Overview

• Representatives from over 100 countries attended the ceremony, including Russia for the first time since 2022 and Israel after its absence last year.
• Participants held a minute of silence at 11:02 a.m. to honor the roughly 74,000 people killed in Nagasaki by the atomic blast in 1945.
• The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception’s solitary original bell, rebuilt in 1959 and restored this spring by American Christians, rang for the first time in eight decades.
• Professor James Nolan of Massachusetts raised $125,000 to fund the bell’s recovery and restoration as a gesture of reconciliation.
• Survivors and local residents shared testimony on the enduring human toll of nuclear warfare, reinforcing calls for disarmament.