Russia to publish report from Soviet embassy in Tokyo received after 1945 A-bombings

MOSCOW, August 5. /TASS/. Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin has issued instructions to publish on the web-site of the Russian Historical Society the unique report Moscow received from the Soviet embassy in Tokyo immediately after the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. "Public interest in this theme is very great. I would suggest making this document available on the website of the Russian Historical Society in the near future, possibly, today," Naryshkin said at a round-table discussion at the Moscow state institute of international relations MGIMO, timed for the 70th anniversary of the 1945 tragedies. The report and its contents were mentioned to the participants in the discussion by the chief of the Japan section at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s third, Asian department, Aleksandr Ilyshev-Vvedensky. He said the Foreign Ministry’s leadership had made a decision to make a copy of the document especially for today’s round-table discussion. "Neither the whole document nor any part of it has ever been published. In our opinion it deserves to be released on the eve of the date," the diplomat said while handing over a copy of the document to Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Historical Society. The Russian diplomat described the report’s contents as the "first eye-witness account of the horrors of bombardments and of what was rightly termed as a crime against humanity. The document points out the effects of the bombings would be felt 70 years after," Ilyshev-Vvedensky said. "The present day merely confirms the conclusions made in that report," he concluded. Japan this year remembers the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the 70th time. August 6 and 9 will see special ceremonies commemorating the tragedies which claimed 450,000 lives. Read more