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At 11.02 a.m. on August 9, 1945, the sky above Nagasaki was filled by a white flash and all the clocks stopped. A gigantic mushroom-shaped cloud soared up towards the blue sky and left a devastated city behind.
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Though many were killed by the U.S. nuclear attack, some survived. People like Terumi Tanaka have dedicated their lives to demanding action to prevent any other city from being attacked with nuclear weapons.
“If the people advocating greater reliance on nuclear weapons really understood what happened 80 years ago in my city and in Hiroshima, they would see how unrealistic it is to think that these weapons keep you safe,” Terumi Tanaka writes.https://t.co/BeRB7yinB5
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) August 6, 2025
Every year the city of Nagasaki holds a commemoration of the nuclear attack. Watch the moment of silence from the 2025 commemoration here.
Nagasaki joined the ICAN cities appeal in 2019, and then Mayor Tomihisa Taue said “The efforts that non-nuclear weapon states and atomic bomb survivors have made to break through this state of affairs have resulted in the forging of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This treaty represents a light of hope for the majority of people in the world.”
After decades of campaigning for a world free of nuclear-weapons, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted in 2017 holds great significance for the Hibakusha. A recent poll for Kyodo reported that 70% of hibakusha are worried nuclear weapons could be used again because of current geopolitical tensions and they were also critical of the Japanese government's disarmament policies, particularly its refusal to join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, TPNW