Paper lanterns float on the Moyasu River to comfort souls of victims of the 6August 1945 atomic bombing, at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Picture: Kimassa Mayama, EPA.

Two Sofia Opera and Ballet workers are responsible for embarrassing the country by scrawling graffiti on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan, the opera company director told Bulgarian television on Wednesday.

The messages written in Cyrillic letters referred to a Bulgarian football team, FC Lokomotiv 1929 – Sofia. The Bulgarian government has appologized for the vandalistic act.

The director of the Sofia Opera and Ballet, Plamen Kartalov, told Bulgarian National Television that the culprits were two stage workers who were touring with the opera in Japan.

Both have been dismissed and will be sacked, Kartalov added. “They brought shame on us and we can’t appologize enough for it,” he told BNT.

The story broke in Japane on Tuesday, when pictures of a sign reading “Loko Sofia” in Cyrillic script were shown on the memorial dedicated to the victims of the atomic bomb that hit the southern Japanese city in 1945.

“We note with indignation the news of the hooligan action against the Monument of Peace in Hiroshima. We find expressing one’s football team fandom on this UNESCO World Cultural Monument in memory of the victims of the nuclear bombardment outrageous and utterly inappropriate,” the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry post on Facebook reads.

“We categorically condemn the assault and offer excuses to our Japanese friends”, it added.

The Japanese online site Asahi said the Hiroshima municipal division that manages the park said a security guard found the signs on October 15.

Graffiti scribbled in black spray were found at three places – on a stone bench, a white iron door and on the fence surrounding the site.

A construction company removed the graffiti from the fence, but the other two places are likely to take time to repair, the report stated.

The memorial commemorates the estimated 140,000 victims of the US bombing of the city on August 6, 1945, which marked the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.

This is not the first time Bulgarian nationals have scribbled on places of cultural significance. In 2015, Bulgarian footballer Blagoy Georgiev was caught writing his name on one of the columns of the Coliseum in Rome with a coin, Bulgarian media reported.

Read more:

Bulgarian Artists ‘Censor’ Gutenberg Statue in Copyright Protest

Painting Monuments Stays in Vogue in Bulgaria

Bulgarians Divided as Capital Scraps Communist-Era Landmark