Hiroshima at 80: An ominous anniversary

By Riaan de Villiers

On 6 August every year, a gathering is held in Hiroshima in western Japan to commemorate the atom bomb explosion in 1945 which obliterated most of the city, instantly killing about 78 000 of its inhabitants.

Three days later, the US dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing about 27 000 people. Japan surrendered on 15 August, ending World War Two.

Acute radiation exposure continued to claim many more lives. By the end of that year, the number of dead in Hiroshima had reached about 140,000, and those in Nagasaki about 70,000.

Eighty years later, and despite the proliferation of nuclear weapons, these are still the only times when nuclear weapons have been used in war.

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The memorials are held in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, against the eerie backdrop of the A-Bomb Dome, also known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The remains of the former Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, it was one of few buildings in the city – and the only one close to the so-called hypocentre of the blast — that remained standing, and has been preserved in skeletal form to this day. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Similar memorials are staged three days later in Nagasaki.

Survivors of the two blasts – known as the hibakusha – play an important role in these ceremonies, first by continuing to provide first-hand testimonies of their experiences, aimed at delivering a message honed over decades, namely that the use of nuclear weapons are incompatible with any meaningful notion of humanity.

Hibakusha are defined in Japanese law, and receive various forms of government support. Essentially, they comprise people who were close to the blasts, close to the hypocentres soon afterwards, exposed to radiation from fallout, or not yet born but carried by pregnant women exposed to radiation. About 650,000 people have been recognised as hibakusha. By March 2025, just over 99 000 were still alive, most of them living in Japan. In a bitter irony, many of them, as well as their children, face significant discrimination, among others due to fears that they will pass on genetic deformities.

Monuments in Hiroshima and Nagasaki contain lists of the names of the hibakusha who are known to have died since the bombings, which are updated annually on the anniversaries of the bombings. As of August 2025, the memorials record the names of more than 550,000 hibakusha; 349,246 in Hiroshima and 201,942 in Nagasaki.

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In 1956, hibakusha formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, often shortened to Nihon Hidankyō. It lobbies the Japanese government for improved support for victims, and governments worldwide for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Its activities include recording witness accounts, issuing public appeals, and sending annual delegations to various international organisations, including the United Nations, to advocate for global nuclear disarmament. In 2024, it won the Nobel Peace Prize ‘for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again’.

 

A photograph of Hiroshima after the bomb, held in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. (Wikimedia Commons)

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Last Wednesday’s memorials – the 80th since the bombings – were particularly significant.  First, given an average age of 86, the numbers of surviving Hibakusha are dwindling, and it was the last major anniversary at which they were expected to play a major role.

Moreover, despite 80 years of advocacy and international efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, threats of nuclear warfare have been rising instead of receding. All these themes were reflected in the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

According to various reports, the Hiroshima ceremony was attended by about 55 000 people, including survivors, family members, and representatives of international organizations as well as a record 120 countries.

As in previous years, the ceremony started at eight o’clock with children and others offering flowers and water to represent helping the victims who survived the blast.

At 8:15, the exact time when the bomb exploded, a peace bell was rung, followed by a minute of silence. After that, the mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, read out a declaration of peace.

The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, Matsui, and other officials laid flowers at a cenotaph containing the names of all those killed by the bomb, and white doves were released as symbols of peace.

In his peace declaration, Kazumi Matsui said the plea for peace derived from hibakusha experiences was more crucial than ever.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the chaos in the Middle East were accelerating military buildups around the world, and policy-makers in some countries even accepted the idea that nuclear weapons were essential for national defence.

‘These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history. They threaten to topple the peacebuilding frameworks so many have worked so hard to construct.

‘Despite the current turmoil at the nation-state level, we, the people, must never give up. Instead, we must work even harder to build civil society consensus that nuclear weapons must be abolished for a genuinely peaceful world.

‘Our youth, the leaders of future generations, must recognize that misguided policies regarding military spending, national security, and nuclear weapons could bring utterly inhumane consequences. We urge them to step forward with this understanding and lead civil society toward consensus through expanded participation at the grass roots level. …’

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The ceremony included a message from the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, delivered on his behalf by Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.

Eighty years previously, it said, humanity crossed a threshold from which there could be no return. Given that the UN was also established 80 years previously, the event served as a reminder why it was created, namely to prevent war, and to ensure that the tragedies of the past would never be repeated.

‘Yet the risk of nuclear conflict is growing, and the weapons that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again treated as tools of coercion.’

There were ‘signs of hope’ in the form of the Pact for the Future, adopted by UN member countries last year, in which they renewed their commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons. However, this should lead to real change by strengthening the global disarmament regime.

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However, a UN statement on the Declaration of International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (26 September) provides a sobering perspective.

Nuclear disarmament, it says, is the UN’s highest disarmament priority, and was addressed in the General Assembly’s first resolution in 1946. Since then, the UN has been in the forefront of diplomatic efforts to advance nuclear disarmament.

‘Yet today, around 12 100 nuclear weapons remain. Countries possessing such weapons have well-funded, long-term plans to modernise their nuclear arsenals. More than half of the world’s population still lives in countries that either have such weapons or are members of nuclear alliances.

While the number of deployed nuclear weapons has appreciably declined since the height of the Cold War, not one nuclear weapon has been physically destroyed pursuant to a treaty. In addition, no nuclear disarmament negotiations are currently under way.

‘Meanwhile, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence persists as an element in the security policies of all possessor states and many of their allies. The international arms control framework that contributed to international security since the Cold War, acted as a brake on the use of nuclear weapons and advanced nuclear disarmament, has come under increasing strain.’

In 2019, it notes, the withdrawal of the US spelled the end of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty through which the US and Russia had previously committed to eliminating an entire class of nuclear missiles. And in February 2023, Russia suspended its participation in the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START’) which had provided the two largest nuclear powers with an opportunity to agree on further arms control measures.

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Last week’s memorials were also overshadowed by the fact that the Japanese government is among those that accept the possession of nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence.

According to Associated Press, in his speech on Wednesday, Matsui also urged the Japanese government to sign and ratify the nuclear weapons ban treaty, and several groups of survivors made this same request in a meeting with the prime minister after the ceremony.

In his own speech, Ishiba reiterated his government’s pledge to work toward a world without nuclear weapons, but did not mention the treaty, and again indicated his government’s support for possessing nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence.

At a news conference later the same day, Ishiba justified Japan’s reliance on US nuclear deterrence on the grounds that it was surrounded by neighbours that possesses nuclear weapons. The stance, he said, did not contradict Japan’s pursuit of a nuclear-free world.

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In the meantime, accord to the AP report, many of the aging survivors who attended the two ceremonies last week expressed frustration about the growing support of global leaders for nuclear weapons as a deterrence.

‘There will be nobody left to pass on this sad and painful experience in 10 years or 20 years,’ Minoru Suzuto, a 94-year-old survivor, said after he kneeled down to pray at the cenotaph. ‘That’s why I want to share (my story) as much as I can.’

In a statement, Nihon Hidankyo said: ‘We don’t have much time left, while we face a greater nuclear threat than ever. Our biggest challenge now is to change, even just a little, nuclear weapons states that give us the cold shoulder.’

According to a recent BBC report, to the hibakusha, the threat of nuclear escalation seems more real than ever. When thinking about conflicts around the world today – such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war — 86-year-old Michiko Kodama told the reporter: ‘My body trembles and tears overflow … We must not allow the hell of the atomic bombing to be recreated. I feel a sense of crisis.”

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On 4 August, two days before Hiroshima aniversary, Masako Toki, a scholar of Japanese descent living in the United States, who promotes disarmament and nonproliferation education among high school students and teachers in the US, Japan, Russia and other countries, posted an article on the academic website The Conversation in which these complex issues and themes are woven together.

Titled ‘Survivors’ voices 80 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki sound a warning and a call to action’, it places the Hibakusha at the centre of global advocacy for nuclear disarmament.

She writes: ‘The Hibakusha have carried their suffering as living testimony to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, with one key wish: that no one else will suffer as they have.

‘Now, in 2025, as the world marks 80 years of remembrance since those bombings, the voices of the Hibakusha offer not only memory, but also moral clarity in an age of growing peril.’

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FEATURED IMAGE: The A-Bomb Dome and part of the Peace Memorial Park against the backdrop of modern Hiroshima. (Wikimedia Commons)

This article is based on reports by The Guardian, the BBC, Associated Press and Al Jazeera, and other online sources, including UN websites and Wikipedia.