Report by Ms. Rosario Scollo, the Municipality of Mirabella Imbaccari, Italy
On 6 August 2025 in Mirabella Imbaccari (an Italian small town in the province of Catania, Sicily), there was an event in square Unità d’Italia to remember the 80 years since the end of the Second World War, with a photographic exhibition on the atomic bombings.
The initiative, organized by the pacifist association SCI (Service Civil International) in collaboration with ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans) and under the patronage of the Municipality, involved 30 people (all the associations of the town, some students of the junior high school ‘E. De Amicis’ and emigrants).
The evening began with the memory of the Italian Resistance, with direct testimonies from relatives of partisans and soldiers and the reading from some letters from partisans sentenced to death. The importance of memory to be passed down to new generations and of the historical research were highlighted (6 unknown local partisans were discovered).
The second part remembered the two atomic bombings in Japan, the commitment of Nihon Hidankyo (Japanese confederation of atomic bomb survivors), winner of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, and the project in Sicily of Kaki Tree for Peace from Nagasaki, with reading of poems, a story for children and testimonies of hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Photos: courtesy of the Municipality of Mirabella Imbaccari