As the world marks the 80th anniversary of the first use of a nuclear weapon, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima near the end of World War II, the planet is closer to seeing them used again than it has been in decades, experts and survivors are warning.
At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Wednesday morning, dignitaries and the dwindling number of survivors were set to commemorate the moment a US B-29 bomber dropped the atomic weapon known as “Little Boy” on August 6, 1945. Three days later, the nearby city of Nagasaki was destroyed by a second US atomic bomb.
More than 110,000 were killed instantly in the attacks, while hundreds of thousands more perished from injuries and radiation-related illness over the years.
To this day they remain the only times that nuclear weapons have been used in warfare. And yet these weapons continue to present a very present-day threat.
“The divisions within the international community over nuclear disarmament are deepening, and the current security environment is growing increasingly severe,” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Wednesday.
