Today, exactly 70 years after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the people of that Japanese city remember the tens of thousands killed and the legacy of their trauma.
The southern city was devastated three days after Hiroshima, in the closing act of World War II. At the ceremony, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe renewed his country's pledge to shun nuclear weapons.
The anniversary of the devastation wrought by the first military use of an atomic weapon comes as Japan's government is pushing an expanded role for its military.