Hiroshima’s mayor, Kazumi Matsui, warns of the dangers of rising global militarism.
Published On 6 Aug 2025
Thousands of people have gathered in Hiroshima to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the world’s first wartime use of a nuclear bomb – as survivors, officials and representatives from 120 countries and territories marked the milestone with renewed calls for disarmament.
The western Japanese city was flattened on August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped a uranium bomb, codenamed Little Boy. Roughly 78,000 people were killed instantly. Tens of thousands more would die by the end of the year due to burns and radiation exposure.
The attack on Hiroshima, followed three days later by a plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki, led to Japan’s surrender on August 15 and the end of the second world war. Hiroshima had been chosen as a target partly because its surrounding mountains were believed by US planners to amplify the bomb’s force.
At Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park on Wednesday, where the bomb detonated almost directly overhead eight decades ago, delegates from a record number of international countries and regions attended the annual memorial.
Reporting from the park, Al Jazeera’s Fadi Salameh said the ceremony unfolded in a similar sequence to those of previous years.
“The ceremony procedure is almost the same throughout the years I’ve been covering it,” Salameh said. “It starts at eight o’clock with the children and people offering flowers and then water to represent helping the victims who survived the atomic bombing at that tim