U.N. Chief to Attend Nagasaki Peace Ceremony for First Time

August 1, 2018

New York- U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will attend this year's peace memorial ceremony in the atomic-bombed southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, the United Nations said Tuesday.

Guterres will be the first U.N. chief to attend the annual Nagasaki ceremony.

In 2010, then U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took part in the Aug. 6 peace memorial ceremony in the city of Hiroshima, western Japan, becoming the first U.N. leader to do so.

Guterres will arrive in Tokyo on Aug. 7. After meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the morning of Aug. 8, Guterres will move on to Nagasaki in the afternoon and hold talks with Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue. He will also meet with hibakusha atomic bomb survivors.

Ahead of his participation in the Nagasaki peace ceremony on Aug. 9, the final day of his three-day tour of Japan, Guterres will visit Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

In the closing days of World War II, Nagasaki was destroyed by the U.S. atomic bombing on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after Hiroshima suffered the same fate.

Guterres, who has shown his eagerness to move ahead with nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation since assuming the top U.N. post in January last year, apparently hopes to demonstrate afresh to the world his determination to kick-start the stalled nuclear disarmament process through his participation in the Nagasaki ceremony.

At the September 2017 signing ceremony for the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Guterres said, "The heroic survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--the hibakusha--continue to remind us of the devastating humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons," applauding their activities aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons. Jiji Press