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Nagasaki’s Immaculate Conception Cathedral was rebuilt in 1959 after being almost completely destroyed in the explosion.

Twin cathedral bells will ring in unison in Nagasaki for the first time in 80 years, as the Japanese city commemorates the moment the United States decimated it with an atomic bomb eight decades ago.

Crowds are set to gather at Nagasaki’s Immaculate Conception Cathedral on Saturday morning, as the church’s two bells will ring together for the first time since 1945.

The US dropped an atomic bomb on the southwestern port city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, at 11:02am local time, three days after it dropped a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima.

About 74,000 people were killed in Nagasaki, while 140,000 were killed in Hiroshima.

On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, marking the end of World War II.

The church in Nagasaki, widely known as Urakami Cathedral, was rebuilt in 1959 after it was almost completely destroyed in the monstrous atomic explosion, the hypocentre of which was just a few hundred metres from the religious building. Only one of two church bells was recovered from the rubble.

But, funded by Catholics in the US, a new second bell has been constructed and restored to the tower. It will chime on Saturday for the first time in 80 years at the exact moment the bomb was dropped.

Nearly 100 countries are set to attend this year’s commemorations in Nagasaki.

Among the participants will be a representative from Russia, which has not been invited since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Israel, whose ambassador to Japan was not invited to the memorial last year over the country’s war on Gaza, is also expected to attend.

“We wanted participants to come and witness directly the reality of the catastrophe that a nuclear weapon can cause,” a Nagasaki official said last week.

Spearheading the fundraising campaign for the new church bell was James Nolan – a sociology professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, whose grandfather participated in the Manhattan Project, which developed the US’s first nuclear weapons.

While doing research in Nagasaki, a Japanese Christian told him he would like to hear the cathedral’s two bells ring together once again.

Inspired, Nolan embarked on a yearlong series of lectures about the atomic bomb across the US, primarily in churches, ultimately raising approximately $125,000 to fund a new bell. It was unveiled in Nagasaki earlier this year.

“The reactions were magnificent. There were people literally in tears,” Nolan said.

The cathedral’s chief priest, Kenichi Yamamura, said the bell’s restoration “shows the greatness of humanity”.

“It’s not about forgetting the wounds of the past but recognising them and taking action to repair and rebuild, and in doing so, working together for peace,” Yamamura told the AFP news agency.

Hiroshima’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui, warns of the dangers of rising global militarism.

Thousands of people have gathered in Hiroshima to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the world’s first wartime use of a nuclear bomb – as survivors, officials and representatives from 120 countries and territories marked the milestone with renewed calls for disarmament.

The western Japanese city was flattened on August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium bomb, codenamed Little Boy. Roughly 78,000 people were killed instantly. Tens of thousands more would die by the end of the year due to burns and radiation exposure.

The attack on Hiroshima, followed three days later by a plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki, led to Japan’s surrender on August 15 and the end of the second world war. Hiroshima had been chosen as a target partly because its surrounding mountains were believed by US planners to amplify the bomb’s force.

At Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park on Wednesday, where the bomb detonated almost directly overhead eight decades ago, delegates from a record number of international countries and regions attended the annual memorial.

Reporting from the park, Al Jazeera’s Fadi Salameh said the ceremony unfolded in a similar sequence to those of previous years.

“The ceremony procedure is almost the same throughout the years I’ve been covering it,” Salameh said. “It starts at eight o’clock with the children and people offering flowers and then water to represent helping the victims who survived the atomic bombing at that time.

“Then at exactly 8:15… a moment of silence. After that, the mayor of Hiroshima reads out the declaration of peace in which they call for the abolition of nuclear weapons around the world,” he added.

Schoolchildren from across Japan participated in the “Promise of Peace” – reading statements of hope and remembrance. This year’s ceremony also included a message from the representative of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, urging global peace.

Hiroshima’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui, warned of the dangers of rising global militarism, criticising world leaders who argue that nuclear weapons are necessary for national security.

“Among the world’s political leaders, there is a growing belief that possessing nuclear weapons is unavoidable in order to protect their own countries,” he said, noting that the United States and Russia still hold 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads.

“This situation not only nullifies the lessons the international community has learned from the tragic history of the past, but also seriously undermines the frameworks that have been built for peace-building,” he said.

“To all the leaders around the world: please visit Hiroshima and witness for yourselves the reality of the atomic bombing.”

Many attendees echoed that call. “It feels more and more like history is repeating itself,” 71-year-old Yoshikazu Horie told the Reuters news agency. “Terrible things are happening in Europe … Even in Japan, in Asia, it’s going the same way – it’s very scary. I’ve got grandchildren and I want peace so they can live their lives happily.”

Survivors of the bombings – known as hibakusha – once faced discrimination over unfounded fears of disease and genetic effects. Their numbers have fallen below 100,000 for the first time this year.

Japan maintains a stated commitment to nuclear disarmament, but remains outside the UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.

Aug. 5 (UPI) — Remembrances in Japan, the United States and elsewhere mark the 80th anniversaries of the only instances of atomic weapons being used in military conflict and against civilian populations.

The nature of global conflict changed permanently when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on different Japanese cities three days apart in August 1945, with combined casualty figures estimated at more than 200,000 by the end of that year.

Kunihiko Iida, 83, is among the remaining survivors and a volunteer guide at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, according to Korean JoongAng Daily.

He leads tours of the memorial’s exhibits and shares his own experience regarding the horrors wrought by one of the world’s two most powerful weapons that ever have been used in military conflict.

Survivors tell their stories

Iida was 3 years old and inside his family’s home that was located about a half mile from the bomb blast’s hypocenter when it detonated.

He says the blast felt as though he were thrown from a building and covered him in debris and pieces of broken glass.

Iida tried to scream, “Mommy, help!” but the words would not come out of his mouth.

Instead, his grandfather found him, and his 25-year-old mother and 4-year-old sister died within a month after each developed skin conditions, bleeding noses and exhaustion.

Iida said he developed similar symptoms, but he slowly regained his health over several years.

Iida first visited Hiroshima’s peace park when he was 60 after his aging aunt asked him to go there with her.

The park is located within the atomic bomb’s hypocenter, and Iida became a park volunteer a few years later.

“The only path to peace is nuclear weapons’ abolishment,” Iida told the Korean JoongAng Daily. “There is no other way.”

Another survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, Fumiko Doi, 86, was a 6-year-old passenger on a train that was stopped about 3 miles from the Hiroshima bomb’s hypocenter.

She saw the bomb’s bright flash and ducked as broken glass rained down upon passengers, some of whom protected her with their bodies.

Those on the street had burned hair, charcoal-black faces and tattered clothing, she said.

None of her family members died during the initial blast, but her mother and three brothers died from cancer, and her two sisters had long-term health problems.

Doi’s father was a local official and helped collect bodies from the blast, which led to him developing radiation symptoms.

Doi now lives in Fukuoka and travels to anti-war rallies to speak against nuclear weapons.

“Some people have forgotten about the atomic bombings. That’s sad,” she told the Korea JoongAng Daily.

“If one hits Japan, we will be destroyed,” she continued. “If more are used around the world, that’s the end of the Earth.”

She said the potential for a global calamity is why she continues to speak out against the development and use of nuclear weapons.

Memorial services for atomic bombing victims

Many Koreans who were in Hiroshima also were killed or became ill due to the atomic bombing.

A memorial ceremony held on Saturday at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park commemorated the Koreans who survived the bombing.

About 110 people, including many survivors and the families of bombing victims, attended to offer flowers and silent prayers, according to Nippon.com.

The Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims also enables visitors to attend memorial services and view exhibits that depict the atomic bombing and its aftermath.

Visitors also can register the names of victims from the bombing, which numbered 198,748 names as of Aug. 9, 2024.

Nagasaki is located about 750 miles and Hiroshima is about 500 miles from Tokyo in southwestern Japan.

Remembrance events also are scheduled for the two atomic bombings in locations across the United States.

Two days that changed the world

A B-29 Superfortress bomber named “Enola Gay” by its crew unleashed the “Little Boy” atomic bomb that was made from enriched uranium-235 on Aug. 6, 1945, and indiscriminately killed an estimated 140,000 of the city’s 350,000 residents.

The Little Boy bomb killed about half of all who were located within three-quarters of a mile of the blast’s hypocenter and between 80% and 100% of those located within its hypocenter, according to the city of Hiroshima.

When the Japanese emperor did not surrender unconditionally following the Hiroshima bombing, the B-29 Superfortress named “Bockscar” dropped an enriched plutonium-239 bomb called “Fat Man” on Nagasaki and its population of 200,000 on Aug. 9.

That bomb killed an estimated 40,000 and injured another 60,000 Japanese and others upon detonation, but the number of those killed rose to about 70,000 by the year’s end, according to The Manhattan Project.

An estimated 100,000 Japanese survived the attacks, which ended World War II and spared Japan and the United States from an otherwise inevitable invasion of Japan’s home islands.

About a third of Americans surveyed said the atomic bombings were justified, while about an equal amount said they were not, according to the Pew Research Center.

Another third of those surveyed said they are unsure.

June 12 (UPI) — The U.N. nuclear energy watchdog ruled Thursday that Iran was in breach of its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations by failing to come clean about undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple sites.

A meeting of the 35-member-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna voted 19-3 in a favor of the resolution, the first against Iran in 20 years, amid heightened tension over its nculear program and fears an pre-emptive military strike by Israel could be imminent.

Russia, China and Burkina Faso voted against the U.S., British, French and German-sponsored resolution, 11 countries abstained and two did not take part at all.

The vote came after IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi, in a briefing on the body’s quarterly report, told the board that Iran had not been cooperating and had sufficient 60% enriched uranium to build nine nuclear warheads.

He said the IAEA had been seeking answers from Tehran ever since inspectors found man-made uranium particles at three undeclared locations in 2019 and 2020, including via a series of high-level meetings and consultations that he said he had been personally involved in.

“We have been seeking explanations and clarifications from Iran for the presence of these uranium particles. Unfortunately, Iran has repeatedly either not answered or not provided technically credible answers to the agency’s questions. It has also sought to sanitize the locations, which has impeded agency verification activities,” Grossi said.

The decision prompted a strong reaction from Tehran, which issued a statement criticizing what it called a “political” move that placed the IAEA’s credibility and stature in doubt and that it would bring forward “a new [uranium] enrichment center in a secure location” and update first generation centrifuges at another site.

Prior to the vote it threatened to quit the 1970 NPT, which Tehran has signed but failed to ratify the part that authorizes international inspection teams access to remote regions of Iran where they have reason to believe illicit nuclear development projects may be underway.

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned the so-called E3 [Britain, France and Germany] against punishing Iran for its own failures with regard to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action under which the United States, E3, Russia and China agreed to lift some sanctions in return for Iran reining in its nuclear program.

“The E3 have had seven years to implement their JCPOA commitments. They have utterly failed, either by design or ineptitude. Instead of displaying remorse or a desire to facilitate diplomacy, the E3 is today promoting confrontation through the absurd demand that Iran must be punished for exercising its right under the JCPOA to respond to non-performance by its counterparts,” he wrote on X.

“As I have warned: Another major strategic mistake by the E3 will compel Iran to react strongly. Blame will lie solely and fully with malign actors who shatter their own relevance.”

A joint statement issued by the Foreign Office in London said Britain, France, Germany, and United States welcomed the action by the IAEA.

“The board’s collective action upholds the integrity of the IAEA safeguards system and the broader nuclear nonproliferation regime: states will be held to account if they do not live up to their obligations.

“The action creates an opportunity Iran should seize. Iran still has a chance to finally fulfill its obligations, in full candor, and answer the IAEA’s crucial, longstanding questions on undeclared nuclear material and activities,” said the statement.

However, ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations mediated by Oman that began in April were apparently unaffected with a sixth round between Araghchi and Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump‘s special envoy, scheduled to go ahead Sunday as planned, according to Omani Foreign Minister Bad Albusaidi.

The negotiations, exactly five years after Trump pulled the United States out of the JCPOA during his first term, are aimed at replacement deal ensuring Iran does not and cannot develop a nuclear weapon in exchange for removing sanctions.

Iran has always denied working toward developing nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear program is strictly for energy and other peaceful purposes.

ATOMIC Kitten’s Natasha Hamilton opened up about her skin cancer battle, revealing she was diagnosed with the disease after getting a persistent itchy spot on her back.

In an emotional Good Morning Britain interview, the singer, 42, revealed she’d had basal cell carcinoma (BCC).

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BCC is the most common skin cancer type in the UK.

It begins in the basal cells — a type of cell within the skin that produces new skin cells as old ones die off – and is more likely to develop on skin regularly exposed to the sun, like the face, head or neck.

The cancer often tends to appear as a pearly lump, but it can also develop as a scar-like patch on the skin or rough, scaly growths.

Natasha initially mistook the diseased patch of skin as a mosquito bite.

She told her hosts Kate Garraway and Rob Rinder that she developed an itch after catching a bit too much sun while on holiday in Majorca.

Natasha said: “So I had been on holiday, I wasn’t actually in the sun a lot, my baby was only about five months old and I was breastfeeding.

“One afternoon I had her on my lap, my back was in the sun and I burnt.

“I don’t know if it was later that day or the next day, I had an itchy spot on my back.

“I felt it, I went “oh mosquito bite”.

‘It wasn’t until four weeks later when I was at home and it was itching I was like ‘hang on a minute, that seems a bit long for a mosquito bite’.

‘I asked my husband to have look and he went “oh that’s not a bite,” he took a picture.

Natasha revealed: “Originally it had just been a dark freckle that I’d had on my back for many years.

“It wasn’t even raised, it wasn’t a mole, it was just a freckle.”

The star sought specialist help and was diagnosed with BCC.

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She was able to have the cancerous skin removed and is now living cancer-free.

But she revealed: “Now I have to be really vigilant, I have to check my skin all the time.

“Since then I’ve had a few things appear where I’ve had to go back to the dermatologist, they’re on the ‘watch list’.  

“This is probably something I am going to have to keep an eye for the rest of my life,” Natasha said.

The 4 signs of BCC

When you think of signs of skin cancer, a mole probably comes to mind.

This is usually the case with melanoma, the deadliest form of the disease.

But non-melanoma skin cancer – which includes BCC – can manifest in other more subtle ways.

According to Macmillan Cancer Support, a BCC might have some of these features:

1. A smooth, firm lump that may be pearly, pink, red, brown or black – on black or brown skin, it is more likely to be pearly, brown or black
2. A lump that is sunken in the middle like a crater
3. A flat patch of scaly, crusty or irritated skin
4. A scar-like area of pale, shiny skin

This type of skin cancer tends to be painless but it can cause itchiness or bleeding.

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Over time, a BCC may develop into an open sore that does not heal.

Any part of your skin can be affected, but it’s most common in areas exposed to the sun, such as the:

• Head, face and ears
• Neck and shoulders
• Back
• Hands
• Lower legs

BCCs mainly people with fair skin, but those with other skin types may also be at risk, according to the British Skin Foundation.

Those with the highest risk of developing a basal cell carcinoma are: 

• People with pale skin who burn easily and rarely tan
• Those who have had a lot of exposure to the sun, such as people with outdoor hobbies or outdoor workers, and people who have lived in sunny climates
• People who have used sun beds or have regularly sunbathed.
• People who have previously had a basal cell carcinoma

Almost all cases of BCC can be cured and it’s almost never a danger to life, according to the charity.

However, if a BCC is not treated early, it may get larger and may be more likely to come back.

Treatment can include surgically removing the affected area of skin.