Overview

• Representatives from some 120 countries attended Hiroshima and Nagasaki ceremonies despite the absence of major nuclear powers such as Russia, China and Pakistan.
• Eighty-three-year-old Kunihiko Iida and 86-year-old Fumiko Doi broke decades of silence by sharing firsthand accounts to press for a world free of nuclear arms.
• The pontiff warned that true peace demands abandoning weapons capable of causing “indescribable catastrophe” in his 80th-anniversary message.
• Tokyo’s Mori Arts Center opened a Godzilla art exhibition and Buenos Aires’s Manzana de las Luces launched an international display promoting peace and non-proliferation.
• Visits to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums have surged since last year’s G7 summit and the Nobel Peace Prize for Nihon Hidankyo, highlighting growing global engagement as survivors age.