NAGASAKI - The surviving head of a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary that was destroyed in the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki is expected to be brought to New Mexico, where the world's first nuclear weapon test took place, a source familiar with the matter said Friday.
Marking its first visit to the state, the statue fragment will be displayed in the state capital of Santa Fe, and may also be taken to Los Alamos, where the laboratory to research and develop nuclear weapons was based, the source said, amid growing concerns over a retreat from nuclear disarmament.
The statue head will be taken to the United States for the first time in 16 years, in time for a conference to review the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in New York in November. Discussions are underway for it to be displayed at the U.N. headquarters.
It will be brought by a group formed by Catholic clergies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and includes atomic bomb survivors, or hibakusha.
Mitsuaki Takami, the 80-year-old archbishop emeritus of Nagasaki whose mother was exposed to the atomic bomb while pregnant with him, and Masao Tomonaga, an 83-year-old physician and hibakusha, are among those scheduled to take part.
The head is expected to arrive in New Mexico in December and be brought to sites such as a church in Santa Fe.
On Dec. 7, the anniversary of Japan's 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a Mass for peace is scheduled in Seattle, where the statue is also slated to be displayed.
The head was found in the rubble of the old Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki by a Catholic priest, who later took it to Hokkaido, where it was kept for many years before it was returned to the reconstructed church.
The last time the statue's head was brought to the United States was in 2010, when a review conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was held in New York.
