On August 6, 1945, the American plane Enola Gay dropped the four-tonne uranium bomb "Little boy" over Hiroshima. About 140,000 of the city's 350,000 residents are estimated to have lost their lives immediately or as a result of radiation damage in the following years.
Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima - during the last days of World War II - Nagasaki was also attacked with an atomic bomb called "Fat Man". More than 75,000 people died immediately.
At 08.15 local time, the time when the first bomb was dropped 75 years ago, survivors and their relatives and a handful of dignitaries gathered for the annual ceremony in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park.
Coronal ceremonyDue to the corona pandemic, the ceremony was held with fewer participants than usual - less than ten percent of the normal number - and with chairs placed at two-meter intervals. Ahead of the anniversary, the city's mayor Kazumi Matsui has urged residents to take part in Thursday's ceremony from the TV couch.
According to tradition, the memorial service began with a silent prayer. Kazumi Matsui then spoke, as did Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and both reiterated their promises of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Warned for nationalismThe mayor called on the world to unite to address global threats, such as the corona virus, and raised a warning finger for the nationalism that preceded World War II.
"When the flu pandemic ravaged a century ago, it claimed millions of lives and terrorized the world because the countries that fought each other in the First World War were unable to meet the threat together," said Kazumi Matsui.
- A subsequent rise of nationalism led to World War II and the atomic bombings. We must never let this painful past repeat itself. Civil society must reject self-centered nationalism and unite against all threats, he continued.