Overview
- About 55,000 participants from a record 120 countries gathered at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to honor the victims of the 1945 bombings.
- Aging hibakusha, now averaging over 86 years old, expressed frustration at increasing support for nuclear weapons as security tools.
- Mayor Kazumi Matsui warned that normalizing nuclear deterrence disregards the lessons of history and threatens international peacebuilding.
- Germany’s Foreign Minister Volker Wadephul and UN Disarmament Chief Izumi Nakamitsu cautioned that treating nuclear arms as coercive instruments raises the risk of conflict.
- Japan’s government reaffirmed its decision not to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons under the U.S. security umbrella despite survivor demands for a ban.