Hiroshima marks the bombing with delegations from 121 countries

Hiroshima observed a minute of silence at 8.15 local time, 1.15 in Switzerland. That is the moment when, in 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb in history on the city, killing more than 140,000 people.

Nagasaki followed on 9 August, with at least 74,000 dead, most of them civilians. Tokyo's unconditional surrender ended the Second World War a few days later.

The ceremony in the Peace Memorial Park brought together some 50,000 people for the eighty-first anniversary. Foreign delegations reached a record number: 121 countries plus the European Union.

The mayor's appeal

Kazumi Matsui read the Peace Declaration, calling on heads of government to abolish nuclear weapons and recalling that civil society is demanding their immediate elimination. He stressed that any use of nuclear weapons today would have catastrophic consequences for humanity.

The park's cenotaph has been updated with the names of victims, which now total 353,639. Over the past year 4,393 deaths were confirmed.

Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi attended for the first time since taking office. She reaffirmed the country's three non-nuclear principles, without explicitly committing to maintain them in future.

The appeal comes after the failure in May of the review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It was the third time running that the meeting ended without a shared document, against a background of tensions in Ukraine and the Middle East following the American and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Similar calls came from Vienna. The social democratic leader Andreas Babler invoked responsibility for peace against renewed rearmament. In 2022 Austria hosted the first meeting of states party to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, in force since 2021, signed by 100 countries and ratified by 75.

The time available to pass on the memory is nonetheless shrinking. The hibakusha, the survivors of the explosions, are on average over 86 years old, and around 91,000 are still alive.