With the Russian war raging in Ukraine and Russia hinting at the use of nuclear weapons, thousands of people in Hiroshima on Saturday commemorated the explosion of an American atomic bomb over the city 77 years ago.
"Nuclear weapons are nonsense," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons in Hiroshima.
A new arms race is accelerating.
"Humanity is playing with a loaded gun."
Patrick Welter
Correspondent for business and politics in Japan based in Tokyo.
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Guterres warned that "crises with serious nuclear overtones" were spreading rapidly, from the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"We must keep the horrors of Hiroshima in mind at all times and recognize that the only solution to the nuclear threat is to have no nuclear weapons at all."
Concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament
Around the world, the idea that peace depends on nuclear deterrence is gaining momentum, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui said in his peace address.
With that, however, the nuclear threat to the survival of mankind and a possible repetition of the hellscape of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 continue.
"We must immediately make all nuclear buttons meaningless," Matsui demanded and called on the five nuclear powers to take concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament now.
Speaking to representatives of 98 countries at the Hiroshima Peace Park, Matsui accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of using the Russian population as an instrument of war by invading Ukraine to steal the lives and livelihoods of innocent civilians in another country.
"Never build your happiness on the misfortune of others, for only in their happiness can you find your own," he quoted the Russian author Leo Tolstoy as saying.
Representatives of Russia and the Russian helper state of Belarus were not invited to the ceremony in Hiroshima.
At 8:15 a.m., the time when the American atomic bomb exploded over the city in western Japan on August 6, 1945, the guests at the ceremony and the residents of Hiroshima held a minute's silence to commemorate the victims.
Tens of thousands of people perished immediately, and the number of dead by the end of 1945 is estimated at 140,000.
Hiroshima is the first city to be destroyed by an atomic bomb.
Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the Americans also destroyed the Japanese port city of Nagasaki with a second atomic bomb.
On August 15th, the Japanese Empire capitulated and the Second World War was over in the Pacific too.
Old fears among the survivors are awakened
The number of nuclear weapons worldwide is estimated at around 13,000.
Guterres called on participants at the NPT conference in New York, which runs until August 26, to "urgently" work towards abolishing nuclear arsenals.
He also called it a sign of hope that the Nuclear Weapons Treaty Conference was working on a roadmap to eliminate "doomsday weapons."
The five official nuclear powers are not part of the ban treaty.
Neither Germany nor Japan, which are under the United States' nuclear protective umbrella, have signed the ban treaty.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations called it "completely unacceptable" for nuclear states to admit the possibility of nuclear war.
This was a reference to Russia's threats at the start of the Ukraine war, when the government in Moscow indicated it would use nuclear weapons if NATO or others came to Ukraine's aid.
In the West and also in Japan, Russia's hints are taken as a threat of nuclear war.
For the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, old fears are being rekindled.
"No one in the world should have to go through what we went through," says 91-year-old atomic bomb survivor Yoshiko Kajimoto.
"I really hope that Putin just talks and doesn't seriously think about using nuclear weapons."
Meanwhile, Russia is trying to downplay the threats.
"We assume that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it must never be started," Putin wrote in a welcoming address to the NPT conference in New York.