other envoys say excluding Israel puts it on par with Russia and Belarus, which are the only two other countries not invited due to their military aggression against Ukraine.
The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo confirmed that Emanuel, who attended a similar ceremony Tuesday in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, would sit out the Nagasaki ceremony. Instead, he will attend a peace ceremony at the Zojoji temple in Tokyo and hold a moment of silence at the embassy.
“He has directed the consulates to do the same,” an embassy spokesperson said in an email.
The U.S. will be represented at the Nagasaki ceremony by the principal officer of the U.S. Consulate in Fukuoka, the spokesperson said.
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