The officials attend the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings

A silent prayer took place Wednesday morning in Japan on Wednesday morning because it has marked 80 years since the United States abandoned an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba attended the ceremony on Wednesday, as well as officials from around the world.

“Japan is the only nation that has undergone an atomic bombardment at war,” said the mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, at Peace Memorial Park in the city. “The Japanese government represents a people that aspires to an authentic and lasting peace.”

The Second World War ended with the surrender of Japan after the drop in bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place days intervals.

Bombs have killed more than 200,000 people – some of the immediate explosion and others against radiation and burns.

The heritage of weapons continues to haunt survivors today.

“My father was seriously burned and blinded by the explosion. His skin was suspended from his body – he couldn’t even hold my hand,” Hiroshima surviving BBC at the BBC. He was six years old when the bomb struck his city, killing his father and two younger brothers and sisters.

Mr. Naito shared his story with a group of students in Hiroshima, who transform his memories of art tragedy.

In 2024, Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to get rid of the world of nuclear weapons.

Wednesday, in a speech, the mayor of Hiroshima Matsui warned against an “accelerated trend towards military construction in the world” and “the idea that nuclear weapons are essential to national defense”.

“These developments ignore the lessons that the international community should have learned from tragedies of history,” he said. “They threaten to overthrow peacebuilding executives, so many people have worked so hard to build.”

Matsui said that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote peaceful use of nuclear energy, was “on the brink of dysfunctionality”.

He also called on the Japanese government to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – an international agreement prohibiting nuclear weapons which entered into force in 2021.

More than 70 countries have ratified the Treaty, but nuclear powers like the United States and Russia have opposed it, highlighting the deterrence of nuclear arsenals.

Japan has also rejected such a ban, arguing that its security is reinforced by American nuclear weapons.

The nuclear problem is divisor in Japan. In the streets leading to the Peace Memorial Park, there have been small demonstrations calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Satoshi Tanaka, another survivor of the atomic bomb which has undergone several cancers of exposure to radiation, said that seeing blood sample in Gaza and Ukraine today evokes its own suffering.

“Seeing the mountains of the rubble, destroyed cities, children and women fleeing panic, everything brings back memories of what I have experienced,” he told the BBC. “We live alongside nuclear weapons that could destroy humanity several times.”

“The most urgent priority is to push the leaders of nuclear countries. The inhabitants of the world must become even more indignant, raise their stronger voices and take massive measures.”