Overview

• A minute of silence was held at 11:02 a.m. local time in Nagasaki’s Peace Park with representatives from 94 countries and regions present, marking the 80th anniversary of the city’s atomic bombing.
• Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki called on global leaders to draft a detailed plan to abolish nuclear weapons, highlighting efforts by the Nobel-recognized hibakusha association Nihon Hidankyo.
• Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba pledged to uphold Japan’s three non-nuclear principles and to support global efforts toward a world without nuclear arms, without endorsing the 2021 UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.
• Official records updated this year list 349,246 deaths in Hiroshima and 198,785 in Nagasaki from the 1945 bombings as survivors known as hibakusha fall below 100,000 with an average age of 86.
• Recent commemorations and media specials have revived ethical debates first sparked by John Hersey’s 1946 New Yorker reportage, but survivors’ appeals for disarmament struggle to influence government policy in an era of rising nuclear tensions.