Hiroshima held a solemn ceremony on Wednesday to mark exactly 80 years since the United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in war. Thousands of people, including survivors and students, bowed their heads for a minute of silence at 8:15 a.m.—the moment the uranium device known as “Little Boy” detonated on 6 August 1945, ultimately killing about 140,000 people by the end of that year. In a Peace Declaration delivered beside the city’s Atomic Bomb Dome, Mayor Kazumi Matsui warned that a global trend toward military build-ups is eroding lessons learned from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Citing the fact that the United States and Russia still control roughly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads, he urged world leaders to visit the city and “witness the reality of the atomic bombing.” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba laid a wreath and pledged that the only nation ever attacked with nuclear weapons would intensify efforts to achieve a world free of them. Representatives from a record 120 countries and territories, including the United States and Israel, attended; Russia and China were among notable absentees. The milestone comes as the number of officially recognised hibakusha—atomic-bomb survivors—has fallen below 100,000 for the first time, their average age now 86. Survivor groups, buoyed by last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for the confederation Nihon Hidankyo, appealed for younger generations to carry forward calls for abolition of nuclear arms. Commemorations unfolded against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza and renewed nuclear rhetoric among major powers. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, in a statement read at the ceremony, said the risk of nuclear conflict is rising and called on all states to return to disarmament negotiations.